Senate Kills Cybersecurity Bill

[Frodo]

Cybersecurity bill fails in the Senate

By Ed O'Keefe
Posted at 12:21 PM ET, 08/02/2012

A bill establishing security standards to prevent large-scale cyber attacks on the nation’s critical infrastructure — including water supplies and the electrical grid — failed in the U.S. Senate Thursday, despite strong endorsements from top military and national security officials.

Senators voted 52 to 46 in favor of the bill, coming up short of the two-thirds majority necessary to advance the bill to final passage. Failure to pass the measure further stalls years of bipartisan efforts to establish stricter security standards and, experts say, could leave the nation vulnerable to widespread hacking or a serious cyber attack.

“This is one of those days when I fear for our country and I’m not proud of the United States Senate,” Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), one of the bill’s chief sponsors, said ahead of the vote. “We’ve got a crisis, and it’s one that we all acknowledge. It’s not just that there’s a theoretical or speculative threat of cyber attack against our country — it’s real.”