Rule to Consider Conference Report for HR 5515 – FY 2019 NDA

Last night the House Rules Committee crafted the rule for the consideration of the Conference Report on HR 5515. As is typical with conference reports, there will be limited debate and no amendments will be offered. This should come to the floor today.

We still do not have an official copy of the 2500+ page report. A quick review of the table of contents (which is 36 pages by itself) of the copy the Rules Committee has on their site shows that most of the cyber related provisions of both the House and Senate versions have made it into the final version of the bill. A more detailed analysis will take some time.

Committee Hearings – Week of 04-17-16

Both the House and Senate are in Washington this week. Lots of committee hearings as the spending bills start up in earnest along with some potentially interesting cybersecurity hearings and two pipeline safety/security hearings.

Cybersecurity

On Tuesday the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will be holding a hearing on “Deciphering the Debate Over Encryption: Industry and Law Enforcement Perspectives”. There will be two witness panels; law enforcement and industry. The witnesses include:

• Amy Hess, Federal Bureau of Investigations

• Thomas Galati, New York City Police Department

• Ron Hickman, Harris County Sheriff's Office

• Charles Cohen, Indiana State Police

• Bruce Sewell, Apple, Inc

• Amit Yoran, RSA Security

• Daniel Weitzner, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Matthew Blaze, University of Pennsylvania

On Wednesday the Information Technology Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will be holding a hearing on “Federal Cybersecurity Detection, Response, and Mitigation”. No witness list is currently available

On Wednesday the House Small Business Committee will be holding a hearing on “How Cyber-Attacks Threaten Both Committee on Small Business”. Witnesses include:

• Richard Snow, Maine Indoor Karting;

• Kevin Dunn, NCC Group

• Nicholas A. Oldham, King & Spalding LLP

• Stephen F. Mankowski, National Conference of CPA Practitioners (NCCPAP)

Pipelines

On Tuesday the Transportation Security Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee will be holding a hearing on "Pipelines: Securing the Veins of the American Economy". The witness list includes:

• Sonya Proctor, TSA

• Andrew Black, Association of Oil Pipe Lines

• Kathleen S. Judge, National Grid

• Paul W. Parfomak, Congressional Research Service

On Wednesday the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold a markup hearing. It will include HR 4937 – The Protecting our Infrastructure of Pipelines and Enhancing Safety Act of 2016. The GPO does not yet have an official copy of the bill available.

On Thursday the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee will be holding a markup hearing of HR 4909. There is no mention in the introduced version of the bill of cybersecurity. If amendments adding cybersecurity provisions are going to be made in Committee, they are likely to be made here.

Spending Bills

House Appropriations Committee

• Tuesday - Markup of FY 2017 Agriculture Bill, Energy and Water Bill – Full Committee

Senate Appropriations Committee

• Tuesday - Markup of the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies – THUD Subcommittee

• Wednesday - Markup of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies – CJS Subcommittee

• Thursday - Markup of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies – Full Committee

• Thursday - Markup of the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies – Full Committee

On the Floor

There is currently nothing scheduled on the floor of the House that will be of specific interest to readers of this blog.

On the Senate side of the Hill there are two bills that are expected to be completed this week; HR 636 and S 2012. Both contain cybersecurity provisions.

Committee Hearings – Week of 11-1-15

With both the House and Senate in Washington this week there will only be three committee hearings that may be of specific interest to readers of this blog. The House Rules Committee will hold two hearings to look at consideration of a surface transportation authorization bill and the House Homeland Security Committee will mark-up a number of bills.

STA Rules Committee Hearing

The House Rules Committee will be holding two hearings this week trying to reconcile two different versions of the Surface Transportation Authorization Act; HR 22 (Senate version) and HR 3763. The first hearing will be this evening and will establish the rule for the general consideration of the bill (will probably us HR 22 as the vehicle). The second hearing will be on Tuesday and will determine how the proposed amendments (86 currently listed on the Committee web site) will be addressed on the floor of the House.

Homeland Security Markup

On Wednesday the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a markup hearing for seven separate bills. Of those bills only three may be of specific interest to readers of this blog and none of them have yet been introduced (Committee Drafts are available):

• State and Local Cyber Protection Act of 2015;

• Department of Homeland Security CBRNE Defense Act of 2015; and

• Strengthening Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Coordination in Our Ports Act of 2015;

I’ll have more information on these bills in a later post.

On the Floor

The House will be taking up a number of homeland security related bills under the suspension of rules this week. Of those only one may be of specific interest to readers of this blog; HR 3503, the Department of Homeland Security Support to Fusion Centers Act of 2015. Unfortunately, there will be limited debate and no chance to correct the deficiencies I noted.

The House will also probably consider the STA authorization bill that I mentioned above. It is also scheduled to address the President’s veto of HR 1735, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2016.

