Committee Hearings – Week of 09-02-18

This week the House and Senate will both be back in Washington with spending bills high on the priority list for the month. There is one cybersecurity hearing of potential interest this week.

Cybersecurity Hearing

On Thursday two subcommittees of the House Homeland Security Committee will be holding a hearing on “Understanding Cybersecurity Threats to America’s Aviation Sector”. There is no witness list available at this time.

While aircraft cybersecurity is a very likely topic, I expect that the main focus will be on cybersecurity for FAA systems, including airspace management systems.

On the Floor

We have two bills that will be considered in the House this week under their suspension of the rules process that may be of interest to readers of this blog. Again, this process calls for limited debate, no floor amendments and a super-majority to pass; generally speaking these are non-controversial bills. The two bills of interest this week are:

• Today - HR 6438 – DHS Countering Unmanned Aircraft Systems Coordinator Act;

• Wednesday - HR 5576 – Cyber Deterrence and Response Act of 2018

There are two spending bills from the Senate that may see some action this week. First is the motion to go to conference on HR 6157, Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2019 and Democrat Motion to Instruct Conferees; this is mainly a proforma vote, though there is a remote (very remote) possibility that the House could accept the Senate amendments. That vote is expected today. Next is the expected conference report on HR 5895 – Energy and Water, Legislative Branch, and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs. This vote will come possibly later this week or next.

S 3378 Introduced – Cyber Sanctions

Last week Sen. Gardner (R,CO) introduced S 3378, the Cyber Deterrence and Response Act of 2018. This bill is very similar to HR 5576 which was introduced in the House in May; no action has taken place on that bill.

Deletions

Most of the changes are grammatical or structural and are of little interest anyone but legal scholars. There are, however, some significant provisions from HR 5576 that did not make it into this bill.

The last two sub-paragraphs from §3(a)(1) did not make it into the senate bill. They allowed the President to take action against governments or persons that attempted to engage in any of the sanctioned activities listed in the bill.

The Senate bill does not include some of the sanctions provided in the House bill. These include prohibiting:

• Non-humanitarian United States development assistance under chapter 1 of part I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 {§3(b)(2)(A)};

• Approval of the issuance of any guarantees, insurance, extensions of credit, or participations in the extension of credit {§3(b)(2)(D)};

• Transactions in foreign exchange that are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and in which the government of the foreign state has any interest {§3(d)(2)(E)}; and

• Transfers of credit or payments between one or more financial institutions or by, through, or to any financial institution, to the extent that such transfers or payments are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States {§3(d)(2)(F)};

The Senate bill also removes the limited Congressional oversight provision of initial briefing to Congress required by §3(f) in the House bill.

Moving Forward

Both Gardner and his single cosponsor {Sen. Coons (D,DE)} are members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to which this bill was referred for consideration. Gardner is a sub-committee chair so he should have enough influence to see this bill considered in Committee. However, seeing the lack of action in the House, I suspect that the chances for this bill being considered during this session are rather remote.

Bills Introduced – 04-18-18

With both the House and Senate in session yesterday there were 58 bills introduced. Of those, one may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HR 5576 To address state-sponsored cyber activities against the United States, and for other purposes. Rep. Yoho, Ted S. [R-FL-3]

Two separate things that may draw my further attention to this bill. First, and most obvious to long time readers, I will watch the definitions used in the bill to see if this bill will specifically address ‘activities’ targeted at control systems. Even if control systems are not covered, how the bill intends to ‘address’ the ‘cyber activities’ may still cause me to expand (slightly) my coverage of cybersecurity issues.