House Passes Four Homeland Security Bills

As I noted this morning the House addressed a number of bills today under suspension of the rules. Four of them were mentioned as being of probably interest to readers of this blog:

• HR 2952 - The Critical Infrastructure Research and Development Act;

• HR 3107 - The Homeland Security Cybersecurity Boots-on-the-Ground Act;

• HR 3202 - The Essential Transportation Worker Identification Credential Assessment Act; and

• HR 3696 - The National Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection Act.

All four bills, as expected, passed with impressive bipartisan support. Two of the bills (HR 2952 and HR 3696) passed by voice votes. The other two bills passed in voice votes; HR 3107 (395 to 8) and HR 3202 (400 to 0). Interestingly, HR 3107 was incorporated into HR 3696 before the bill was reported by the Homeland Security Committee.

I suspect the four bills could also garner similar bipartisan support in the Senate. There is a possible problem for HR 3696. This bill is as close at things will get in the near future to being a comprehensive cybersecurity bill. ‘Comprehensive bills’ have been routinely held up by Sen. Reid (D,NV) as the various affected committees in the Senate tried to craft their own bills. I suspect that Reid will do the same for this bill as the leadership tries to craft a deal to pass S 2588, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2014. It is not really a competing bill, but Reid seems to figure that he can only pass one significant cybersecurity bill each session.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 7-27-14

This is the start of the last week currently scheduled for the House and Senate to be in Washington until after the Labor Day Weekend. There is only one hearing currently scheduled that is of specific interest to readers of this blog; a Senate markup hearing that looks at a number of interesting bills including CFATS.

Senate Markup Hearing

On Wednesday the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a business meeting to cover a wide range of nominations and legislation. Included in the list of bills to be addressed are:

• HR 4007, the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Program Authorization and Accountability Act of 2014;

• S 2547, the RESPONSE Act of 2014; and

• S 2664, a public alert and warning system bill yet to be published.

HR 4007 is, of course, the bill of biggest interest here. The Committee leadership has been talking about writing their own bill since the first of the year, but has failed to reach a consensus on that language. There has been recent talk about Chairman Carper (D,DE) wanting to see language added that would allow Tier 4 facilities to ‘self-certify’ compliance with the site security plan requirements. That amendment would probably be acceptable to the House. Anything more complicated than that might derail passage of this bill.

House Floor

Today the House will consider a number of bills under suspension of rules. Four of them will be of interest to readers of this blog:

• HR 2952 - The Critical Infrastructure Research and Development Act;

• HR 3107 - The Homeland Security Cybersecurity Boots-on-the-Ground Act;

• HR 3202 - The Essential Transportation Worker Identification Credential Assessment Act; and

• HR 3696 - The National Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection Act.

The House leadership has determined that these bills have enough bipartisan support to ensure their passage with a 2/3 vote. I’m kind of surprised that HR 3696 made that cut considering the number of organizations that still have problems with privacy issues in the bill. We will see if they get surprised on this vote; it does happen periodically.

House Panel Passes HR 3696

Today the Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee held a markup hearing to address HR 3696, the National Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection (NCCIP) Act of 2013. After adopting six of the seven amendments considered the amended version of the bill was adopted by the Subcommittee in a voice vote.

Only two of the amendments made substantive changes to the bill. Amendment 2A, offered by Rep. Clarke (D,NY) added Title III – Homeland Security Cybersecurity Boots-on-the Ground. Amendment 6, offered by Rep. Daines (R,MT), added a Federal agency breach reporting requirement where personally identifiable information (PII) is compromised.

The Title III amendment is essentially HR 3107 that had already been approved by the Homeland Security Committee in a markup hearing back in October and reported by the Committee in December. It looks like adding the language to this bill will increase the chance of the provisions being considered by the House in a floor vote.

