Review - HR 3932 Reported in House – FY 2024 Intel Authorization Act

Earlier this month, the House Intelligence Committee published their Report on HR 3932, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024. They also published the reported version of the bill. There is one section in the bill that addresses cybersecurity for intelligence agencies and the sole mention in the report explicates that section. This legislation would also exempt the intelligence community from rules covering controlled unclassified information. The bill also briefly addresses the chemicals used to manufacture illicit drugs in Mexico.

NOTE: The introduced version of this bill was a very bare bones bill that would act as a skeleton for the work by the Committee to flesh out the language. Thus, there is no point in trying to explain the differences between the two versions of the bill.

Moving Forward

With the publication of this report, the bill is now cleared for consideration by the House. This is one of the annual ‘must pass’ bills and in recent years it has been included in the massive year end spending bill. With Congress being ‘prohibited’ from passing a consolidated spending bill, there is a strong likelihood that this bill will be considered by the House before the end of the year.

There are a number of provisions in the bill (not covered here, but see §418 for example) that will draw almost automatic opposition from Democrats in the House, so this will require a united Republican front to pass the bill. Depending on amendments offered by the Republican 11 and rejected by the more moderate Republicans, this bill may not be able to pass without the removal of some of the provisions objected to by the Democrats.

 

For more details about the provisions of this bill, including commentary on some of them, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-3932-reported-in-house - subscription required.

Bills Introduced – 6-7-23

Yesterday, with both the House and Senate in Washington (House meeting was almost pro forma because of radical right Republican grudge match), there were 100 bills introduced. There were two bills that may receive additional coverage in this blog:

HR 3932 Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 Turner, Michael R. [Rep.-R-OH-10]

S 1862 A bill to amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to provide explicit authority for the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to work with international partners on cybersecurity, and for other purposes. Peters, Gary C. [Sen.-D-MI]

I will be watching HR 3932 for cybersecurity measures that may affect control systems.

 

I will be watching S 1862 for language and definitions that specifically include industrial control systems within the scope of the legislation.

 

Mention in Passing

 

I would like to mention in passing an anti-swatting bill that was introduced in the House by Rep Kustoff (R,TN), HR 3913. Neither Kustoff nor any of his four, bipartisan cosponsors are members of the House Judiciary Committee to which this bill was assigned, so the bill is unlikely to go anywhere. It is nice, however, for this problem to be recognized by Congress, even if nothing is actually done about it.