More on Amendments to HR 624

Yesterday I noted that there had been a modification made to the amendment offered by Rep. Sanchez (D,CA), but from the information available at the time it was not clear what that amendment was. The Congressional Record for yesterday provides the expected details:

Insert ‘‘Security’’ after ‘‘Homeland’’ in the second instruction.

Two pages earlier in the Congressional Record (same link as above) there is also a notice that a 13^th Amendment had been added to the Rule for the consideration of HR 624. This new amendment, submitted by Chairman McCaul (Homeland Security) would make DHS and the Justice Department the action agencies for receiving shared information by amending §1104(b)(1)(A)(ii) and §1104(b)(1)(A)(ii) by replacing the words “Federal Government” with “entities of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice designated under paragraphs (1) and (2) of section 2(b) of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act”. This amendment also passed in a voice vote of 409 – 5.

This last change was made to mollify some of the critics of the bill that were afraid that NSA and the military would become the action agencies for receiving this information. It is not clear at this point if this change would overcome President Obama’s intention to veto the bill.

The bill will now move to the Senate where, if it is actually brought to the floor of the Senate by Sen. Reid (D,NV), there is a good chance that a similar bipartisan vote would send the bill to the President.