The breach reporting amendment would add a requirement to the new §228. Paragraph (d) would have a new subparagraph (11) added that would require the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) to implement policies and procedures that would:

• Require Federal civilian agencies to send reports and information to the Center about all personally identifiable information breaches that occur on Federal civilian information systems not later than two business days after the discovery of such a breach {§228(d)(11)(B)}; and

• Require Federal civilian agencies to notify all potential victims of a data breach involving personally identifiable information not later than two business days after the date on which such an agency sends a report and information to the Center {§228(d)(11)(C)}.

The full Committee will take action on this bill sometime after the House comes back to Washington after a one week ‘District Work’ session.

HR 3107 Reported in House – Boots-on-the-Ground Act

Last week the House Homeland Security Committee filed their report on HR 3107, the Homeland Security Cybersecurity Boots-on-the-Ground Act. This bill would require the DHS Secretary to establish cybersecurity occupation classifications, assess the cybersecurity workforce, and to develop a strategy to address identified gaps in the cybersecurity workforce,

The revisions made to the original language during the Committee Markups of this bill resulted in two significant additions:

• The requirement for the Comptroller General to conduct a study on the assessment of the cybersecurity workforce; and

• The requirement for the Secretary to report to Congress on the feasibility of establishing a Cybersecurity Fellowship Program to offer a tuition payment plan for undergraduate and doctoral candidates who agree to work for the Department of Homeland Security.

Since there is little more in this bill beyond compiling reports and making plans there is no reason that this bill would not pass in the House if it makes it to the floor. I expect that there is a decent chance that this bill will considered under a suspension of the rules process on a day when the House considers a number of similarly innocuous cybersecurity bills.

Homeland Security Mark-up Hearing Results

Yesterday the House Homeland Security Committee held their markup hearing looking at six different bills including (of potential interest here) HR 1204, HR 1791, HR 2952, and HR 3107. All six bills were ordered to be reported favorably; some with amendments (including HR 1204, HR 2952, and HR 3107).

The Committee provides a nice summary of the amendments, but none of them were significant. The closest to being a meaningful change was the amendment from Rep. Horsford (D,NV) that changed one of the subcommittee names of the new Aviation Security Advisory Committee from the “Perimeter Security Subcommittee” to the “Perimeter Security, Exit Lane Security , and Access Control Subcommittee”.

Actually ‘access control’ was already one of the topics that this subcommittee was to cover, so it only added ‘Exit Lane Security’. This topic is already a big deal in the airport security community so this just gave ‘Exit Lane Security’ a specific home.

Of course, any time a House Committee can do the markup of six bills in a single hearing, we know that there are not going to be any controversial or substantive changes made to any of the bills.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 10-27-13

Both the Senate and the House will be in town this week and the pace of hearings is getting back to normal after the fiscal fiasco has passed. There are four House hearings and one Senate hearing that might be of specific interest to readers of this blog. They include three mark-up hearings, one Coast Guard authorization hearing and one cybersecurity hearing.

Mark-up Hearings

The House Homeland Security Committee will try for a third time on Tuesday to mark-up a group of bills including HR 1204, HR 1791, HR 2952, and HR 3107. I wrote about this hearing in some detail last week on the second attempt to hold this hearing.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold a mark-up hearing on Tuesday that will address four bills including HR 3300, the FEMA Reauthorization Act of 2013 that I described yesterday. No word yet on any potential amendments.

The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee will have a Business Meeting today. It will either include a mark-up of some legislation, consider nominations or both; no agenda has been published.

Coast Guard Authorization

The Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will meet on Tuesday to look at a variety of issues that might be included in a Coast Guard authorization bill. The current ‘Summary of Subject Matter’ published by the Committee does not include mention of any security or chemical safety issues.

Cybersecurity

Wednesday will see a potentially interesting take on cybersecurity when the Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response and Communications and the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protections and Security Technologies of the House Homeland Security Committee (whew, that’s a lot of words) hold a joint hearing on “Cyber Incident Response: Bridging the Gap Between Cybersecurity and Emergency Management”. No agenda or witness list is currently available.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 10-20-13

The House returns to work tomorrow while the Senate remains in their States for another week of keeping in touch with voters and contributors. The House does not currently have a real heavy hearing schedule this week and only one hearing that might be of specific interest to readers of this blog, a mark-up hearing that was originally scheduled for 10-2-13.

