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.

House Skips Cybersecurity Amendment to HR 2397

Yesterday during the consideration of amendments to HR 2397 the sole cybersecurity amendment that was cleared to be offered on the floor (Langevin #7 in the Rules Committee Report) was skipped. Under the rule for the consideration of HR 2397 once an amendment is skipped in sequence it cannot be brought back up.

So if this bill passes, a high probability but not a foregone conclusion in the House, the only cyber-provisions will be the ones put in place by the Appropriations Committee.

The debate continues today with a probable vote late this afternoon.

NOTE: The Senate Appropriations Committee has not yet published their version of the DOD spending bill.

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. 

Bills Introduced – 6-17-13

It was a slow day yesterday for the introduction of legislation, 1 bill in the Senate and 12 in the House. Still there was one major spending bill introduced that might contain cybersecurity language:

HR 2397 Latest Title: Making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2014, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Young, C. W. Bill (R,FL)

A subcommittee draft from two weeks ago did not contain any specific cybersecurity language, but you never can tell (since their deliberations we not public) what provisions were added in subcommittee or full committee markup. This bill will probably make it to the House Floor next week.