Rules Committee Approves Rule for HR 2596

This evening the House Rules Committee met to develop the rule for the floor consideration of HR 2596, the FY 2016 intelligence authorization bill. As expected the bill will be considered under a structured rule with only 16 amendments allowed to be offered on the House floor tomorrow.

Five of the amendments may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

#2 Rep. Israel (D,NY) - Requires the Director of National Intelligence to provide report to the congressional intelligence and defense committees on the cyber threat trends identified by the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, an assessment of collaborative efforts between federal agencies, and recommendations to improve those collaborative efforts.

#5 Rep. Keating (D,MA) - Restores reporting requirement on the progress of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in implementing information-sharing principles.

#7 Rep. Rooney (R,FL) - Requires a report detailing the Intelligence Community's utilization of the National Science Foundation's CyberCorps Scholarship for Service program.

#8 Rep. Moulton (D,MA) - Requires a report and briefing regarding the impacts on the intelligence community (IC) of the recently disclosed cyber breach at OPM.

#13 Rep. Wilson (R,SC) - Directs the Director of National Intelligence to study how we measure cyber attacks and report to the relevant committees in both a classified and unclassified format.

Sharp eyed readers will note the similarity of amendment #13 to HR 2708 that I reported on earlier today. Apparently the Rules Committee did not share my opinion on the inappropriateness of this measure.