Senate Bows Bipartisan Bill to Deter Foreign Hacking
A bipartisan group of Senators introduced cybersecurity legislation Tuesday aimed at deterring countries from hacking U.S. commercial secrets and intellectual property (http://1.usa.gov/141SEgi). The Deter Cyber Theft Act targets foreign governments and companies which are found committing cyber espionage against U.S. companies, and authorizes U.S. trade officials to restrict trade with them, its authors said in interviews Tuesday. The bill is sponsored by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich.; Ranking Member John McCain, R-Ariz.; Homeland Security and Governmental Services Ranking Member Tom Coburn, R-Okla.; and Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.
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The bill will “direct the intelligence agency to make a list of countries that are supporting cyber espionage and theft of our commercial secrets and intellectual property,” Levin told us. The bill would direct the Director of National Intelligence to create and publish lists on which U.S. technologies and proprietary information are targeted by foreign actors, and which companies are benefitting from cyber-espionage of U.S. goods, said a news release. The bill would also direct the U.S. Trade representative “to take steps against any country found to engage in that kind of espionage by restricting trade” to the U.S., Levin said. Such remedies could include blocking the import of products containing stolen U.S. technology, products made by state-owned agencies found to steal U.S. intellectual property or products made by foreign companies found to have benefitted from cyberespionage against the U.S., the news release said. Levin said the bill will go through regular process. He didn’t know whether it would be referred to the Senate Finance Committee or the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The bill “basically goes after countries that use cyberattacks in order to obtain commercial information,” Levin told us. “We've got to stop it -- mainly coming from China,” he said. “This is a very direct way to stop it, because countries such as China are not going to want to lose trade with us, I don’t think. So it is a real effective remedy, if we can get it passed, to cybertheft where countries are involved -- either authorizing it, or having companies which are engaging in it that are owned by the government, or looking the other way and not enforcing intellectual property law in their own country.”
The legislation offers a “totally different approach” to cybersecurity than the House-passed Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) (HR-624), Levin said. “This is the remedy -- this is the way to stop” cyberattacks against U.S. companies, he said. The legislation will “identify who the culprits are and if a government is involved either ... through its military or through companies that it hold or controls. Then U.S. trade agencies will take action against those companies,” he said. “Under international trade laws, you are allowed to do that to protect your own security.”
Rockefeller sees the measure as an “amendment” to a forthcoming comprehensive cybersecurity bill, he said in an interview at the Capitol: The legislation “gets very tough on countries that hack us, and we take it out on trade agreements and stuff like that.” U.S. “economic prosperity and national security depend on bolstering our cybersecurity, and this bill is a crucial component of that effort,” he said in a release.
Foreign governments are “using cyber espionage to steal American intellectual property and rob U.S. ingenuity and innovation in order to gain competitive advantage,” said McCain in a news release. “This kills American jobs, undermines the competitiveness of our businesses and compromises U.S. economic and national security interests, and it must stop now. This bill provides the President with the authority to target those who are attempting to unfairly and illegally benefit from cyber crime at the expense of America’s interests."
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she met with Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., Tuesday to discuss legislation that encourages cyberthreat information sharing between the public and private sectors. “We want to put something together which has privacy rights, which has the homeland security portal in real time and has liability protection that is adequate and secure for the use of government countermeasures, and anyone that uses the countermeasures,” she said. Feinstein told us she plans to meet next with the Republican and Democratic authors of CISPA, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and Ranking Member Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., to try to incorporate parts of their bill into the Senate bill.
House Homeland Security Chairman Tom Carper, D-Del., said there will be six elements incorporated into the Senate’s comprehensive cybersecurity bill. Along with cyberespionage, information sharing “is one of them, another is critical infrastructure, another is protecting our own .gov domain, another is workforce development, another is research and development,” he said. “Some of them are more controversial than others, and there is work going on one or more of those in the various committees of jurisdiction every day.” The bill’s introduction came ahead of Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime hearing entitled “Cyberthreats: Law Enforcement and Private Sector Responses.” The hearing is at 9 a.m. in 226 Dirksen.