S 4673 Passed in Senate – NCFI Reauthorization

Yesterday, the Senate discharged the Senate Judiciary Committee from the responsibility of considering S 4673, the National Computer Forensics Institute Reauthorization Act of 2022, and passed the bill under the Senate’ unanimous consent process. There was no debate and no formal vote. The House passed an entirely different version of the reauthorization, HR 7174 back in June.

It will be interesting to see if the House takes up S 4673 and if they then amend the bill by substituting the language from HR 7174. With the Senate ignoring HR 7174 and taking up a bill that was introduced two months after HR 7174 was passed, I do not expect that the Senate would agree to a version of the bill amended in that manner. Insisting on the Senate version of the language would require a conference committee.

Since the major difference between the two bills in the expansion of the definition of information systems to include industrial control systems, I suspect that it is that expansion of coverage that the Senate leadership objects to. If that is the case, working out a compromise might be a problem.