House to Take Up 5 Cybersecurity Bills

This week the House is scheduled to take up 50 bills under the suspension of the rules process. Five of those bills are related to cybersecurity. The suspension of the rules process calls for limited debate and no amendment of the bill to be accepted from the floor. Bills are required to get a supermajority vote to pass.

The five cybersecurity bills are:

HR 359 – Enhancing Grid Security through Public-Private Partnerships Act, as amended (Rep. McNerney – Energy and Commerce)

HR 360 – Cyber Sense Act of 2020, as amended (Rep. Latta – Energy and Commerce)

HR 5760 – Grid Security Research and Development Act (Rep. Bera – Science, Space, and Technology)

HR 5780 – Safe Communities Act of 2020, as amended (Rep. Underwood – Homeland Security)

HR 5823 – State and Local Cybersecurity Improvement Act, as amended (Rep. Richmond – Homeland Security)

Only one of these bills as being considered this week have been changed since they were adopted in committee. HR 359 has had the phrase “and other Federal agencies” removed from language requiring the DOE to consult with various organizations as “the Secretary determines appropriate”. This means that Congress does not want to even suggest that DOE might want to consult with CISA. This is an odd change.

The other oddity in this list is the inclusion of HR 5760. The language from this bill was mostly included in the recently passed HR 4447. That bill has little to no chance of being considered by the Senate. That means that taking up this bill in a stand-alone version would increase its chances of making it to the President’s desk for signature. It makes one wonder why it was added to HR 4447 in the first place; it might have been an attempt to politically buy the vote of Rep Weber (R,TX) who was a cosponsor of HR 5760. If so, it did not work; Weber was not one of the 7 Republicans to vote for the bill.

The House leadership expects each of these bills to pass this week with substantial bipartisan support. This means that there is some chance that the bills could be taken up by the Senate under their unanimous consent process. We will have to wait and see what kind of votes these bills actually get before we can assess what those chances might actually be.

HR 5780 Introduced – Safe Communities Act

Last week Rep Underwood (D,IL) introduced HR 5780, the Safe Communities Act of 2020. The bill is very nearly identical to HR 5667 that was introduced by Underwood last month.

Difference

There is only one difference that I can find between the two bills. In the earlier bill §3(a) reads:

“(a) STRATEGY.—Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of the Department of Homeland Security shall issue a strategy to improve stakeholder outreach and operational engagement that includes the Agency’s strategic and operational goals and priorities for carrying out the stakeholder engagement activities described in paragraphs (6) and (11) of section 2202(c) of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (6 U.S.C. 652(c)), as added and redesignated, respectively, by section 2 of this Act.”

In HR 5780 §3(a) reads the same except everything from the words ‘described in paragraphs’ to the end of the sentence has been removed.

Moving Forward

As I noted yesterday, the House Homeland Security Committee will markup this bill tomorrow. The bill is likely to receive widespread bipartisan support.

Committee Hearings – Week of 2-9-20

The President’s budget comes to Capital Hill this week, but apparently chemical safety and security (and cybersecurity) will have to wait until next week. There will be four other hearing of interest; two markups, autonomous vehicles and cybersecurity.

Markup Hearings

The House Homeland Security Committee will hold a markup hearing on Wednesday. Among the ten bills that are scheduled for consideration are:

• HR 5780, the Safe Communities Act of 2020;

• HR ____, the State and Local Cybersecurity Improvement Act

The official version of HR 5780 has not yet been published and the second has not yet been introduced (okay it probably was today, but we will not see it until tomorrow).

The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee will hold a markup hearing on Wednesday. Among the five bills that are scheduled for consideration are:

• HR 5428, Grid Modernization Research and Development Act of 2019; and

• HR 5760, Grid Security Research and Development Act

HR 5760 has not yet been officially published.

Autonomous Vehicles

On Tuesday the Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on “Autonomous Vehicles: Promises and Challenges of Evolving Automotive Technologies”. The witness list includes:

• John Bozzella, Alliance for Automotive Innovation

• Cathy Chase, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety

• Daniel Hinkle, American Association for Justice

• Mark Riccobono, National Federation of the Blind

• Gary Shapiro, Consumer Technology Association

• Jeffrey Tumlin, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency

Cybersecurity

On Tuesday the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on “What States, Locals and the Business Community Should Know and Do: A Roadmap for Effective Cybersecurity”. The witness list includes:

• Christopher C. Krebs, CISA;

• Amanda Crawford, Department of Information Resources, Texas;

• Christopher DeRusha, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Office, Michigan

On the Floor

The House is scheduled to take up HR 4432, the Protecting Critical Infrastructure Against Drones and Emerging Threats Act tonight or perhaps tomorrow under the suspension of the rules process. There will be limited debate, no floor amendments and the bill will require a supermajority to pass. This bill will almost certainly receive strong bipartisan support.

Bills Introduced – 2-6-20

Yesterday with just the House in session there were 36 bills introduced. One of those bills may receive additional attention in this blog:

HR 5780 To enhance stakeholder outreach to and operational engagement with owners and operators of critical infrastructure and other relevant stakeholders by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to bolster security against acts of terrorism and other homeland security threats, including by maintaining a clearinghouse of security guidance, best practices, and other voluntary content developed by the Agency or aggregated from trusted sources, and for other purposes. Rep. Underwood, Lauren [D-IL-14]