The highly controversial Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which passed the House last week, will “almost certainly be shelved by the Senate,” according to a representative of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

This comes the day after it was revealed that the government is already carrying out activities like those legitimized under CISPA by issuing so-called 2511 letters. CISPA would have given programs that may currently be illegal a solid legal foothold.

However, it seems that it very well may be dead, at least according to the unnamed committee representative along with Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, and Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the ACLU.

“We’re not taking [CISPA] up,” the committee representative said, according to U.S. News. “Staff and senators are divvying up the issues and the key provisions everyone agrees would need to be handled if we’re going to strengthen cybersecurity. They’ll be drafting separate bills.”

Rockefeller previously said the passage of CISPA was “important,” but the legislation’s “privacy protections are insufficient.”

As CNET points out, “Rockefeller’s comments are significant as he takes up the lead on the Commerce Committee, which will be the first branch of the Senate that will debate its own cybersecurity legislation.”

“I think it’s dead for now,” Richardson said. “CISPA is too controversial, it’s too expansive, it’s just not the same sort of program contemplated by the Senate last year. We’re pleased to hear the Senate will probably pick up where it left off last year.”

However, the comment from the committee representative seems to indicate that regardless of the fate of CISPA, the “key provisions” will be passed one way or another. These key provisions are incredibly problematic.

According to Richardson, it will likely be at least three months before the Senate votes on new cybersecurity legislation.

“We need to be vigilant as the year moves on to make sure that whatever the next product is, it’s not CISPA-lite,” Richardson said. “I think this is probably going to take the rest of the year.”

Hopefully Richardson is right about the long timeframe but the unfortunate reality is that programs almost identical to those that would be authorized under CISPA are already going on.

Regardless, legislation like CISPA giving blanket authorization to otherwise illegal programs should continue to be opposed. Richardson couldn’t be more correct about staying vigilant.

It is almost certain that if CISPA dies in the Senate in its second incarnation, it will be resurrected in one form or another to be pushed again.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg's opposition means the sweeping surveillance regime — which would have tracked everything Britons did online — is likely dead in the water because his Liberal Democrats are the junior partner in Britain's coalition government and have an effective veto over official policy.

"The idea that government will pass a law which means that there'd be a record kept of every website you visit, who you communicate with on social media sites, that's not going happen," Clegg said in comments to London's LBC radio on Thursday. "I'm afraid I think that is not either necessary, workable, nor proportionate, so it's not going to happen."

The proposal would have forced communications service providers to retain for a year a huge amount of personal data — including a record of websites visited, emails sent and Skype calls made — and make it available to law enforcement and other government agencies at the stroke of a key. Authorities would need a warrant to see the content of calls, emails and other communications.

Officials argued that the proposal was key to helping police, spies, and regulators catch up with advances in online communications, but activists, academics, and libertarians expressed horror at what they dubbed a "snooper's charter."

Clegg's opposition meant that the ruling Conservatives would have to rely on the opposition Labour Party to pass any eventual law — something one expert said was improbable. "You can't rule it out," said Mark Bennister, who teaches politics at Canterbury Christ Church University, but he said it was "highly unlikely that the Conservatives would push ahead on something that they would need Labour support for."

Prime Minister David Cameron's office declined to say whether the bill would be included when the government announces its slate of legislation for the coming parliamentary term next month. Julian Huppert, a Liberal Democrat lawmaker, seemed to express little doubt that the surveillance plan was history.

"It's dead," he said in a message posted to Twitter. It's not clear that Britain's Home Office — which has been leading the charge on the surveillance program — saw Clegg's intervention coming. A spokeswoman said she wasn't aware of Clegg's comments when The Associated Press called seeking a response. She later said the Home Office would not be commenting.

Civil liberties groups were cheered by the news — although they also expressed caution about the future. "We're happy that this is dead, but we need to make sure it doesn't rise from the dead again," said Emma Carr of Big Brother Watch, a U.K. group that campaigns against government surveillance.

Padraig Reidy of the London-based Index on Censorship echoed those concerns, warning that the police and intelligence agencies would doubtless be back with new proposals for Internet monitoring and surveillance.

"This is not an issue that will be dropped," he wrote in a blog post.