Bills Introduced – 02-13-13

Yesterday there were two bills introduced in the House that may be of specific interest to readers of this blog. They were:

H.R.624: To provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Rogers (R,MI)

H.R.654: To amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to reauthorize technical assistance to small public water systems, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Harper (R,MS)

CISPA

HR 624 is the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2013. A quick look at the Committee Draft of the bill (the GPO version is not yet available) does not reveal any major differences from the version (HR 3523) passed in the House last session. I’ll take a closer look at the provisions of the bill when the GPO version comes out.

I did see at least one press report yesterday that claimed that this bill would prohibit the implementation of the President’s Cybersecurity Executive Order. I clearly do not see any such provision in the Committee Draft of this bill.

Drinking Water Security

According to a press release from Rep. Harper, HR 654 would “reauthorize and modernize much needed technical assistance and compliance training for small water districts to meet federal compliance for an additional five years” under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Since this act contains the only current drinking water system security requirements (minimal though they are), this bill may have some impact on drinking water security. We will have to see the details of the bill when it is made available by the GPO.