Senate to Close S 1197 Debate Friday

A cloture motion to end debate on S 1197, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014, was filed yesterday and there will be a vote on the motion on Friday. This raises the possibility that a final vote on the bill could take place before the Thanksgiving recess.

Amendments

As part of the unanimous consent motion to continue debate today on the bill, a deadline for 1 pm today was established for the filing of first-degree amendments to the bill. Yesterday there were again a large number of amendments offered to S 1197. This time there were a number of cybersecurity related amendments. Four of those were minor wording changes to existing cybersecurity provisions (SA 2352 – SA 2355) offered by Sen. Landrieu (D,LA).

The only other cybersecurity related amendment was offered by Sen. Moran (R,KS) would modify the wording of §945 concerning the use of National Guard personnel in a cybersecurity role. I have not had a chance to review all of the substitute wording but the significant provisions that I described in the original bill are still there.

Senate Moves to Debate S 1197, FY 2014 DOD Spending

As I noted in yesterday’s blog post, the Senate voted on the cloture motion to allow the Senate to proceed to the consideration of S 1197, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014. The cloture motion passed by a vote of 91 – 0; clearly a bipartisan vote. A large number of amendments were also offered, but none had anything to do with cybersecurity or chemical safety.

As I noted earlier, this bill has a number of cybersecurity provisions that are missing from the House bill, HR 1960, passed in the House back in June.

Actual debate on the bill started today, and there will be additional amendments offered. Debate on this bill is never short. A final vote is not really expected until after Thanksgiving.

S 1429 Introduced – FY 2014 DOD Spending

As I noted in an earlier post Sen. Durbin (D,IL) introduced S 1429, Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2014. The bill was reported favorably by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Cybersecurity Spending

As expected, there was no specific mention of cybersecurity programs in the actual bill, spending levels still have not reached that kind of level. The Committee Report does, however, contain a number of cybersecurity related line items.

Under the Air Force RDT&E spending (pg 166) the following line items are listed:

                                                                        Requested    Recommended

169 Cyber Command Activities                     68,099,000    38,099,000

170 AF Offensive Cyberspace Operations     14,047,000    14,047,000 

171 AF Defensive Cyberspace Operations       5,853,000      5,853,000 

191 Cyber Security Initiative                             2,048,000      2,048,000

192 DOD Cyber Crime Center                            288,000         288,000

The $30 million reduction for Cyber Command Activities was recommended by the Committee. They suggested that this could be achieved by improving “fund management” and “forward financing” (pg 169) without adversely impacting program performance.

Under DOD wide RDT&E spending (pgs 173 – 176) the following cyber items are listed:

                                                                        Requested    Recommended

045 Cyber Security Advanced Research        19,668,000   19,668,000  

116 Cyber Security Initiative                               946,000        946,000  

220 Cyber Security Initiative                            3,658,000     3,658,000   

221 Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP)      9,752,000     9,752,000  

There is no explanation given why there are three different line items for “Cyber Security Initiative”. It could be three different programs or a single program with three different funding sources. It would also help if these spending items were all grouped together, it would make cyber program tracking much easier.

No Program Comments

There are no program comments on cyber-programs in the Committee Report, a departure from the practice of recent years. What is surprising is the lack of reports about cyber issues; these have become a fixture of DOD appropriations bills. It is hard to tell if this is because the Committee is completely satisfied with current program performance (unlikely) or that cybersecurity matters have fallen below the observational threshold. A more likely possibility is that, because of the NSA monitoring controversy, the Committee is trying to avoid any discussion of cybersecurity, hoping that the bill won’t stir up any NSA discussion; a highly unlikely outcome.

Bills Introduced – 8-1-13

On the next to last day of the session before the summer recess it was a busy day for the introduction of legislation; 70 bills in the Senate and 86 bills in the House. The following may be of specific interest to the chemical security/safety and cybersecurity communities:

S 1429 Latest Title: An original bill making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2014, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Sen Durbin, Richard (D,IL)

S 1435 Latest Title: A bill to amend title 49, United States Code, to provide certain port authorities, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Sen Gillibrand, Kirsten E. (D,NY)

S 1462 Latest Title: A bill to extend the positive train control system implementation deadline, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Sen Thune, John [SD]

S 1464 Latest Title: A bill to facilitate and enhance the declassification of information that merits declassification, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Sen Shaheen, Jeanne [NH]

HR 2952 Latest Title: To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to make certain improvements in the laws relating to the advancement of security technologies for critical infrastructure protection, and for other purposes.Sponsor: Rep Meehan, Patrick (R,PA)

HR 2958 Latest Title: To amend title 49, United States Code, to provide certain port authorities, and for other purposes.Sponsor: Rep Nadler, Jerrold (D,NY)

House Passes HR 2397

Earlier this evening the House passed HR 2397, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2014, in a largely bipartisan vote of 315 – 109. The vast majority of Republicans and almost half of the Democrats voted in favor of the spending bill. As expected the two amendments limiting military spending in Syria and Egypt (# 97 and #98) passed by voice votes. The least restrictive anti-NSA amendments (#99) passed overwhelmingly and the more restrictive (#100) narrowly failed.

