HR 2608 Easily Passes in House

At this point it is almost old news, but yesterday the House passed HR 2608, the [second] Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012, by a very bipartisan vote. Large numbers of both Republicans and Democrats voted for the proposed six-week extension of spending authority. The opposition was also very bipartisan with most of the 66 opposition votes coming from Republicans.

The Fix Was In

Last week’s deal was apparently very solid. Not only was the vote not close, but there was little discussion. The deal had allowed for an hour’s worth of debate on the floor, but the whole action yesterday took less than an hour. Actually it was closer to 30 minutes than an hour and that time included a roll call vote.

I haven’t heard this mentioned by any of the network pundits, but this is how Congress is supposed to work. For the peoples work to get done the different sides of the debate need to be able to work out compromises that are marginally acceptable to both sides. This is particularly true when there is a mixed majority, the House controlled by one party and the Senate by the other. Hopefully we will see more of this ability to compromise on important legislation.

Dangers of Unanimous Consent

In yesterday’s blog I made a point about the dangers associated with considering this bill (and any bill) under a unanimous consent agreement. When I had initially written that post, I hadn’t seen Monday’s Congressional Record, so I hadn’t realized that the unanimous consent motion had been offered on Monday afternoon.

It’s obvious in hind sight that the Republican leadership in the House recognized the potential of a single representative de-railing the consideration of this bill. That is why the unanimous consent motion was offered before 5:00 pm on Monday. If a voice was raised in opposition they still had the Rules Committee hearing scheduled for the formation of a rule for the consideration of the bill on Tuesday.

The Next Six Weeks

It will be interesting to see if this new found ability to compromise will extend to the spending bills that will need to pass in the next six weeks. I doubt that we will see votes of this large a margin on most of the bills, but maybe we will get enough ability to compromise to at least get bills that can pass in both Houses.

The interesting thing for readers of this blog to watch for is how the Congress will deal with a new Homeland Security spending bill. The House could introduce a new bill using either the original Committee language or the version passed in the House. The latter could possibly avoid the extended floor debate that accompanied the first bill.

The other alternative would be for the Senate to add their DHS language that was developed for HR 2017 and add that to another House passed spending bill, probably the DOD spending bill. This would probably be the least time consuming as it would not require the initial passage process, even if abbreviated, in the House. This is the process that I am expecting to see.

ISCD Updates ANSP Information

Today the folks at DHS ISCD updated their information regarding the ammonium nitrated security program (ANSP) public meetings on two different web sites. First they updated the list of public meeting sites on the ANSP web page. Second they added information about the public meetings to the CFATS Knowledge Center.

Update ANSP Web Page

The updated information on the ANSP web page removed the first two meetings; the ones scheduled for today in Mobile, AL and the one for Thursday in Savannah, GA. Actually the one in Mobile was rescheduled for November 8^th; the one in Savannah was rescheduled for November 1^st.

There was no explanation given for the rescheduling. Hopefully not too many people had already showed up for the Mobile, AL meeting this morning. Since there was no registration for attendees there was no way for ISCD to notify them of the change.

CFATS Knowledge Center

The updated list of meeting sites was included today in an article on the CFATS Knowledge Center. There is a brief note about the meetings in the “Latest News” section that points readers at a generic ‘article’. The actual listing is found in Article 1727 (NOTE: there are no permanent links to Knowledge Center articles or FAQ; enter ‘Article 1727’ in the search box to get the current link).

There are a couple of new pieces of information available in this Article that are not mentioned on the ANSP web site. First the Article notes that “though sign‐in sheets will be provided to voluntarily collect contact information from the attending public and to properly log oral comments received during the meetings”. This is important because DHS will be recording comments at these meetings as part of the public comment process for the NPRM that would establish this program. The notice about this recording and reporting of the public comments is the second new piece of information.

The third new piece of information deals with the lack of point of contact information that I mentioned in my blog posting about the original publication of this list of public meetings. There is still no POC information on the ANSP web site, but this article does provide a telephone number for people with disabilities to request appropriate accommodations. This isn’t quite a POC, but it would probably lead to one if someone were to push hard enough.

