HR 2685 Amended and Passed in House

This morning the House finished their consideration of the FY 2016 DOD spending bill, HR 2685. The original bill contained no specific mention of cybersecurity issues, but one amendment made proposed last night attempted to change that. The bill was adopted this morning on a partially bipartisan vote of 278 to 149. Five Republicans and 43 Democrats crossed party lines on the vote.

The cybersecurity amendment was offered by Rep. Grayson (D,FL) {CREC, 06-10-15, pg H4125}. It addressed the issue of collaboration between NSA and NIST and was intended to prevent a re-occurrence of the reported NIST compromise on security issues at the behest of NSA. As Grayson noted on the floor:

“The amendment seeks to prohibit the intelligence community from subverting or interfering with the integrity of any cryptographic standard that is proposed, developed, or adopted by NIST.”

The amendment was ultimately defeated in a voice vote.