House Amends and Passes HR 2596

This afternoon the House finished the amendment process on HR 2596, the FY 2016 intel authorization bill, and passed the bill on a mixed vote of 247 to 178. There were 25 Republicans that voted ‘No’ and 31 Democrats votes ‘Aye’.

All five of the cybersecurity related amendments that I reported on yesterday were adopted by voice votes.

Rules Committee Approves Rule for HR 2596

This evening the House Rules Committee met to develop the rule for the floor consideration of HR 2596, the FY 2016 intelligence authorization bill. As expected the bill will be considered under a structured rule with only 16 amendments allowed to be offered on the House floor tomorrow.

Five of the amendments may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

#2 Rep. Israel (D,NY) - Requires the Director of National Intelligence to provide report to the congressional intelligence and defense committees on the cyber threat trends identified by the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, an assessment of collaborative efforts between federal agencies, and recommendations to improve those collaborative efforts.

#5 Rep. Keating (D,MA) - Restores reporting requirement on the progress of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in implementing information-sharing principles.

#7 Rep. Rooney (R,FL) - Requires a report detailing the Intelligence Community's utilization of the National Science Foundation's CyberCorps Scholarship for Service program.

#8 Rep. Moulton (D,MA) - Requires a report and briefing regarding the impacts on the intelligence community (IC) of the recently disclosed cyber breach at OPM.

#13 Rep. Wilson (R,SC) - Directs the Director of National Intelligence to study how we measure cyber attacks and report to the relevant committees in both a classified and unclassified format.

Sharp eyed readers will note the similarity of amendment #13 to HR 2708 that I reported on earlier today. Apparently the Rules Committee did not share my opinion on the inappropriateness of this measure.

Committee Hearings – Week of 06-14-15

This week both the House and Senate will be in Washington. Spending bills and the DOD authorization bill are still big priorities this week. There are a number of potentially interesting hearings this week that may be of specific interest to readers of this blog including the intel authorization bill, the OPM hack, surface transportation security, chemical warfare, and the DHS spending bill.

Intel Authorization

The House Rules Committee will be meeting this afternoon to formulate the rule for the consideration of HR 2596; this was postponed from last week. There will only be limited amendments allowed during the consideration of this bill. A total of 27 have been submitted to the Committee to draw from.

Some of the more interesting ones (for readers of this blog) include:

∙ A report on FBI information sharing;

∙ Another attempt to limit NSA influence at NIST;

∙ A report on cyber-threat trends;

∙ Prohibit CIA and NSA from using software backdoors; and

∙ A report on the OPM hack.

 Assad’s Chemical Attacks

The House Foreign Affairs Committee will be holding a hearing on Wednesday about “Assad’s Abhorrent Chemical Weapons Attacks”. An interesting slate of witnesses, but no one from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. I don’t expect much more than hand wringing and condemnation from this hearing; certainly no action.

OPM Hack

We have been seeing all sorts of news over the weekend about the ‘data breach’ at the Office of Personnel Management. On Tuesday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing on the topic. It will be interesting to watch how the questions and answers slide right past each other in this hearing. There will be no new or insightful information here.

Surface Transportation Security

The Transportation Security Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee will be holding a hearing on Tuesday on “Safeguarding our Nation’s Surface Transportation Systems Against Evolving Terrorist Threats”. The witness list includes:

∙ Stacey Fitzmaurice, Office of Intelligence and Analysis, TSA;

∙ Jennifer Grover, Homeland Security and Justice Team, GAO; and

∙ John Roth,  Inspector General, DHS

Anytime the witness list includes both an IG and GAO representative, there is going to be some bad news. I expect that these two reports may become available later today.

FY 2016 DHS Spending

On Tuesday the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee will be holding a markup hearing for the FY 2016 DHS spending bill. We will probably not be able to see the bill until the full committee; probably next week.

On the Floor

The Senate will finish work this week on the FY 2016 DOD authorization bill (HR 1735). That bill will have to come back to the House to determine if they will accept the extensive Senate amendments or whether a conference committee will be required; I expect the later.

The intelligence authorization bill is scheduled to make it to the floor of the House on Tuesday. The only other potentially interesting thing happening in the House is a potential War Powers resolution requiring the removal of US Forces from Iraq. It is unlikely to pass and is almost certainly a political move to pressure the President to more clearly define the role of those forces being employed against IS.

HR 2596 Introduced – FY 2016 Intel Authorization Bill

Last week Rep. Nunes (R,CA) introduced HR 2596, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016. Normally I don’t pay much attention to these intel bills because the good stuff is kept in the classified annex and classified report, but a reader urged me to take a look and sure enough there is a cybersecurity provision in the bill.

Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center

Section 307 of the bill amends Title I of the National Security Act of 1947 (50 USC 3021 et seq) by adding a new section 119B to formally establish the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center within the office of the Director of National Intelligence. The function of the CTIIC would be to {new §119B(c)}:

∙ Serve as the primary organization within the Federal Government for analyzing and integrating all intelligence possessed or acquired by the United States pertaining to cyber threats;

∙ Ensure that appropriate departments and agencies of the Federal Government have full access to and receive all-source intelligence support needed to execute the cyber threat intelligence activities of such agencies and to perform independent, alternative analyses;

∙ Disseminate cyber threat analysis to the President, the appropriate departments and agencies of the Federal Government, and the appropriate committees of Congress;

∙ Coordinate cyber threat intelligence activities of the departments and agencies of the Federal Government; and

∙ Conduct strategic cyber threat intelligence planning for the Federal Government.

The bill would limit the CTIIC staff to 50 people and it would have to be ‘housed’ in a facility already owned by the Intel Community.

Moving Forward

The House Rules Committee will meet tomorrow to formulate the rule for this bill. It will almost certainly allow for only limited amendments. Twenty-four proposed amendments are currently listed on the Committee web site. There are a number of cyber related amendments listed but none that would have any real effect on civilian cybersecurity activities.

Commentary

While it might seem odd that the CTIIC has no language about sharing threat intelligence with the private sector, this function would be undertaken by elements within DHS. Similarly, DOD would be responsible for sharing the cyber threat intelligence information with the Defense Industrial Base.