Still No Federal Register Announcement

I suspect that the reason for the postponement of the first two meetings is that there was no announcement of the public meetings in the Federal Register. With the large number of meetings scheduled ISCD probably could have gone forward with these meetings without running the risk of complaints, but it is just another indication of the care with which this program development is proceeding.

HR 2608 to be Considered by House Today

Well, the House Rules Committee never did take up HR 2608, the [second] Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012, in its hearing last night. Instead of considering the bill under a rule, it will be taken up under a unanimous consent agreement. The text of the proposed UC motion calls for one hour of debate with no possibility of amendment. According to the Majority Leader’s web site, this will be considered sometime after noon, but before 3:30 pm.

As I noted in an earlier blog, this route of consideration of HR 2608 is not without risk. The voice of a single representative objecting to the UC will kill consideration of this bill today, leading to a potential “shutdown” of the Federal Government. The Republican leadership obviously thinks that this is unlikely and they probably have quiet agreements in place with those most likely to throw a monkey wrench into the works.

Still, I bet there will be some breaths being held when the UC motion is made. NOTE: This UC motion was actually approved yesterday afternoon at about 4:15 EDT (PJCoyle 04:33 10-04-11).

Open Source Infrastructure Report Problems

This is an open note to whomever at DHS is responsible for the DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report web site.

The links to Friday’s and today’s reports are bad links; returning a “404 Error: The requested page was not found” error message.

There used to be a link on this page to the people handling this site; contractors if I remember correctly, but that link is no longer there.

NOTE: As of 14:30 EDT, 10-03-11 this problem has been corrected. PJCoyle

HR 901 Report Published – CFATS Extension

Last week the House Homeland Security Committee filed their report on HR 901, the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Security Authorization Act of 2011.This report is based upon the markup hearing that the Committee held back in June. Readers will recall that HR 901 is essentially a codification of the §550 CFATS authorization language as an amendment to the Homeland Security Act of 2002. Along with providing nearly permanent authorization for the program (it would technically expire on September 30^th, 2018) it would essentially provide the House Homeland Security Committee primary jurisdiction for oversight of the program.

The Report

Nothing really new in this report as the Committee  markup hearing documentation on their web site was quite extensive and included the exact language for each of the amendments considered during the consideration of the bill. What’s important here is that the Committee has now officially completed their work on the bill.

The Democratic Staff of the Committee did not do as good a job in their preparation of the “Additional Views” section of the report in explaining the reasons for their objections to this bill as did the staff of the Energy and Commerce Committee did on their report on HR 908. Instead they focused on the amendments (both adopted and rejected) offered by the Democrats during the markup process. Even with this difference in focus, the “Additional Views” section of the bill provides an important discussion of the issues that will make this bill difficult to pass in the Senate.

Extended Committee Consideration

What was really important in the legislative process on this bill was not the publication of this Report (though that was a prerequisite to further consideration of the legislation; ‘a’ prerequisite not ‘the’). More important was the announcement that the Republican leadership in the House had given the Energy and Commerce Committee additional time to complete their ‘review’ of this bill. Their deadline for consideration of the bill is now November 11^th.

Actually the word ‘deadline’ is not really appropriate as that implies that there is a requirement for the Committee to take action by that date. The actual term used in the House is ‘granted an extension’ and even that is misleading as it would seem to imply that the Leadership actually expects the Committee to take action by that date; that may or may not happen.

The problem in this case is that the Energy and Commerce Committee has already taken action on CFATS extension legislation, HR 908. The important difference between the two bills is that HR 908 would maintain the current §550 language and just change the expiration date. This keeps that Committee’s shared (with the Appropriations Committee) oversight responsibility (as yet unexercised) for the program. Thus, there is no political incentive for the Energy and Commerce Committee to consider this bill.

Moving Forward or Not

The real importance of this consideration extension is that it indicates that the leadership does not intend to consider this bill before the Whole House before November 11^th. What is not clear is whether it intends to consider this bill at all. The leadership has not indicated which version of the CFATS extension it actually favors.

Whichever bill comes to the House floor (and only one will make it to the floor) will almost certainly pass, likely with substantial Democratic support. Since neither bill will likely be actually considered by the Senate (at best an amendment in the form of a substitute putting the Senate Homeland Security bill, S 473, language will replace the House language) the bill that makes it to the floor will be less about the CFATS extension than about the oversight of homeland security issues.

