S 1846 Reported in Senate

On Tuesday the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee published their report on S 1846, Critical Infrastructure Protection Act (CIPA) of 2015. The report and revised language of the bill reflect changes made to the bill during a markup hearing conducted last July.

Changes to the Bill

The first significant change to the bill is found in the way it changes definitions in 6 USC 101. Instead of a single definition for ‘EM Threat’, the new language adds two definitions; one for ‘EMP’ (electromagnetic pulse) and a separate definition for ‘GMD’ (geomagnetic disturbance). Both EMP and GMD were included in the definition of EM Threat in the original language.

This revised definition results in a large number of editorial changes in the subsequent wording of the bill where ‘EMP and GMD’ are substituted for ‘EM’ or ‘EM Threat’. The real significance of this change is not apparent until the revised wording for the proposed addition to 6 USC 121(d) is seen. The original change called for a study on how to protect critical infrastructure against EM threats. The new wording calls for a similar report, but only after requiring an “intelligence-based review and comparison of the risk and consequence of threats and hazards, including GMD and EMP, facing critical infrastructures” {new §121(d)(26)(A)}. This means that the EMP and GMD threats are evaluated separately and may be treated differently in the subsequent strategy.

Similar wording changes were made in the proposed language for the new §319 (GMD and EMP Mitigation Research and Development) and the new §527 (National Planning and Education).

Moving Forward

Publication of this report indicates that Johnson is prepared to try to move this bill forward to the Floor of the Senate. I doubt that this bill will engender any significant debate or amendments; it does not allow any new regulations or expenditures. It is probable that this bill would be considered under the Senate’s unanimous consent provisions with no debate and no actual vote.

The House bill on this topic (HR 1073) was reported last August, but there has been no move to bring it to the floor. That bill is not as extensive in its treatment of the EMP threat (the definition of which in that bill encompasses both the EMP and GMD issues identified in this bill).

The big problem here for both of these bills is that there are some congress critters that are passionate about this problem, but for most it is seen as a non-issue. The closer we get to the summer recess, the less likely it is that either of these bills will see floor action. Higher priority bills are going to squeeze them out of the available time.

Commentary

The changes to the S 1846 will place the risks to the grid from EMP attacks or GMD activities in a more realistic perspective. Requiring the evaluation of these risks alongside the other risks to critical infrastructure will help to ensure that appropriate responses to all of the risks are properly prioritized.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 11-15-15

This week the House and Senate return to Washington after their extended Veterans Day holiday. Currently there is only one hearing scheduled this week that may be of specific interest to readers of this blog; looking at automotive cybersecurity.

Auto Cybersecurity

The Transportation and Public Assets Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday on “The Internet of Cars”. There is no witness list currently available.

On the Floor

There are two bills that will be considered under suspension of the rules in the House this week that may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HR 1073 - Critical Infrastructure Protection Act; and

HR 3996 – The Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2015, part II (introduced today)

HR 1073 is an electromagnetic pulse protection bill with no funding or regulatory authority. HR 3996 is another short term extension of the Surface Transportation Extension Act while the House and Senate Conferees work out the differences in the two versions of HR 22. The draft of the bill from the House Transportation Committee looks to be a relatively clean bill this time. Both bills will pass without significant opposition.

Homeland Security Committee Reports HR 1073

Before leaving Washington for the summer recess, the House Homeland Security Committee filed their report on HR 1073, the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act (CIPA). There are no changes to the bill beyond what I already reported, but there is some discussion about the one controversy surrounding the bill.

EMP vs Geomagnetic Storm

Section 2(a) of the revised bill amends 6 USC 101 by adding the definition of ‘EMP’. That definition includes both intentional man made electromagnetic pulse events and geomagnetic disturbances caused by solar storms.

On page 7 of the Committee Report there is a discussion about the difference between the two types of events. It clearly states that:

“The committee is aware of the concerns of industry in the possible confusion between pulses caused by intentional means, such as a high altitude nuclear weapon detonation, and those caused by natural phenomena such as solar storms. The magnitude and the temporal duration of the energy released are very different.”

Ranking Member Thompson (D,MS), in his ‘additional view’ response to the report on page 19, further explains the distinction between the two types of events this way:

“An EMP event is manmade and expected to impact all microprocessors. A GMD is naturally-occurring and expected to impact primarily bulk power and communication systems.”

This, of course means that the mitigation measures undertaken to lessen the effects of the two types of events will be different. They will both need to provide similar protections of the electric grid, but an EMP event would also have to protect a much wider variety (and much larger number) of electronic devices throughout the country to be effective.

Moving Forward

Because the bill allows no regulatory action or the spending of any new money this bill passed in Committee by a voice vote, even considering Thompson’s concerns. I would expect this bill to see the same bipartisan support on the floor of the House where it will almost certainly be considered under the ‘suspension of the rules’ process with limited debate and no amendments. There is a very good chance that this bill will reach the floor before the end of the fiscal year even with everything else that will be going on the House.

