President Obama has made improving digital defenses a top national security priority. Stakes high for W.H. on CISPA

The Obama administration didn't mince words in 2012 when it threatened to veto what it saw as a horrible House cybersecurity bill — one that fell short on consumer privacy.

A year later, that bill is back, and the White House may be hedging its bets.


As a House vote draws near, the White House remains caught between large technology companies that support the measure, powerful privacy advocates who vocally oppose it and congressional leaders it can't afford to alienate if it seeks a cybersecurity deal in 2013.

For President Barack Obama, the stakes are high. He’s made improving the country's digital defenses one of his top national security priorities, but the House bill, known as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, has incurred the wrath of the Internet’s loudest activists, and the administration must tread carefully to avoid becoming a target as well.

For now, the White House's allies are urging it to speak with the same forceful tone it adopted in 2012. The administration is at least "going to make it clear the bill in its current form is a deal-breaker,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), one of the bill's opponents, though he said he didn’t know whether the White House would issue a veto statement.

Angry House Democrats and a collection of privacy hawks, including the American Civil Liberties Union, are pushing most forcefully for a veto threat this week. They're also rallying opponents on Capitol Hill — while others, like browser-maker Mozilla, try to galvanize Internet activists with online calls to action.

Meanwhile, CISPA's backers, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (Md.), are canvassing the Capitol furiously to shore up their vote tallies while meeting with the White House, they've told POLITICO, to address last-minute concerns.

For all the politicking, a final answer could come in a matter of hours: The administration typically issues its official statements of policy as bills head to the floor, a spokeswoman previously told POLITICO. And CISPA drew its first veto threat last year just after it received a green light by the House Rules Committee, which will set the parameters of the 2013 cybersecurity debate on Tuesday afternoon.

The White House, however, didn't comment on its timing or process to POLITICO.

Veto threat or not, CISPA is likely to pass the House this week for a second time — only to reach the roadblock that is the U.S. Senate, which hasn't even drafted a bill. Both chambers and the administration agree with CISPA’s purpose — to facilitate the exchange of cyberthreat data — but there's rampant disagreement on the mechanics.

The showdown centers on its privacy protections: CISPA peeves privacy hawks because they believe it includes too few checks on companies swapping data, conceivably letting them share information with intelligence agencies. The bill's backers dispute those charges while highlighting their frequent revisions meant to satisfy privacy advocates.

Still, those qualms correspond closely to criticisms the White House raised in a 2012 veto threat. Earlier this month, after CISPA cleared the House Intelligence Committee, a White House spokeswoman issued a damning statement, telling POLITICO the changes "reflect a good-faith effort" but that in the end, the White House "[does] not believe these changes have addressed some outstanding fundamental priorities."

That has civil liberties leaders, privacy-minded Democrats and Internet companies firing on all cylinders in Washington as CISPA heads back to the House floor for a vote expected on Thursday.

And it leaves the White House with time running out to make a key decision: Will it threaten to kill a widely backed proposal just to affirm its own privacy bona fides? Or will it stay largely silent, working the Capitol in pursuit of the very compromise that's long eluded Washington on cybersecurity?

Opponents certainly hope for a veto. And critics from the Center for Democracy & Technology and ACLU, for example, spent some of Monday trying to rally lawmakers' staffs to vote against the bill. Mozilla revived its public campaign against the bill, weeks after the so-called Internet Defense League, a group of Web activists, tried to bait its online followers with an alarmist message about CISPA and its potential threat to privacy.

Top companies like IBM and others, meanwhile, stormed the Hill again Monday to defend CISPA in its current form. Many leading tech trade associations and telecom giants back the bill because it doesn't impose mandates on industry.

And top Democrats began circulating letters that urged a vote against the bill, barring additional changes. A few leaders of the Capitol's small Democratic insurgency told POLITICO every vote ultimately matters — even if CISPA does pass — in the long game of cybersecurity legislation in Congress.

"It would certainly help us with our Democratic members," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) about a veto threat. Schakowsky is one of only two House Intelligence Committee members who opposed CISPA when it was marked up. She said she's still hopeful Democrats can alter the bill on the House floor.

But Democrats aren't totally united on that front, with some believing CISPA already strikes the best balance — and that veto chatter could ultimately create the same political headaches that obstructed progress in 2012.

"It would definitely make the political process more difficult, but it's not insurmountable; the bill would get through the Congress," said Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), one of its supporters.

The political dynamic is much different this year: After the failures of 2012, the president signed an executive order on cybersecurity in February that spares Congress from some of the more politically onerous disputes. A veto, though, could revive political tensions.

For now, a former administration official familiar with the White House's thinking acknowledged the political calculations — how, exactly, the administration can stake its position while avoiding a move that would make it "a lot harder to get any sort of conference deal done."

The source noted, though, that there are "principles at stake."

Rogers, for his part, declined to respond for this story. Ruppersberger told POLITICO in an interview earlier this week that he had not heard anything new from the White House — but did say he felt the administration actually had issued a "good statement" after the markup.

Both frequently have accused the White House of blindsiding them in 2012 with their veto threat, though administration officials have rejected that account. The two sides have met repeatedly throughout April, they confirmed to POLITICO.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 5:58 p.m. on April 15, 2013.