White House uses PSN, Sony Pictures cyberattacks to resurrect ‘dangerous’ CISPA-like security measures

If those Sony cyberattacks bummed you out, the White House wants you to know that it has a proposal to deal with those kinds of security risks in the future. Just one problem: President Barack Obama’s plan is very similar to the Cyber Intelligence and Sharing Act (CISPA) legislation that he previously promised to veto.

Yesterday, the White House published a press release that proposed a number of new measures for protecting public and private entities from cyberthreats. The heart of the plan would have corporations share information about attacks with the U.S. government and its security agencies. This move from the executive branch is widely seen as a response to the Sony Pictures breach, which helped hackers get access to an unprecedented amount of private data from a corporation. But it’s also a response to the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that brought down the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live gaming services on Christmas Day. While many are looking for the government to take action about online threats, at least one privacy group is worried Obama’s proposal already goes too far.