Idaho Wilderness Water Resources Protection Act

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 3523.

Madam Chair, I yield myself 4 minutes.

Never a problem have I seen when it comes to our national security, Madam Chair, that we are just not prepared to handle.

In just the last few years, nation-states, like China, have stolen enough intellectual property from just the Fed's contractors that it would be equivalent to 50 times the print collection of the Library of Congress. We have nation-states that are literally stealing jobs and our future. We also have countries that are engaged in activities and have capabilities that have the ability to break networks, computer networks, which means you can't just reboot. It means your system is literally broken. Those kinds of disruptions can be catastrophic when you think about the financial sector or the energy sector or our command and control elements for all of our national security apparatus.

This is as serious a problem as I have seen. So, last year, I and my partner--Dutch Ruppersberger, the vice chairman and ranking member of the Intelligence Committee--agreed that this was a significant enough problem to the future prosperity of America that we'd better do something about it.

We needed to stop the Chinese Government from stealing our stuff. We needed to stop the Russians from what they're doing to our networks and to people's personal information, data, and resources. We needed to prepare for countries like Iran and North Korea so that they don't do something catastrophic to our networks here in America and cause real harm to real people.

So, in a bipartisan way, we set out to do something very, very, very narrow. When the government spies overseas, it collects malware-- viruses, software that is dangerous to our computers. That means they can either steal our stuff--the personal information off of your computer--or they can steal the secrets that make your business viable, the kinds of secrets that give people jobs.

So wouldn't it be great if we could take that source code, that software and share it with the private sector so that they could put it on their private systems, like they do every single day to try to protect networks, and have that added advantage of that extra coverage from that malicious source code? The good news is this happens every day. If you have Norton or McAfee or Symantec or any other antivirus protection on your computer, it has patches of information that they know is really bad stuff, and every time you turn your computer on, it updates and tries to protect your computer, your personal information.

That's all this is. It is adding to that patchwork some zeroes and some ones that we know is malicious code that is either going to steal your information or break your computer or something worse. That's all this bill is. It draws a very fine line between the government and the private sector. It is all voluntary. There are no new mandates. There is no government surveillance--none, not any--in this bill. It just says, if we know we have this source code, shouldn't we be obligated to give it so it doesn't do something bad to the companies and individuals in America. That's all this bill does.

We have worked collaboratively with hundreds of companies, with privacy groups, with civil libertarians. We have worked with government folks. We have had hundreds and hundreds of meetings for over a year. We have kept this bill open in an unprecedented transparent way to try to meet the needs of privacy concerns, civil libertarian concerns, civil liberties concerns. We wanted to make sure that, with this bill, people understood exactly what we were trying to do, how simple it is, and how crucial it is to the future defense of this great Nation.

Without our ideas, without our innovation that countries like China are stealing every single day, we will cease to be a great Nation. They are slowly and silently and quickly stealing the value and prosperity of America.

I yield myself an additional 1 minute.

One credit card company said that they get attacked for your personal information 300,000 times a day--one company. We have a company that can directly show you stolen intellectual property. This one particular company estimated 20,000 manufacturing jobs that they lost for Americans, which were good-paying jobs, because countries like China stole their intellectual property and illegally competed against them in the marketplace.

This is as bad a problem, Madam Chair, as I have seen. I think you'll hear throughout the day this has been a responsible debate and that it has been a responsible negotiation to get to privacy concerns and our ability to protect your information on your computer through this series of zeroes and ones, the binary code on our computers.

Again, I want to thank my ranking member for his partnership and his work. He has been exceptional to work with on something on which we both agree and on which we agreed, in a bipartisan fashion, was a danger to the future prosperity of America.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from North Carolina (Mrs. Myrick) who is on the Intelligence Committee and has a tremendous expertise on counterterrorism issues.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kinzinger).

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Stivers).

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Heck).

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry).

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Bono Mack).

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Nunes).

I yield the gentleman from California an additional 30 seconds.

Madam Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton).