The House Homeland Security Committee will be meeting on Thursday to consider six different bills; four of which may be of specific interest here:

• HR 1204, The Aviation Security Stakeholder Participation Act of 2013;

• HR 1791, The Medical Preparedness Allowable Use Act;

• HR 2952, The Critical Infrastructure Research and Development Advancement Act of 2013; and

• HR 3107, The Homeland Security Cybersecurity Boots-on-the-Ground Act.

Revised language will be introduced for three of these bills:

• HR 1204;

• HR 2952; and

• HR 3107

Among other things the revisions to HR 1204 would tend to re-emphasize that the TSA is to take the recommendations of the Advisory Committee very seriously; reporting to Congress when the TSA does not follow those recommendations. The changes in the language for HR 2952 are essentially non-substantive political changes. The same can be said of the proposed changes to HR 3107.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 10-06-13

With the government heading into its second week of fiscal fiasco the congress continues to schedule a variety of non-funding hearings. Last week most of those scheduled were canceled, probably due to inadequate staff support (staff pay is affected by the shut-down). This week we still see a fair number of scheduled hearings, four of which may be of specific interest to the chemical safety-security and cybersecurity communities. They include a second attempt at a TWIC markup, two transportation hearings and a terrorism hearing.

TWIC Markup

The Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security of the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a markup hearing on Wednesday that will address HR 3141, the Essential Transportation Worker Identification Credential Assessment Act. It appears that an amendment in the form of a substitute may be offered. A markup hearing last week that included this bill was postponed; no guarantees on this one.

Transportation Hearings

The Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold a hearing on Thursday that will look at Maritime Transportation Regulations: Impacts on Safety, Security, Jobs and the Environment, Part 2. There is no witness list available so there is no telling exactly what might be included; potential topics of interest could include TWIC and hazmat regulations.

The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s special Panel on 21st Century Freight Transportation will hold a hearing on Thursday looking at “Funding the Nation’s Freight System”. Taxes and fees and how they get allocated are always a concern. No witness list is available for this hearing.

Terrorism

The House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday looking at “From al-Shabaab to al-Nusra: How Westerners Joining Terror Groups Overseas Affect the Homeland”. No witness list is available for this hearing either. I expect generic comments from non-government experts that will say operational experience will make returning fighters more of a threat.

House Homeland Security Committee Markup Hearing – 10-2-13

The House Homeland Security Committee announced this morning that they would be holding a markup hearing on Wednesday to look at six bills, four of which might be of specific interest to readers of this blog.

Those four bills would be:

HR 1204, The Aviation Security Stakeholder Participation Act of 2013;

HR 1791, The Medical Preparedness Allowable Use Act;

HR 2952, The Critical Infrastructure Research and Development Advancement Act of 2013; and

HR 3107, The Homeland Security Cybersecurity Boots-on-the-Ground Act.

The Committee web site indicates that there will be an amendment in the form of a substitute offered for three of the four bills listed above:

H.R. 1204, Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute [PDF];

H.R. 2952, Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute [PDF]; and

H.R. 3107, Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute [PDF]

I haven’t had a chance to do a detailed review of the substitute language, I’ll probably report on that tomorrow.

Bills Introduced – 09-17-13

Congress is in full swing and bills are being introduced in significant numbers in both houses of Congress, but only one bill yesterday that readers of this blog might be specifically interested in; a cybersecurity bill.

HR 3107 : To require the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish cybersecurity occupation classifications, assess the cybersecurity workforce, develop a strategy to address identified gaps in the cybersecurity workforce, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Clarke, Yvette D. (D,NY)

This is the bill that I mentioned in by blog post Sunday. It will be marked up in a hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee today.