White House tech official: No need to ‘sacrifice privacy for cybersecurity’

The White House remains ready to work with Congress on cybersecurity legislation despite the veto threat issued for legislation in the House, an administration official said Thursday. 

Danny Weitzner, the White House’s chief technology officer for Internet policy, said the administration is opposed to the House bill partly because "we don't need to sacrifice privacy for cybersecurity." 

The legislation Weitzner referred to, the Cyber Intelligence and Sharing Protection Act (CISPA), is scheduled for a vote in the House on Friday. The White House issued a veto threat for CISPA on Wednesday, arguing it would undermine Internet privacy and fail to protect critical infrastructure systems.

Weitzner also addressed privacy issues more broadly during the speech at the Computer and Communications Industry Association's annual Washington caucus. He praised the Federal Trade Commission as a "world-leading privacy enforcer" that is as good or better than its European counterparts. 

"I think we have the most robust privacy enforcement of any country in the world," he said.

Weitzner said that the White House truly wants to construct  a "flexible" national privacy framework meant to deal with the "challenges and opportunities of the Internet environment."

He said the privacy bill of rights put forward by the administration is "a set of principles consumers ought to rely on and companies out to embrace."

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