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Thornberry).

I do.

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from the great State of Oregon (Mr. Walden).

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Madam Chair, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Lots of misinformation about this bill today. I respect the gentleman from Georgia greatly for his efforts. I heard the gentleman from Texas talk about searches and seizures. And this is the good news: there are none of those things in this bill. None.

You know, if I knew that your house was to be robbed, I would expect that if the police knew, that they'd pick up the phone and call you and say, you are going to be robbed. Take precaution. We'll be their shortly.

This bill just says, if we have this nasty source code, these zeroes and ones, I want to give it to you so you can protect your systems. That's it. No monitoring, no content, no surveillance, nothing. That's not what this bill is about.

I understand the passion about it. That's why we've taken a year to forge this bipartisan effort to get where we believe privacy is protected. It is paramount that we do that, that our civil liberties are protected. It is paramount that we do that.

But we at least take down the hurdle to share nasty source code or software that's flying through the Internet, that's developed, and it's very sophisticated, by the Chinese and the Russians and the Iranians and other groups and non-nation-state actors that are going to steal your personal information.

That's all this is. It's sharing bad source code so you can put it on your system so you don't get infected. End of story.

I wish people would read the bill, all of it, every word of it. I think you'll find the carefully crafted language to make sure that our rights are protected, that the Fourth Amendment is protected.

And by the way, just like the Army, the Navy, the Marines, your FBI is protecting you. That's what this bill allows it to do, simply that.

So, as I said, I respect greatly the gentleman from Georgia. There's a lot of atrocities I think he lived through in his life that no one should have to live through. We took those things into consideration when we wrote this bill, and that's why we've got so much support and so much technical company support, companies like Facebook and Microsoft and all of those groups.

So I hope people read the bill and support the bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

I do want to thank the ranking member and both staffs from both committees who have been tireless in this effort to get it right and to find that right place where we could all feel comfortable.

The amendments that are following here are months of negotiation and work with many organizations--privacy groups. We have worked language

with the Center for Democracy and Technology, and they just the other day said they applauded our progress on where we're going with privacy and civil liberties. So we have included a lot of folks.

It has been a long road. It has been the most open and transparent bill that, I think, I've ever worked on here. We kept it open to the very end to make sure that we could find the language that clarified our intent to protect privacy, to protect civil liberties, and to just be able to share dangerous information with victims. That's all this bill is. The whopping 13 pages it is does only that. So I appreciate the comments today. I look forward to the amendment debate.

Again, Mr. Ruppersberger, it has been a joy to work with you on this particular issue.

As an old Army officer once told me, once you find a problem, you are morally obligated to do something about it. We set about it a year ago to make America safe and to protect your network at home from people stealing it, breaking it, and doing something worse.

So, Madam Chair, I look forward to the debate on the amendments, and I yield back the balance of my time.

I rise in opposition to the amendment.

I want to first compliment Mr. Langevin for working with us on the cybersecurity bill. He has been an instrumental force in pushing this cybersecurity issue to the front and in getting the language that we have that finds that right balance.

My concern with this, which is why I thought, at least, the President's advisers who were recommending to him that he veto the bill were misguided, is that now we have done something in this bill that is fairly unique. It is all voluntary, and we have separated the government and the private sector. The government is not going to be involved in private sector networks, and they're not going to be involved in the government networks. Perfect. That's exactly the balance we found.

With this, it crosses both of those, and it gets us to a place that I think we need to have a lot more discussion on, and you can see by the level of debate just on this issue how people are really nervous about the Federal Government getting into their business.

This, I'm afraid, opens it up to that. Here's the good news. We believe this is already covered in the bill as far as the sharing component, and you replace the word ``utility'' with something that isn't defined, ``critical infrastructure, owners and operators.'' We're not sure what that is, and in some cases you could extrapolate that to be even the local police, who argue they're part of the national security infrastructure. Does that mean local police are going to get very sensitive foreign cyberintelligence information? And why would they have it? We don't know the answers to those questions, and that's why we're having such a hard time with this amendment.