If HR 901 makes it to the floor, it will be a sign that the Republican leadership is starting to change the current confusion in oversight responsibility for homeland security issues; providing the Homeland Security Committee with primary oversight of those issues. If HR 908 makes it to the floor, it will be a sign that the leadership has no intention of fighting the political power of the committee chairs that will have to give up their fractured oversight of portions of the Department of Homeland Security.

I’m pretty sure that this extension of the consideration of HR 901 is an indication that the leadership would really rather just have this issue go away for now. It is a distraction from the economic and regulatory issues that are a current priority in the Republican battles with the White House. If it weren’t for the chemical industry pressing for a long term extension of the CFATS program, neither bill would make it to the floor this session.

Oh, yes, the Democrats are not in any hurry for either of these bills to make it to the floor either. They know that they are unlikely to get any of their issues addressed in the current political environment. This means that they would be better off stalling consideration of the bill until the next session when they might be in charge of the House and better able to get their program included in the long term authorization. That is a long shot as it is unlikely that either party will get actual control of the Senate.

Congressional Hearings – Week of 10-03-11

This week there are currently only two hearings of potential interest to the chemical, cyber or transportation security communities; the Rules Committee Hearing on HR 2608 (which I wrote about Thursday) and a hearing on maritime terrorism agreements.

HR 2608 Rule Hearing

As I noted earlier the House Rules Committee will meet on Monday evening to develop the rule for the floor consideration of HR 2608. That may change; the Majority Leader’s web site notes that on Tuesday the deal with a Motion to Concur in the Senate Amendment to HR 2608. That will be subject to a ‘Unanimous Consent Agreement’.

This would be quicker (not as quick as the House vote on HR 2017, but quicker than normal) as it would avoid a debate on the rule and then a debate on the bill with potential recorded votes on each. It would also allow a single political-bomb thrower the chance to prevent consideration. Fortunately (SARCASM Warning) we don’t have anyone in the House that might be considered a political-bomb thrower.

BTW: The Rules Committee web page now correctly lists HR 2608 as the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012,  to be considered not HR 2017. They probably caught the error internally, but I’ll take a small measure of credit for easing this confusion anyway.

Maritime Terrorism Agreements

The House Judiciary Committee will be holding a hearing on Wednesday on the Implementation of Certain International Nuclear and Maritime Terrorism Agreements. No mention of what ‘maritime terrorism agreements’ might be mentioned or considered in this hearing and not even a witness list yet. But, given the importance of maritime chemical shipping and potential MTSA impacts, this may be an interesting hearing.

ICS-CERT Issues Three SCADA Advisories

On Friday afternoon the DHS Industrial Control System Cyber Emergency Response Team published three advisories on their web site. One was a follow-up to one of the earlier Luigi alerts while the other two were about new vulnerabilities in systems reported by security researchers in ‘properly’ coordinated disclosures. The three advisories deal with the following systems:

• Rockwell RSLogix

• InduSoft ISSymbol

• ICONICS GENESIS32

Rockwell RSLogix

This Advisory updates an earlier alert issued for the vulnerabilities reported by Luigi. Rockwell has developed patches for these denial of service vulnerabilities in two versions their Factory Talk Services Platform (CPR9 SR3 and SR4). Patches are under development for earlier versions of Factory Talk and for RSLogix. ICS-CERT will update this Advisory when those patches become available. [CVE-2011-3489; Base Score 5.0]

InduSoft ISSymbol

Dmitriy Pletnev of Secunia Research reported ActiveX control buffer overflow vulnerabilities in the InduSoft ISSymbol product and developed proof-of-concept exploit code for those vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities allow a low skilled attacker to conduct DOS attacks while a more skilled attacker could execute arbitrary code. InduSoft has published an upgrade for the affected systems as well as a new service pack. [CVE-2011-0342; Base Score 10.0]

ICONICS GENESIS32

Independent researchers Billy Rios and Terry McCorkle have identified eight separate memory corruption vulnerabilities in components of the GENESIS32 HMI/SCADA product. A low skill level attacker could cause a system crash while a more skilled attacker could execute arbitrary code. This vulnerability would require a social engineering attack causing a user to open specially crafted files. ICONICS has produced patches to mitigate these vulnerabilities.