Committee Hearings – Week of 9-11-22

This week, with both the House and Senate in Washington, we have a fairly full hearing schedule, including control system cybersecurity, right-to-repair, CG authorization markup, and social media impact hearings.

Cybersecurity

On September 15^th, 2022 the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Innovation of the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on “Building on our Baseline: Securing Industrial Control Systems Against Cyberattacks”. The witness list includes:

• Eric Goldstein, CISA,

• Vergle Gipson, Idaho National Laboratories

This could end up being a fairly technical hearing. It will be interesting to see how well the staff prepares their principals for asking questions.

Right-to-Repair

On September 14^th, 2022 the Subcommittee on Underserved, Agricultural, and Rural Business Development of the House Small Business Committee will hold a hearing on “Right to Repair and What it Means for Entrepreneurs”. The witness list includes:

• Gay Gordon-Byrne, Digital Right to Repair Coalition,

• Brian Clark, The iGuys’ Tech Shop, LLC,

• Jim Gerritsen, Wood Prairie Family Farm, and

• Ken Taylor, Ohio Machinery Co.

Any action for relief will have to include changes to the copywrite law and that will not happen in the Small Business Committee.

Coast Guard Authorization

On September 14^th, 2020 the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee will hold a markup hearing on “Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2022” (the Committee web site lists the bill as ‘S.XXXX’ but S 4802 was introduced last week by Sen Cantwell (D,WA) the Committee Chair).

The hearing site includes a link to a committee draft of the bill (GPO version of S 4802 is not yet available). I have not conducted an in-depth review of the provisions, but it does include the following sections that may be of interest:

§231. Enhancing maritime cybersecurity.

§232. Establishment of unmanned system program and autonomous control and computer vision technology project.

§233. Artificial intelligence strategy.

§234. Review of artificial intelligence applications and establishment of performance metrics.

§235. Cyber data management.

§236. Data management.

§237. Study on cyber threats to the United States marine transportation system.

§523. Study on multi-level supply chain security strategy of the department of homeland security.

Social Media Impact

Today the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on “Data Security at Risk: Testimony from a Twitter Whistleblower”. The sole witness scheduled is Peiter “Mudge” Zatko.

On September 14^th, 2022 the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on “Social Media’s Impact on Homeland Security”. Two separate witness panels with industry representatives.

On the Floor

The House has a fairly busy schedule this week, but the leadership is hoping to be able to get to a continuing resolution to push a FY 2023 spending bill until sometime in December. See this article a GovExec.com for more information about the on-going negotiations on the CR. Action on a CR does not ‘have’ to be completed until close-of-business on September 30^th. Early action keeps down the press cries about a ‘potential government shutdown’ and would take the spending bill out of the mid-term political fight.