I would argue that there does need to be a Homeland Security bill, and it really shouldn't be done in the Intelligence Committee. It should be done in the Homeland Security Committee.

So I would love to work with Mr. Langevin as the process works its way through the Homeland Security Committee and believe that that should be fully debated.

Remember, when you start getting regulation into the private sector, including private networks, that, I argue, is troublesome and very worrisome to me, and something I would have a hard time supporting.

So, I look forward to working with the gentleman. I would have to oppose this amendment, but I want to thank you for all your work on the cyberissue and, clearly, this cyber information-sharing bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

How much time do I have remaining?

I would just remind the gentleman that the definition does not go back anywhere in this bill to that. It leaves it open, and when you start, again, crossing that valley between the government and the private sector, it causes serious issues--as you can see, the people who are very concerned that the government is going to get into regulating anything on the Internet.

I would say this is no pride of authorship. I don't know if Mr. Ruppersberger and I could have any more authors participate in our bill than we have.

The problem here is very real and very substantive. And that's why I think both the gentlemen, who have as much passion and care and commitment to this issue as I've seen, need to work that issue on the Homeland Security Committee so you can do it in a way that won't rise to the level of the objections that we have seen when just the suggestion of regulating outside of the purview of national security comes into discussion.

That's why I would hope the gentleman would exercise extreme caution when taking that walk. It is perilous for the government to get into regulating the Internet, and I oppose that completely. That's why we have these problems, I think, arise from it. I think, if these are issues that they can get over, that this should have substantive debate. Remember, this very narrow bill took 1 year--1 year--of work and negotiation and discussions to get it to where we are today.

So, I would encourage that maybe more thought ought to be put in it, and I would look forward to working with both gentleman as they introduce and work their bills through the Homeland Security Committee, as I think would be appropriate.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I want to thank Mr. Pompeo for working with us. This was an amendment negotiated with Mr. Ruppersberger and myself and Mr. Pompeo to clearly define the intention of the bill, and I think it offers protections. I think we should all strongly support Mr. Pompeo's amendment.

I have an amendment at the desk, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair, I strongly encourage the support of this amendment. It's a simple amendment we negotiated. It is clarifying language again on FOIA.

With that, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa).

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you, Mr. Quayle.

Again, this is an amendment worked out with Mr. Ruppersberger, Mr. Thompson, Mr. Quayle, and myself. Ms. Eshoo is also on the amendment.

This is in consultation with all of the privacy groups and the civil liberty groups. We wanted to make sure that the intent matched the language. And we think this is a limiting amendment on what it can be used for, which is very narrow, is very specific; and we think this enhances already good privacy protections in the bill, and I strongly support it and would encourage the House to strongly support the bipartisan amendment.

Madam Chair, I just want to rise in strong support of this amendment. I appreciate Mr. Mulvaney's working with the committee.

This is a limiting amendment, and I think it, again, is in response to making sure that the intent of the bill meets the language of the bill, and this is well done to continue to protect privacy and civil liberties of all Americans and still allow for the government to share malicious source code with the private sector.

I want to thank the gentleman from Arizona for working with us. This, again, was a negotiated amendment. The gentleman approached us with concerns to make sure that the IG report adequately reflected and allowed us to perform the adequate oversight. This amendment does that. I appreciate his work and effort, and I think this strengthens the bill and continues to provide the oversight and protection of civil liberties and privacy for all Americans.

This is an important amendment, and again, I think it alleviates some of the concerns. They were misguided, but this locks it down, makes it very tight and makes it very clear on the limiting of this information, which is the intent of this bill. So I think this amendment addresses the privacy and civil liberties advocates' claims that the liability protection in the bill with respect to the use of cybersecurity systems could be read to be broader than the activities authorized by the legislation.

As I said, that was not true, certainly not the intent. This amendment makes that very clear in the bill that that would not be its purpose, and it is a limiting amendment. I strongly support this amendment. It is a bipartisan amendment as well.

