A bit over a week ago Rep. Rogers (R,AL) introduced HR 480,
the Homeland Threat Assessment Act. The bill would require DHS to conduct an
annual “assessment of the terrorist threat to the homeland” {§2(a)}.
The Assessment
The bill would require the annual assessment to include {§2(b)}:
• Empirical data assessing
terrorist activities and incidents over time in the United States:
• An evaluation of current
terrorist tactics, as well as ongoing and possible future changes in terrorist
tactics;
• An assessment of criminal
activity encountered or observed by officers or employees of components in the
field which is suspected of financing terrorist activity;
• Detailed information on all
individuals denied entry to or removed from the United States as a result of
material support provided to a foreign terrorist organization;
• The efficacy and spread of
foreign terrorist organization propaganda, messaging, or recruitment;
• An assessment of threats,
including cyber threats, to the homeland, including to critical infrastructure
and Federal civilian networks;
• An assessment of current and
potential terrorism and criminal threats posed by individuals and organized
groups seeking to unlawfully enter the United States; and
• An assessment of threats to the transportation
sector, including surface and aviation transportation systems.
The bill would require the assessment to be presented to
congress in a classified form with unclassified summaries and, potentially,
unclassified annexes.
Moving Forward
Rogers is the Ranking Member of the House Homeland Security
Committee and Rep. Thompson (D,MS), the single cosponsor, is the Chair. This
means that this bill will almost certainly be considered in Committee in the
not too distant future. There is nothing in the bill that would cause and
serious opposition and it would almost certainly receive strong bipartisan
support, both in Committee and on the Floor of the House.
Commentary
Now this bill is clearly about a ‘terrorist’ threat
assessment, but the language in two of the sub-paragraphs in §2(b) very carefully do
not contain the word ‘terrorist’ when all of the remaining sub-paragraphs do
contain that word (or variations there on). This would lead me to suspect that
Rogers (or the Committee Staff who actually crafted the legislation) intended
the cybersecurity and transportation assessments to include threats other than
just those posed by terrorists.
So far, the only terrorist cyber threat that we have seen in
actual practice have been a variety of doxing attacks (publication of private
personal information) against various members of the armed forces and their families.
There is nothing that would stop various terrorist groups (or radicalized
individuals) from conducting more serious cyber-attacks, but nation-state
actors are currently much more of a cyberthreat than terrorists.
While the wording of this sub-paragraph {§2(b)(6)} does not
specifically call for reporting on nation-state level cybersecurity threats,
the wording is vague enough to invite DHS to do so. If that is actually the
intent of the wording, it would appear that it was done with the intention of
avoiding stepping on the toes of the House Intelligence Committee or
specifically involving the US Cybercommand/NSA in the assessment (an action
outside the purview of the Homeland Security Committee).
The intent of the similarly vague wording in §2(b)(8)
regarding transportation threats is less clear until you think to include energy
transportation (specifically gas and oil pipelines). There again we have seen
indications of a potential nation-state level cyber-threat that the crafters of
this bill might want to have included in this DHS threat assessment.
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