WASHINGTON, D.C. – Stressing an urgency to help protect American businesses and jobs and ensure the openness of the internet, the House Intelligence Committee today completed its markup of H.R. 624, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2013.  Six amendments were adopted by the committee and the bill passed with a decisive vote of 18-2.

The first amendment was a Managers’ Amendment to make some non-controversial technical corrections and enhance the core information sharing purposes of the bill.

The second amendment, offered by Rep. Thompson of California, added roles for the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board (PCLOB) and the individual agency privacy officers to provide additional oversight of the government’s use of information received from the private sector under this bill.

A third amendment, offered by Rep. Langevin, clarified that the bill does not provide any new authority to “hack back.”  This provision addresses concerns that the bill could be misinterpreted to authorize companies to hack into other companies’ networks to take back information that was stolen from them.

The fourth amendment, offered by Rep. Heck and Rep. Himes, put in place a private sector cybersecurity use restriction that parallels the bill’s use restrictions imposed on the government.  This provision will limit the private sector’s use of any cyber security information received only to a cybersecurity use purpose.  This is intended to address misperceptions that private sector companies could have used this information for marketing and other non-cybersecurity purposes.

Chairman Rogers said:  “This amendment addresses a concern that was expressed to us by several Members of Congress and a number of organizations, to include the White House.  I commend Rep. Joe Barton for his leadership on this important issue and for bringing the matter to the committee’s attention.”

The fifth amendment, offered by Rep. Himes, requires the government to establish minimization procedures.  Those procedures must be designed to limit the receipt, retention and use of personally identifiable information not necessary to protect systems or networks from cyber threats while still ensuring the critical cyber threat information necessary to protect systems can flow quickly.

The sixth amendment, offered by Rep. Sewell, struck the bill’s authorized “national security” use to further narrow the government’s authorized uses of cyber threat information shared by the private sector.

“Cyber-hackers from nation-states like China, Russia, and Iran are infiltrating American cyber networks, stealing billions of dollars a year in intellectual property, and undermining the technological innovation at the heart of America’s economy.  This bill takes a solid step toward helping American businesses protect their networks from these cyber looters.  Through hard work and compromise, we have produced a balanced bill that provides strong protections for privacy and civil liberties, while enabling effective cyber-threat sharing.  The decisiveness of the vote shows the tremendous bipartisan support for this bill,” Chairman Rogers said.

Rogers continued, “Our bill does not require significant additional federal spending or the creation of a new government bureaucracy.  It does not impose additional federal regulation or unfunded mandates on the private sector.  To the contrary, the bill is a critical, bipartisan first step to empowering the private sector to protect its own networks, which hold invaluable intellectual property and personal information.  The bill will also unleash American private-sector innovation by helping create a more dynamic cybersecurity marketplace.”

Ranking Member Dutch Ruppersberger said, “We have always said this was a collaborative process with privacy groups, the business community, and the White House.  The adoption of a host of amendments in markup today supported by these groups shows a true commitment to making our bill better and improving privacy and civil liberties protections.  I commend everyone who participated in this effort, especially the bi-partisan leadership of Chairman Rogers and the other Members of the Intelligence Committee on both sides of the aisle.  I look forward to advancing this bill so we can protect our nation and its economy from the threat that cyber attacks and cyber espionage pose.”

The bill is expected to be considered by the full House next week.

source: http://intelligence.house.gov

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The proposal is aimed at getting past the technical and legal obstacles that make it difficult for the FBI and other agencies with court orders to check so-called voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) services such as those offered by Microsoft Corp’s Skype.

It would also apply to real-time chat services offered by Facebook, Google and others.

The FBI has long sought new policies that would enable it to eavesdrop on the Internet in the same way that it does on traditional telephone calls. But tech companies have fiercely opposed the idea, and it would likely face stiff opposition in Congress.

Though officials can seek court approval to wiretap almost anything, only traditional telecommunications carriers are required to make it easy.

“The real question here is VoIP,” said a former senior U.S. security official familiar with the debate. Microsoft and other VoIP providers have said they are exempt from existing law.

“The U.S. law, Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, does not apply to any of Microsoft’s services, including Skype, as Microsoft is not a telecommunications carrier,” Microsoft wrote in a March corporate blog post.

Microsoft, Facebook and Google had no comment on the Obama administration’s draft proposal, which has been reported with varying details by The Washington Post, The New York Times and others.

As described to Reuters by U.S. officials and outsiders, the proposal would encompass VoIP, chat and other Internet communication services.

It remains unclear whether and how companies could be compelled to help police and intelligence agencies unscramble encrypted communications, in addition to providing access.

Al Gidari Jr., an attorney for Google and other tech companies, said he had been informed of the key provisions in the text and that providers would have to come up with a way to translate encrypted communications when required to do so by a judge, or else face escalating fines.

“It says if you offer a communication service it has to come with wiretapping capabilities or if not, you better be able to get that capability,” said Gidari.