BTW: This week really marks the start of the House’s operation under Speaker Ryan. That may get interesting, but probably not this week.

Senate Adopts HR 1735 Conference Report

Yesterday as expected the Senate the Senate accepted the Conference Report on HR 1735, the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act, by a vote of 70-23. The bill now goes to the President for signature. While a veto had been threatened, the vote to pass in both houses of Congress was certainly large enough to overturn a veto. It will be interesting to see if Obama makes a principled stand on this budgeting issue or if he just acquiesces and makes that fight another day.

Bills Introduced – 05-19-15

Yesterday there were 89 bills introduced in the House and Senate. Only two of those may be of specific interest to readers of this blog:

HR 2410 To authorize highway infrastructure and safety, transit, motor carrier, rail, and other surface transportation programs, and for other purposes Rep. DeFazio, Peter A. [D-OR-4]

S 1376 An original bill to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2016 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of... Sen. McCain, John [R-AZ]

HR 2410 may contain references to new hazardous material transportation requirements, particularly for crude oil trains. We will just have to wait and see.

S 1376 has already been ‘ordered reported’ so we are now waiting on both the publication of the language of the bill as well as the accompanying report. This will be the version of the 2016 NDA that will be considered in the Senate. A conference committee will sort out the differences between this version and the one passed by the House last week.

Committee Hearings – Week of 05-11-15

Both the House and Senate will be in session this week. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDA) for 2016 is big on both sides of the Hill. The THUD (Transportation, Housing and Urban Development) spending bill is also moving forward. There are also two other hearings of potential interest to readers of this blog on drones and EMP.

Spending

The Senate Armed Services Committee and various sub-committees will be marking up their NDA (S 1118) all week. The text of that bill hasn’t been released yet, so we will have to wait and see what the final bill looks like, probably next week.

The House Rules Committee only has a general debate scheduled for the House version of the NDA (HR 1735). That hearing is scheduled for tomorrow evening. But the House is scheduled to take up the bill later this week so a rule meeting will almost certainly be held on Wednesday.

The House Appropriations Committee will markup the THUD bill on Wednesday. It would not be surprising to see amendments concerning rail hazmat issues.

Drones

The Oversight and Management Efficiency Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a markup hearing on Wednesday. Five bills will be addressed, including HR 1646, the Homeland Security Drone Assessment and Analysis Act. This bill has some serious bipartisan support and should move to the floor of the House rather quickly.

EMP

The Interior and National Security Subcommittees of the House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee will be holding a hearing on Wednesday looking at the threat of EMP events. No witness list is yet available.

Rules Committee Hearing Set for NDA Wednesday

This evening the House Rules Committee announced a hearing for tomorrow evening to develop the rule for the consideration of S 1847 which will now be the 2015 NDA (actually titled the Carl Levin and Howard P. ‘Buck’McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year

2015 after the retiring Senate and House chairmen).

S 1847 was introduced as the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies is hereby renamed the `Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies and was passed in the Senate back in December of last year.

The new language hammered out between the Senate and House Armed Services Committees has been published on the Rules Committee site. A quick review of the table of contents of the bill (which is 27 pages long by itself) shows the following sections of the bill deal with cyber issues:

Sec. 1078. Notification of foreign threats to information technology systems impacting

national security.

Sec. 1631. Budgeting and accounting for cyber mission forces.

Sec. 1632. Reporting on cyber incidents with respect to networks and information

systems of operationally critical contractors.

Sec. 1633. Executive agents for cyber test and training ranges.

Sec. 1634. Cyberspace mapping.

Sec. 1635. Review of cross domain solution policy and requirement for cross domain

solution strategy.

Sec. 1636. Requirement for strategy to develop and deploy decryption service

for the Joint Information Environment.

Sec. 1637. Actions to address economic or industrial espionage in cyberspace.

Sec. 1638. Sense of Congress regarding role of reserve components in defense

of United States against cyber attacks.

Sec. 1639. Sense of Congress on the future of the Internet and the .MIL top level domain.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 12-01-14

There are a number of hearings scheduled this week as the House and Senate come back to Washington for week 3 of the lame-duck session, but none of specific interest to readers of this blog. The House Majority Leader does expect to bring some bills of interest to the floor for votes this week. The currently listed bills will all be considered ‘under suspension of the rules’ which call for a super-majority vote, limited debate and no amendments. Typically these bills are expected to pass with at least some bipartisan support.