I want to thank the distinguished former chairman and member, Mr. Goodlatte, for his commonsense amendment. Again, this is working to make sure that this bill is restricted for both information use, privacy, and civil liberties, and why the coalition, I argue, continues to grow because of the good work of folks like Mr. Goodlatte. It's bipartisan in nature, and I would strongly urge the body's support for the Goodlatte amendment.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that during further consideration of H.R. 3523, pursuant to House Resolution 631, amendments No. 10 and No. 5 in House Report 112 454 may be considered out of sequence.

Madam Chair, I want to, again, thank Mr. Turner for this important clarification amendment and working with us to improve the status of the bill to make sure that we are able to protect America's networks and increases the ability for us to protect privacy and civil liberties.

I appreciate the gentleman's good effort, and I would encourage the House to support the Turner amendment.

I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes.

If you thought it was good for the businesses to require Facebook to give them your passwords, you'll love this. If not, you should go apoplectic. I think that's an awful practice on Facebook. This is worse. I want to read just from the law. Notwithstanding any other provision, it allows them to:

acquire, intercept, retain, use, and disclose

communications and other system traffic that are transiting

to and from or are stored on the Federal systems and to

deploy countermeasures with regard to such communications and

system traffic for cybersecurity purposes.

This is dangerous. It's dangerous. For the very narrow bill that has been misrepresented from what we do, this is Big Brother on steroids. We cannot allow this to happen. This would be the government tracking communications or your medical records from the veterans' association. It would track your IRS forms coming in and out of the Federal Government. This is exactly what scares people about trying to get into the business of making sure we protect our networks, but we can't do it by trampling on privacy and civil liberties.

This is awful. I am just shocked, after all of this debate and all of this discussion on our very narrow bill, that my friends would come up with something that wholesale monitors the Internet and gets all of the information which we've fought so hard to protect on behalf of average Americans.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland).

I appreciate the gentlelady's effort. Again, we were pretty careful in this year-long process of trying to find a very narrow solution because of all of the challenges that come with trying to get a piece of legislation across the House to the Senate to the President's desk.

I argue that the Homeland Security Committee should engage in a critical infrastructure debate. Here's the problem: it's not defined for the purposes of this bill. So we don't know what that means. We've been very careful to separate the government from the private sector. There is no government involvement in the private sector networks. It is just information, malicious source code-sharing. That's it.

This, we're not sure where it goes. Many in industry believe that they're talking about the backbone of the Internet. Are they talking about the backbone of the Internet? We don't know. It's not well defined. That would mean, then, that the government for the first time gets into the backbone of the Internet. I think that's a horrible, terrible idea.

So I don't think that's what the gentlelady intends, but the problem is that's not what the language says.

I look forward to working with the gentlelady as she works through those issues on Homeland Security because these are hard. They are tricky. Sometimes a word will get you in trouble, as we have found along the path here, and as it should. We should be really careful about how we're doing this.

So I would encourage the gentlelady to work with us. I know Mr. Ruppersberger, since we've been through this, we can provide some help along the way, and we look forward to the product that you all work on that is geared toward the infrastructure piece. Again, this was never intended to solve all the problems. It was intended to be a very narrow first step to say, Hey, if your house is being robbed, we want to tell you before the robber gets there. That's all this bill does. It tells if your computer is going to get hacked and your personal information stolen, we want you to have the malicious code so you can protect yourself. That's all this bill does.

So we get a little nervous when it starts crossing that divide that we've established between the government and the private sector. You start crossing that divide, we think you can get into some serious trouble in a hurry without very clearly defined language and definition.

Unfortunately, I have to oppose the amendment, but I look forward to working with the gentlelady on a very important issue, infrastructure protection, as the Homeland Security does its work.

