The 112th Congress is moving quickly this week to adjourn to the campaign trail. Therefore there are only a couple days left before the “lame duck” session following the election when Congress is expected to revisit major tax and budget issues. For now, the Hill will see one last flurry around issues of interest to SIIA members:
Cybersecurity ball officially in Administration’s Court
On the cybersecurity front, high expectations for legislation to advance at the beginning of the year have given-in to the increased likelihood that the ball is now in the President’s court. While the congressional recess doesn’t mark the official death of cybersecurity legislation for 2012 or beyond, indications are that the White House will use an executive order as the next step and leave open the possibility for continued legislative talks on cybersecurity legislation to fill in the gaps that exceed the President’s authority.
Specifically, a letter made available late last week from U.S. National Security Adviser John Brennan confirmed that the White House is “determined to use existing executive branch authorities” to accomplish key cybersecurity goals. In the letter, Brenan also confirmed the direction that the Administration is “exploring an Executive Order to direct executive branch departments and agencies to secure our nation’s critical infrastructure by working with the private sector.”
While continuing to voice support for legislation to address cyber info. sharing between the government and private sector and reform FISMA, the door has been left open for legislative talks to continue, just not any time soon.
House to Explore Int’l IP Enforcement
This Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee will hold as its final hearing, a session exploring “International IP Enforcement: Opening Markets Abroad and Protecting Innovation.” The hearing will feature testimony and Q&A with White House IP Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel, and is expected to focus on the continuing IPEC efforts to increase enforcement against copyright infringement both through direct law enforcement and through voluntary cooperation among industry players. The state of patent and copyright enforcement in China is also expected to be reviewed.
Senate Follows House Lead on Internet Governance
On Wednesday, the Sen. Foreign Relations Committee will consider a bipartisan resolution sponsored by Marco Rubio (R-FL) condemning efforts by various countries to control the Internet and urging the Obama administration to oppose these actions. The resolution mirrors a similar resolution sponsored by Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) that passed the House earlier this year by a vote of 414-0, and is on an inside track to be adopted by the Senate in the near future.
Senate Judiciary Cmte. to Consider ECPA Amendment
And at the final markup for the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) intends to offer an amendment to video privacy legislation that would level the playing field for access to information stored electronically by amending the Electronics Communication’s Privacy Act to require the government to obtain a warrant in order to compel service providers to disclose the content of emails, texts or other private material stored by the service provider on behalf of its users. While the outlook for both the underlying bill and the ECPA amendment are unclear, this is another step forward in the ongoing campaign to update ECPA to accommodate cloud computing.
David LeDuc is Senior Director, Public Policy at SIIA. He focuses on e-commerce, privacy, cyber security, cloud computing, open standards, e-government and information policy.