Monday

The House is expected to take up 10 bills today; three of them are of potential specific interest to my readers:

• H.R. 3410 – Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, as amended (Sponsored by Rep. Trent Franks / Homeland Security Committee)

• H.R. 5629 – Strengthening Domestic Nuclear Security Act of 2014, as amended (Sponsored by Rep. Patrick Meehan / Homeland Security Committee)

• H.R. 3438 – National Laboratories Mean National Security Act (Sponsored by Rep. Eric Swalwell / Homeland Security Committee)

I’ve only addressed one of these bills; HR 3410. This bill would require DHS to undertake emergency response planning for EMP events. No funding is provided in this bill, so any DHS efforts will be minimal at best. The bill will probably pass Monday, but it is an open question if it will ever see action in the Senate. If it does it will almost certainly be one of those bills that pass at the end of the day under unanimous consent.

Later in the Week

None of the eleven bills currently listed for Tuesday consideration are of specific interest here. The only other bill potentially of interest that might come to the floor this week is the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act, this is one of those ‘must pass’ bills that will almost certainly be considered before the 113^th Congress ends deliberations for the last time. Interestingly, the Majority Leader’s web site lists this bill by name rather than bill number (HR 4435) [NOTE: Because HR 4435 was passed in House earlier this year but not considered in the Senate; 12-02-14, 7:00 CST].

There was no mention of cybersecurity issues in the original bill or committee markup, but the House Armed Services Committee Report does add some reporting requirements on cyber range operations, Air Force cyber-operations compatibility with the Cyber Command, and the required information sharing program with the defense industrial base.

[Ignore discussion below, See Note above]

A rule for the consideration of HR 4435 had been adopted by the House Rules Committee back in May and the Whole House adopted that rule on May 21^st. That provided a structured rule with a large number of specific amendments that could be brought to the floor. Amendments of specific interest to readers of this blog included:

• Amdt #39 – Adding authorization for National Guard Cyber Protection Teams similar in concept to the WMD response units currently deployed;

• Amdt #78 – Small business cyber education program to aid small DOD contractors to understand, prepare for and respond to cyber attacks;

• Amdt#142 – DNI certification of mission analysis of DOD cyber operations; and

• Amdt#146 – Sense of Congress statement about the use of National Guard in defending against cyber-attacks on the United States.

At this point it is not clear if the currently approved rule will be used for the floor consideration of HR 4435, or even if HR 4435 will be the actual bill used to pass the NDA this year. As more information becomes available I will share it.

HR 4435 Introduced – NDA FY 2015

As I mentioned earlier Rep. McKeon (R,CA) recently introduced HR 4435, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015 (NDA FY 2015); a copy of which is finally available from the Government Printing Office.

Surprisingly I can find no mention of cybersecurity or cyber warfare provisions in the bill. I expect that this will be changed as the bill goes through the markup process and proceeds to the floor of the House.

This is a ‘must pass’ bill that will almost certainly reach the floor of the House well before the summer recess.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 5-19-13

While both the House and Senate will be in Washington this week, we only have to worry about hearings from the House, at least those of us in the chemical safety/security and cybersecurity communities. There will be two House cybersecurity hearings and two hearings on spending matters.

Cybersecurity

Two different subcommittees of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will both be looking at cybersecurity issues on the same day. Fortunately one is in the morning and the other is in the afternoon; otherwise the cybersecurity staff would be hard pressed to whisper the right questions into the correct congressman’s ear.

In the morning the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee will be holding a hearing on “Cyber Threats and Security Solutions”. The witness list is available and it is lengthy. Dr. Gallagher, Director of NIST, will be the first panel; no prizes for guessing what he will be talking about.

The second morning panel (I almost expect a second and third panel) will include:

• Dave McCurdy, American Gas Association

• John M. (Mike) McConnell, Booz Allen Hamilton

• R. James Woolsey, Woolsey Partners LLC

• Michael Papay, Northrop Grumman Information Systems

• Phyllis Schneck, McAfee, Inc.

• Charles Blauner, Citigroup, Inc.

• Duane Highley, Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation

• Robert Mayer, United States Telecom Association

The afternoon hearing will be conducted by the Communications and Technology Sub-Committee and will address “Cybersecurity: An Examination of the Communications Supply Chain”. While this does not directly affect control system security (except of course where it interfaces with a communications network) many of the same issues will apply to the control systems supply chain. The Subcommittee does have a staff background memo up on the Committee web site that provides the witness list and a description of the topics to be addressed.

Money Hearings

We will need to monitor the outcome of two mark-up hearings this week that will be looking at money matters.

The House Appropriations Committee will be marking up the as yet un-numbered FY 2014 Homeland Security spending bill on Wednesday. I’ve already described some of the CFATS and TWIC related language that is in the draft document. The Homeland Security Subcommittee met last week to do their markup, but we will not seeing the results of that mark-up until the bill is introduced.

There will be a whole series of hearings this conducted this week by the various subcommittees of the House Armed Forces Committee on the FY 2014 National Defense Authorization Act, HR 1960. The one that will probably be of interest to the cybersecurity community will be the markup being conducted Wednesday by the Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities. Again, we probably will not be seeing the results of this hearing until the Committee Report is prepared.