I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

I thank the gentlelady, and I look forward to that opportunity.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Today, 300,000 times somebody will be trying to get into our credit card companies--300,000 times, one company. In just the last few years, just in defense contractors, foreign nation- states have stolen more intellectual property, which will end up protecting this country, equivalent to 50 times the print collection of our U.S. Library of Congress. Anonymous is attacking businesses, and today attacked Wall Street because they're anti-capitalists. There are people out there today who are literally robbing the future of America for our jobs, our prosperity, and our economic prowess in the world; and they're doing it by design.

A year ago, we set out to try to do something small. If we have some bad software--some bad, malicious virus information--shouldn't we be obligated to share that with the private sector so they can protect themselves? Absolutely.

If we don't do this, a nation-state like China has geared up its military and intelligence services for the very purpose of economically wounding the United States--by draining our intellectual property dry. They have done it by stealing pesticide formulas. They have done it by stealing pharmaceutical formulas. They have done it by stealing intellectual property when it relates to military hardware and then have copied it, and it has cost us a tremendous amount of more money to have had to go back and redesign it.

So we can play games. We can do silly things. This amendment actually does nothing to protect a person's private password at home. Nothing. Not one thing. But it is serving to try to obfuscate and maybe send it back to committee and come back.

This has been a bipartisan bill, and I can't tell you how disappointing this amendment is to me. I have worked with Mr. Ruppersberger and the members of this committee. I have worked with the privacy groups. We've worked with civil libertarians. They threw everything but the kitchen sink at us. By the way, this does nothing, or this would have been thrown at us, too. You know why? Because it doesn't do anything. I get it. Sounds great. You're going to run out and do some bad things with it.

But this is our Nation's defense. This is the last bastion of things we need to do to protect this country. We've done it since 9/11. We did Homeland Security. We've done the Patriot Act. We've done other things that this body and the other body and the President of the United States signed to protect this country, as our Constitution tells us to do for the common defense of this great Nation.

I will tell you something. We can have this debate. We can talk about a bill that does absolutely nothing to protect someone's private password at home, or we can get about the business of trying to give the private sector just a little bit of information to protect people's private information in the comfort of their homes, so that we can protect this Nation from a catastrophic attack.

The director of the national security didn't say ``maybe,'' didn't say, ``could happen.'' They said it will happen.

This is the one small thing we get to do to prepare for a whole bunch of folks out there that want to bring this Nation down.

We ought to stand together today in a bipartisan way. We ought to reject all of the confusion and obfuscation and all of the things that they're saying about this bill that just are not true. We ought to stand here and say, We respected the fact that you kept the government stuff government, and the private stuff private, and you're not mixing it up, and you're not surveilling. You're doing none of those things. You're just sharing some pretty bad information so that they can apply it to their patches that happen on your computer every single day, thousands of times a day, to try to keep viruses off your computer, and that's it.

We've spent a lot of time today trying to go in a different direction. People are upset that there aren't things in the bill. Okay. I mean, the Buffett rule isn't in the bill. I don't think that ought to get a veto threat either.

This is where we are. This is that first small threat.

I'm going to ask all of you to join us today. Reject this red herring, this obfuscation, and stand with America. They need it. There are 3 million businesses with all of the associations telling us, Please, give us that classified secret malware information that your government has so we can protect the people we have as customers and clients. They're begging for it because they're getting killed every single day. It's happening right this second.

This is our chance to stand up. This was a bipartisan effort. If you really believe in bipartisanship, if you believe that's the future of this Chamber, and that's the dignity of the very Founding Fathers that gave it to us, then today is the day to prove it.

Reject this amendment, stand for America. Support this bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

First of all, I do want to thank the chairman for working with us in a bipartisan way to protect our country from this very serious threat of cyberattacks.

As the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, people often ask me what keeps me up at night. I tell them: weapons of mass destruction entering the country undetected and also a catastrophic cyberattack shutting down our water supply, power grid or banking systems; and those are just a few of the many areas that could be attacked and shut down.

