White House Reviewing Possible Conference Cybersecurity Information Sharing Bill Text
The White House is reportedly reviewing what may be a “close-to-final” draft of a conference cybersecurity information sharing bill, two industry lobbyists told us Wednesday. Behind-the-scenes negotiations on legislation have ramped up in recent days following the circulation over the…
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weekend of the House and Senate Intelligence committees’ preferred language on the bill (see 1512070056). Congress’ Homeland Security and Intelligence committees have been grappling with how to reconcile the Senate-passed Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (S-754) and two House-passed bills -- the Protecting Cyber Networks Act (HR-1560) and the National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act (HR-1731). House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said in a statement Tuesday that he and the leaders of Congress’ Intelligence committees have been making progress in their negotiations. McCaul had apparently raised concerns about the degree to which the Intelligence committees’ earlier text had shifted the center of gravity in an extended information sharing apparatus too far away from the Department of Homeland Security in favor of intelligence and law enforcement agencies, a lobbyist said. It was unclear at our deadline whether the White House was likely to agree to the current conference text since some issues remained under negotiation, but that the text was at a point where it could receive White House review is “definitely encouraging,” a lobbyist said. The White House didn’t comment. Meanwhile, Fight for the Future and 18 other digital rights and privacy groups jointly sent a letter Wednesday encouraging House and Senate leaders to oppose the current conference bill. The current language “is the result of secret negotiations between the House and Senate intelligence committees at the expense of critical expert input from the House Committee on Homeland Security, and it loses any advantages and improvements” that resulted from the DHS-centric HR-1731, the groups said in their letter. The House inserted HR-1731’s language into HR-1560 before sending the bill to the Senate.