 Good morning, I'm Kristen Folletti and welcome to News Desk on SiliconANGLE TV for Tuesday, April 16, 2013. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act comes up for a vote in the House this week, and one R&D company is in force to show their support. Join us now to provide his breaking analysis on this week's action in Washington is SiliconANGLE founding editor Mark Risen-Hopkins. Good morning, Mark. Thanks for joining us. Good morning. Nearly 200 senior IBM executives are flying into Washington this week to push for the passage of the controversial cybersecurity bill, which comes up for a vote in the House. Mark, to begin, why are IBM execs fighting for the passage of this bill, and what's their agenda? So they honestly don't believe there is a strong alignment between the aim of this bill and what IBM is pushing for. IBM, what they want is what office one, they want a little bit of security and they want a little bit of security on the cyber front, particularly because this is a hot button issue. It's one that IBM deals with on a daily basis. And it's an issue that, I mean, we saw the president had, I think we talked about this on the other president had several key, like 22 key executives from tech industry and other Fortune 100 companies to talk about the issue, the very real issue of cyber threat from foreign countries. The SISPA bill has come under a lot of scrutiny, especially from privacy advocates who say that the bill imposes on some human rights issues. So what problem does SISPA aim to solve? It aims to solve the issue of national security on the cyber front. I mean, this is a divisive issue because I would say it's a divisive issue. We all agree that this is an issue for those that are abreast of the news and what's going on. It's a very real threat. We've talked about it on the show in a number of different ways. John Casoretto specializes in this talking about, you know, the HTC and Lenovo concerns when bringing Chinese made equipment into the United States government installations also on the software security network security fronts. There's a lot of stuff going on in there. And there's just no cohesive way for branches of government to interface with the private sector and protect America and protect critical infrastructure because there's no provision for that in the Constitution. There was no thought given to a global communications network in the 1700s, surprise, surprise. Mark, what are your thoughts on IBM's support for a bill who many believe is bad? Yeah, so I mean, I will say, even within the SiliconANGLE newsroom, there is some division as to whether it's a good or a bad thing because something needs to be done. That's the bottom line. Something needs to be done. I am of the personal belief that something needs to be done in the private sector without government help. We've talked about this on the program before. I think that almost any government action in this sector is bad government action. The government has a horrible track record when it comes to security. They're known for lagging years, if not sometimes decades behind in technological savvy in general behind the private sector. And any sort of coordinated effort by the government to create rules or a national cybersecurity plan for the private sector is going to end up in some level of disaster or at least downside for the American public. Why does it seem that the tech industry and the general public seem to be divided on this bill? Is there something in particular interest to the tech industry that they find appealing about it? Well, I don't know why the industry would find this appealing, quite honestly. Unless it is to absolve service providers of liability. And that it would certainly do. I'll preface anything I say that this bill is incredibly complex. I haven't read anything as complex as this since the bankruptcy act of 2007 or 2006 or perhaps the Patriot Act was very convoluted language and consisted mostly of expanding previously existing powers. One of the things this does is it expands upon copyright protection rules that were fought against widely by the consumer tech audience in SOPA. And also, and this is more frighteningly, it gives not carte blanche, but a fairly wide brush of a wide swath of law enforcement officials, the ability to look at your browsing history or your email, if they feel that you are a person of interest. Anybody, anybody that's in America, American citizen or has an account inside of America, their data is not safe from spying. And that means the right to having spy free email is not an enumerated right in the Constitution. However, I feel that most Americans or most people would feel violated by having somebody look at their private messages, even if they're not doing anything illegal. And from a network security standpoint, let's look at this beyond. Let's just look at this. Our proponents for these measures will say, well, it may suck, but we have to do this. Circumstances require this if we're going to remain secure. Well, I don't agree with that on the facts of the case. There's too many people under the provisions of this bill that will have access to too many more people's private data. And you cannot have a security policy that improves security when you have so many people that have admin level access. That's just basic security 101. If you want to have a secure system keeping out unwanted intruders, you don't give two, three, four, five million people in America admin level access to everybody's data. I mean, that's a huge security hole right there. So given what you just said, if the bill were to face some revision, do you feel that there's a middle of the road solution that we could reach? Or is it something that we're always going to be divided on? There will probably be some middle ground reached at some point. I'm not sure exactly what the solution is here. I just know that CISPA is not it. I know that CISPA will create more problems than it solves, and I don't understand why IBM is advocating this bill. It's not a very well thought out bill, in my opinion. There's too many problems. The only understanding or only reasoning I can put behind IBM's advocacy of this bill is that they are of the opinion that something needs to be done. And if this doesn't pass, then nothing will. What kind of implications are associated with the passage of CISPA? Like I mentioned before, it's just complete lack of privacy for the average citizen. There's millions of law enforcement officials that belong to various branches of the government, homeland security, local law enforcement, sheriff's deputies, FBI, CIA, all these different three letter organizations down down to the local law enforcement that will have access to all data, should they desire it or make a strong enough case for it. And I mean, you don't even have to go into the conspiracy theories of, you know, will this bill be used to exploit political enemies or people that have certain political beliefs. You don't even have to go that far. I mean, it's just, you know, what would the local Barney Fife do if he had access to your email? You know, there's not a stretch, it's not a conspiracy theory to think how that could be misapplied. Mark, do we know how the tech industry is responding to IBM's outright backing of this bill? There's not been a whole lot of response as of yet. I mean, there's the people that are opposed to CISPA that are now speaking out against IBM, but IBM isn't a giant consumer company. This is not something that's going to get them a lot of flack or any kind of backlash or blowback in their perspective. They're an enterprise, primarily an enterprise company. They don't have a lot of dealings with the direct-to-consumer offerings. So, I mean, occasionally you go to the store and you see like an IBM mouse or a keyboard and, you know, your fries or your Best Buy. I just don't think a boycott of those types of items is going to really phase IBM. You know, and enterprise clients aren't likely to have a political opinion on something like this. Well, Mark, thanks so much for your comments this morning. Great talking with you. And all of today's top tech headlines. Join you in one place with your SiliconANGLE Daily Roundup. That's just moments away here on Newsdesk.