As I noted earlier today, the one cybersecurity amendment cleared for consideration was never brought to the floor for debate or vote. The only cybersecurity measures in the House passed version of the bill are those that were included in the Appropriations Committee version of the bill.

It is not yet clear when the Senate will take up this bill as the Appropriations Committee still has not introduced their version of the bill yet.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 7-21-13

There are only three House hearings and one Senate hearing that might be of specific interest to the chemical safety/security and cybersecurity communities. They involve a TSA markup, a rule for two spending bills, a transportation bill and a cybersecurity bill. A WMD bill will also be considered on the floor of the House.

Spending Bills

The House Rules Committee will meet this evening to try again to formulate a rule for the consideration of HR 2610 (FY 2014 DOT spending bill) and HR 2397 (FY 2014 DOD spending bill). The big holdup here is the question of whether or not to have an open rule (which the Republican leadership has made the norm for spending bills) for the DOD bill. There is a great deal of concern about an amendment defunding the NSA over the recent cyber-snooping disclosure about that agency.

Apparently there has been a resolution as to handle the DOD bill because the Majority Leader’s web site reports that HR 2397 will be considered this week.

TSA Markup

The Subcommittee on Transportation Security of the House Homeland Security Committee will be holding a markup hearing on Wednesday. One of the bills to be considered will be HR 1204, the Aviation Security Stakeholder Participation Act of 2013.

Transportation

Friday there will be a field hearing in New York City by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Panel on 21^st Century Freight Transportation looking at “How Freight Transportation Challenges in Urban Areas Impact the Nation”. There is no witness list yet available so it is hard to tell what might be discussed. Always a possibility is the issue of the risk of hazmat trains transiting urban areas.

Cybersecurity

The Senate Commerce Committee will be holding a hearing on Thursday looking at “The Partnership Between NIST and the Private Sector: Improving Cybersecurity”. This should be another feel good hearing about the Cybersecurity Framework being developed by NIST under the President’s Cybersecurity EO (EO 13636). No witness list is yet available, but we can expect to see the NIST Director.

WMD Intelligence

There will also be a House floor vote on HR 1542, the WMD Intelligence and Information Sharing Act of 2013. This bill will be considered under suspension of rules so there will be no floor amendments allowed. There was no committee markup of this bill so there was no chance to add the industrial chemical amendment that I suggested. This bill will pass in a bipartisan vote later today.

HR 2397 Introduced – FY 2014 DOD Spending

As I noted yesterday Rep. Young (R,FL) introduced HR 2397, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2014. As expected there is no specific language in the bill that deals with cybersecurity matters. The Committee Report that was filed with the bill does, however, address two cybersecurity issues; cyber incident response teams and Cyber Command funding.

Cyber Incident Response Teams

There is a brief, two paragraph discussion of National Guard Cyber Incident Response Teams on page 53 (Adobe 63) of the report. The concept discussed here is very broadly drawn, but appears to be somewhat similar to the ‘Cyber Warrior’ concept outlined in S 658 and HR 1640. The broad language includes the comment that:

“The Committee recognizes that the National Guard can fill the roles denoted in the President’s executive order. As dual use, cyber incident response teams, the Guard would focus on forensic analysis and defensive cyber operations, providing all purpose ‘‘triage’’ of local/state network incidents.”

There is one interesting comment here that might cause some consternation for the people who see black helicopters behind every tree. The closing comment states that these units “should be regionally located near established key infrastructure nodes for the internet to leverage their capabilities”. This is obviously (SARCASM ALERT) intended to allow the President to seize control of the internet.

The lack of specifics means that specific Congressional action will almost certainly be required before such teams are formed, but I would suspect that the National Guard Bureau will begin studying the concept.

Cyber Command Funding

Last year the Committee Report on HR 5856 included general language ‘suggesting’ that the Administration should “continue to refine what activities, budget lines, and programs should be considered cyber in order to better coordinate and track these budgets”. That was apparently not done to the satisfaction of the Committee so this year, on page 83 (Adobe 93) of the report they specify what section of the budgeting documents such information will be included:

“Funding for the United States Cyber Command, a subordinate unified command under the United States Strategic Command, currently is not discretely visible in the Air Force’s budget justification material. With the increased emphasis on cyber activities and related resourcing, the Committee directs [emphasis added] that beginning in fiscal year 2015, the Air Force’s budget justification material separately report and separately justify funds to support Cyber Command in sub-activity group 015A, ‘Combatant Commands Direct Mission Support’ and in sub-activity group 015B, ‘Combatant Command Core Operations’.”

Moving Forward

As I mentioned yesterday, I suspect that this bill will be considered by the House next week under an open rule. I would not be surprised to see cybersecurity related amendments made from the floor.