Review - HR 3932 Reported in House – FY 2024 Intel Authorization Act

Earlier this month, the House Intelligence Committee published their Report on HR 3932, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024. They also published the reported version of the bill. There is one section in the bill that addresses cybersecurity for intelligence agencies and the sole mention in the report explicates that section. This legislation would also exempt the intelligence community from rules covering controlled unclassified information. The bill also briefly addresses the chemicals used to manufacture illicit drugs in Mexico.

NOTE: The introduced version of this bill was a very bare bones bill that would act as a skeleton for the work by the Committee to flesh out the language. Thus, there is no point in trying to explain the differences between the two versions of the bill.

Moving Forward

With the publication of this report, the bill is now cleared for consideration by the House. This is one of the annual ‘must pass’ bills and in recent years it has been included in the massive year end spending bill. With Congress being ‘prohibited’ from passing a consolidated spending bill, there is a strong likelihood that this bill will be considered by the House before the end of the year.

There are a number of provisions in the bill (not covered here, but see §418 for example) that will draw almost automatic opposition from Democrats in the House, so this will require a united Republican front to pass the bill. Depending on amendments offered by the Republican 11 and rejected by the more moderate Republicans, this bill may not be able to pass without the removal of some of the provisions objected to by the Democrats.

 

For more details about the provisions of this bill, including commentary on some of them, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-3932-reported-in-house - subscription required.