SERIES OF COMPROMISES

FBI officials had originally sought a blanket requirement that Internet companies give authorized law enforcement officials the same kind of sweeping, turn-key access to their networks that phone companies do.

Tech companies, civil libertarians and some government officials argued that such a mandate would be impractical for smaller, innovative companies and that “back doors” created for law enforcement present serious security risks.

Over the past year, a task force convened by FBI Director Robert Mueller has offered a series of compromises, said technologist Joe Hall of the Center for Democracy & Technology.

The result would leave specific cases to judges overseeing warrant requests and give companies time to comply.

Evidently that has been enough to overcome objections at the Commerce Department and bring the matter to the White House, which is likely to back the plan, Gidari said. He predicted it would still face a tough fight in the divided Congress. A Commerce Department spokesman declined to comment.

U.S. officials said the legislative proposals are still being studied by an interagency group. It is unclear when the group might finalize it for presentation to President Barack Obama, they said.

Current and former officials said frustration over the difficulty of executing court-approved wiretaps in the Internet era has been building for years as new communications services become invisible to the carriers, often described as “going dark.”

“The Department of Justice is working with other agencies on a way forward that protects privacy of Americans, preserves corporate innovation, and provides the tools that our law enforcement and counterterrorism professionals require,” a White House statement said. “We have nothing new to announce on that process today.”

Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said that solutions “would not create any new surveillance authority.”

Retired General Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA and the National Security Agency, said in an interview with Reuters that there should be no controversy over proposals to expand wiretap laws “to the extent that this allows the FBI to continue its lawful interception capabilities” with new technologies.

© 2013 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.newsmax.com

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Recent Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) figures released for June 2012 ranked Australia at 21 out of 34 in fixed broadband penetration (1), while ranked 9th for GDP per capita (2).

“Increasing the speed of and end-user’s broadband connection, while desirable, does not necessarily address the issue of affordability, adoption and usage. As such, it will be important, under the Coalition’s Plan, that a focus on encouraging adoption and usage by consumers and small business also forms part of that plan,” said Peter Lee, Chief Executive of the IIA.

The IIA also welcomes the Coalition’s commitment to competitive and free markets, particularly where it promotes innovation and delivers incentives for businesses to continue investing locally. The structural reform of the industry that a wholesale-only owned and operated NBN has sought to achieve also needs to remain an important part of the Coalition’s Plan.

The Coalition’s Plan also commits to initiate three reviews, an NBN Co strategic review, an independent audit into broadband policy and NBN Co’s governance and an independent cost-benefit analysis and review of regulation.

“While the IIA supports the underlying principle of these reviews, we believe that the Coalition needs to ensure that a plan for continuity of the NBN rollout is implemented during this review phase so that the industry, businesses and consumers are not left pondering in a state of flux that creates further uncertainty or unnecessary delay in upgrading our national broadband infrastructure”, said Peter Lee.

The IIA believes the NBN to be an important part of this country’s national infrastructure as an enabler that will support Australia’s growth in a global economy. The social and economic benefits of universal, affordable and fast broadband and how the Internet’s pervasive presence continues to transform the lives of all Australians should never be underestimated or taken for granted.

1 Number of subscribers per 100 inhabitants, June 2012 = 24.6.
2 Australia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita (USD PPP, 2011) equals an estimated 40,790.

Taken from IIA Internet Industry Association

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While the IIA supports an approach that promotes media diversity, we question the effectiveness of creating yet another regulator in the form of the Public Interest Media Advocate (PIMA).

“A more effective way of creating competition and diversity, particularly on-line through digital media, would be to provide better incentives for investment that promotes and encourages a greater diversity of voices across a variety of new platforms and applications,” said Peter Lee, Chief Executive of the Internet Industry Association (IIA).

“Online is one of the most diverse and growing national and international platforms that exists: diversity should not be enforced by over regulation.”

The IIA is sceptical about expanding regulation of online media without clear evidence that such regulation is required and also imposing additional cost to online media because those with an significant audience reach of >60,000 per day (however that may be measured) will need to pay membership to support a “Press Standards” style body.
Senator Conroy indicated that there is currently two existing mechanisms in place that address competition law and foreign ownership restrictions, but that they don’t address or reflect the full question of ‘public interest’ for media acquisitions.

These proposed reforms overlook the media diversity controls that already exist in Division 5A of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992. It is not clear why these controls have failed and/or why it is necessary to bring the very diverse and rich array of online services under further regulatory control.

Rather than creating yet another regulatory body [PIMA] within the communications sector, the Government should consider utilising existing bodies such as the ACCC, the TIO and the ACMA by expanding their roles in relation to these proposed reforms. Any such regulatory body should be totally independent of the government of the day to ensure that the government does not use its power over the regulator to control outcomes or garner support.

As in most cases, the devil is in the detail and until the proposed legislation is tabled it is difficult to fully understand the implications of the proposed reforms. Important particulars such as the criteria and processes to be used for any public interest test could have a significant impact on the continued growth of on-line media and diversity.

For more information, visit – www.iia.net.au

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