Source: WiredKim Zetter
After three years of haggling to produce bipartisan cybersecurity
legislation that addresses the security of the nation’s critical
infrastructure systems, the Senate finally got a bill this week that
seemed destined to actually pass.
That is, until a hearing on Thursday to discuss the bill in which
Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) sideswiped lawmakers behind the proposed
legislation and announced that he, and seven other Senate ranking
members, were opposed to the bill and would be introducing a competing
bill in two weeks to address failings they see in the legislation.
McCain and his colleagues oppose the current bill on the grounds that
it would give the Department of Homeland Security regulatory authority
over private businesses that own and operate critical infrastructure
systems and that it doesn’t grant the National Security Agency, a branch
of the Defense Department, any authority to monitor networks in
real-time to thwart cyberattacks.
The bill neglects to give authority “to the only institutions
currently capable of [protecting the homeland], U.S. Cybercommand and
the National Security Agency (NSA),” McCain said in a written statement presented at the hearing.
“According to [General Keith Alexander, the Commander of U.S.
Cybercommand and the Director of the NSA] in order to stop a cyber
attack you have to see it in real time, and you have to have those
authorities…. This legislation does nothing to address this significant
concern and I question why we have yet to have a serious discussion
about who is best suited to protect our country from this threat we all
agree is very real and growing.”
The current cybersecurity bill proposes to do what nothing else has
succeeded in doing to date – that is, improve the security of critical
infrastructure systems. It would do this by giving the government
regulatory power over companies that operate such systems to force them
to do due diligence.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) introduced the legislation on Tuesday
along with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller
(D-W.Va.).
