S 3378 Introduced – Cyber Sanctions

Last week Sen. Gardner (R,CO) introduced S 3378, the Cyber Deterrence and Response Act of 2018. This bill is very similar to HR 5576 which was introduced in the House in May; no action has taken place on that bill.

Deletions

Most of the changes are grammatical or structural and are of little interest anyone but legal scholars. There are, however, some significant provisions from HR 5576 that did not make it into this bill.

The last two sub-paragraphs from §3(a)(1) did not make it into the senate bill. They allowed the President to take action against governments or persons that attempted to engage in any of the sanctioned activities listed in the bill.

The Senate bill does not include some of the sanctions provided in the House bill. These include prohibiting:

• Non-humanitarian United States development assistance under chapter 1 of part I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 {§3(b)(2)(A)};

• Approval of the issuance of any guarantees, insurance, extensions of credit, or participations in the extension of credit {§3(b)(2)(D)};

• Transactions in foreign exchange that are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and in which the government of the foreign state has any interest {§3(d)(2)(E)}; and

• Transfers of credit or payments between one or more financial institutions or by, through, or to any financial institution, to the extent that such transfers or payments are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States {§3(d)(2)(F)};

The Senate bill also removes the limited Congressional oversight provision of initial briefing to Congress required by §3(f) in the House bill.

Moving Forward

Both Gardner and his single cosponsor {Sen. Coons (D,DE)} are members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to which this bill was referred for consideration. Gardner is a sub-committee chair so he should have enough influence to see this bill considered in Committee. However, seeing the lack of action in the House, I suspect that the chances for this bill being considered during this session are rather remote.