Bills Introduced – 2-11-15

Yesterday there were 76 bills introduced in the House and Senate. Three of those may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HR 861 - Making appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2015, and for other purposes. Rep. Cummings, Elijah E. [D-MD-7]

HR 878 - To provide for the authorization of border, maritime, and transportation security responsibilities and functions in the Department of Homeland Security and the establishment of United States Customs...Rep. Miller, Candice S. [R-MI-10]

S 456 - A bill to codify mechanisms for enabling cybersecurity threat indicator sharing between private and government entities, as well as among private entities, to better protect information systems. Sen. Carper, Thomas R. [D-DE]

HR 861 is almost certainly a ‘clean’ FY 2015 appropriations bill for DHS. Since Rep. Cummings is a Democrat and not on either the Appropriations Committee nor the Homeland Security Committee this bill has almost no chance of being considered.

I think that recent press reports about the President’s cybersecurity bill being introduced in the Senate refer to this bill (almost no one else reports bill numbers), but according to Sen. Carper’s press release this bill is a blend of the Administration’s bill and “insights and advice from our Committee’s hearing on the topic earlier this month”. According to the release the bill will:

● Authorizes sharing and provides liability protections;

● Sharing within the government and protection of information;

● Government to industry sharing and improved coordination; and

● Builds in strong privacy protections.

The same could be said for a number of information sharing bills, but the devil is in the details. We’ll have to see what the bill actually says.