Commentary

While the Committee noted that the intent of their EMP definition was to “keep these electromagnetic pulse initiating events distinct and separate, as well as the resulting impact on critical infrastructure such as the electric power grid” (pg 7) it would seem to me that defining the two terms separately and requiring planning and research activities to address both types of events would have made that distinction clearer.

This is not just a semantic distinction. It may be possible to protect the electric grid from a geomagnetic storm (GMS) event, or at least provide adequate spare parts to get substantial parts of the grid back into operation in a reasonable time after such an event. All it would take is large sums of money. The problem with a large scale EMP event is that while many of those same grid protection measures may be useable to mitigate an EMP event’s effect on the grid, the larger problem of the destruction of nearly all electronic devices within line of site of the nuclear device initiating the EMP event cannot practically be mitigated.

Smaller scale, non-nuclear EMP attacks (like that shown in the movie Oceans Eleven), are of course a different matter. Their small scale and relatively limited impact would still be much more difficult to mitigate than a similar scale GMS event, again because of the simultaneous destruction of microprocessor based devices. But, depending on the size of the device used, it may be possible to throw enough money at the problem after the attack to allow for a reasonable recovery.

This bill will move to the Senate in its current form. There is a remote chance that it will be revised by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee before it comes to a floor vote, but I suspect that it will move straight to consideration on the floor of the Senate by unanimous consent.

This means that we will have to rely on DHS to make a reasonable distinction between these two types of events. Hopefully they would use their limited resources (again no new resources are being authorized in this bill) to concentrate on the GMS threat and pretty much ignore the EMP event. Spending any time or money on the EMP threat will achieve nothing but detracting from other work on more likely threats.

Homeland Security Committee Amends and Reports 10 Bills

This afternoon the House Homeland Security Committee held a markup hearing to address 10 pieces of proposed legislation. All ten bills were approved (many after being amended) on voice votes. Two of the bills, as I mentioned in an earlier post, may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HR 1073, the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act; and

HR 2786, the Cross-Border Rail Security Act of 2015

HR 1073

The Committee web site for this hearing had mentioned as early as Tuesday that an amendment in the form of a substitute would be offered by Rep. Perry (R,PA). I mentioned earlier that the amendment was mainly about some word changes that had no practical effect on the bill. There was an amendment offered to the Perry substitute by Rep. Thompson (D,MS). It was a another set of word changes that don’t really make a difference. They included:

∙ Substituting “national planning frameworks” for “national planning scenarios”; and

∙ Substituting “emergency response providers” for “emergency responders”.

Both amendments were adopted by voice votes.

HR 2786

There were no amendments offered on HR 2786 so it was adopted as introduced, again by a voice vote

Moving Forward

Both of these bills look like strong prospects to move forward to the House floor for consideration. If they do, they will almost certainly be considered under suspension of the rules (no amendments) and will receive broad bipartisan support.

Homeland Security Committee Adds Markup Hearing – 6-25-15

The House Homeland Security Committee announced this evening that they were adding a full-committee markup hearing on Thursday to address a number of pending bills. Two of the bills included, HR 1073 (the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act) and HR 2786 (Cross-Border Rail Security Act of 2015) have been reviewed in this blog.

According to the announcement there will be an amendment in the form of a substitute offered by Rep. McSally for HR 1073. A quick review of that amendment shows that it does not include any significant new requirements.

HR 1073 Introduced – EMP

As I mentioned earlier Rep. Franks (R,AZ) introduced HR 1073, the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act. This bill would require DHS to consider electromagnetic pulse events (natural and man-made) in federal planning scenarios.

As I mentioned in my earlier post this bill is closely patterned after HR 3410 which was introduced and passed in the House last session. Now that I have had a chance to actually read HR 1073 it is clear that it is the same bill with two inconsequential additions;

Section 3 was added to specifically state that this bill cannot be “be construed to grant any regulatory authority”;

Section 4 was added to specifically state that this bill provides no authorization for new spending and that it may only “be carried out only by using funds appropriated under the authority of other laws”.

The added wording was superfluous as there is no mention of regulations or spending authority in the bill. As with the previous bill this will require DHS to undertake new work without providing any new money or manpower. That being said I don’t see any significant opposition to this bill in either house.

If it is brought up it will be considered under suspension of the rules in the House and under unanimous consent procedures in the Senate, so there will be not real debate and no amendments offered. If it gets to the floor in either case it will be passed with a substantially bipartisan vote.

Bills Introduced – 02-25-15

There were 66 bills introduced yesterday in the House and Senate. Only one of those bills might be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HR 1073 To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to secure critical infrastructure against electromagnetic threats, and for other purposes. Rep. Franks, Trent [R-AZ-8]

I suspect that this will be very similar to HR 3410 introduced last session by Rep. Franks. That bill passed in the House on a voice vote, but was never acted upon in the Senate.