Every day, U.S. Web sites and our Nation's networks are threatened by foreign governments like China, Iran, Russia, and other groups trying to steal our money and valuable trade secrets. According to the National Counterterrorism Executive, the number one thing cyberthieves are trying to steal is information and communication technology, which form the backbone of nearly every other technology. In fact, according to the United States Cyber Command, $300 billion worth of trade secrets are stolen every year. This proves we need to make real changes to how we protect our cybersystems.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act helps the private sector protect itself and its clients from these attackers and data thieves. The intelligence community has the ability to detect these cyberthreats, these malicious codes and viruses, before they are able to attack our networks; but right now, Federal law prohibits the intelligence community from sharing the classified cyberthreat with the companies that will protect us, that control the network--the AT&Ts, the Verizons, the Comcasts, those groups. We have the ability to give them the information to protect us; yet we have to pass a law to do that, and that's why we are here today.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act will clearly do that if we pass the bill. It allows the intelligence community to share the codes and signatures associated with malware and viruses and the means to counter the bad stuff with the companies. These companies keep a lookout for these viruses and work to stop them before they are able to attack their system.

Companies then voluntarily give information about the cyberattack back to the government, machine code consisting of strings of zeroes and ones that uniquely identifies the malware. Cyberanalysts will use this information to better understand the attack and try to figure out who launched it and where it came from.

This information will be used to protect against similar attacks in the future.

Now, the Democrats worked hard to protect privacy and civil liberties in this bill throughout the entire process. We fought for additional privacy protections in the original bill that was marked up in committee. In the version we will vote on tomorrow morning, additional changes are also included in the amendments.

Privacy and civil liberty groups and the White House all agree we made important positive changes that went a long way to improve the initial bill that came out of committee. We severely limit what information can be shared with the government and how it can be used.

It is also important to note the entire process is completely voluntary and provides industry the flexibility they need to deal with business realities.

The bill also requires an annual report from the inspector general of the intelligence community to ensure none of the information provided to the government is mishandled or is misused. This is a very important privacy issue.

The review will include annual recommendations to improve the protection of privacy and civil liberties. That review will be done again by the inspector general.

We also made it clear this legislation grants no new authority to the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, or the intelligence community. At the urging of the White House and others, we included the Department of Homeland Security in the process so that there is not even a perception that our intelligence agencies or military will be in control of this. The Homeland Security Department will be coordinating as a civil body.

In addition, companies that act in good faith to protect systems and networks can receive liability protection. This is what our bill does.

Now, what does it not do? The bill does not allow the government to order companies to turn over private email or other personal information. This is not surveillance. The bill does not allow the government to monitor private networks, read private email, censor, or shut down any Web site.

We have a broad coalition of support with 100 cosponsors, close to 30 companies and industry groups, and dozens of trade organizations like Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, a lot of different groups that are supporting this bill.

This is not a perfect bill, but the threat is great. I believe this legislation is critical for our national security and yet deals with the issue of privacy. We can do better in privacy, and we hope to get the bill to the Senate, where there will be a lot more negotiation. Congress must act now, and I encourage my colleagues to vote for this bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague from the State of Utah (Mr. Boswell) who formerly served on the Intelligence Committee.

I yield the gentleman an additional 10 seconds.

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague from the State of New Jersey, Mr. Rush Holt, who was formally on the Intelligence Committee.

I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague from the State of California, Mr. Adam Schiff, who is also the ranking member on the Technical and Tactical Intelligence Committee.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague from the State of Mississippi, Mr. Bennie Thompson, who is also the ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee.

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague and friend from the State of Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin), who is also a member of our Intelligence Committee and has worked very hard with the chairman and myself on the issue of cybersecurity. I consider him one of our experts on the Hill in the area of cybersecurity.

(Mr. LANGEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

I yield the gentleman from Rhode Island 30 additional seconds.

I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague from the State of Georgia (Mr. Johnson).

Madam Chair, I yield 3 minutes to my distinguished colleague from the State of Oklahoma (Mr. Boren), who is also a member of the Intelligence Committee. He has worked very closely with me and the chairman to bring this bill to the floor today, and we thank him for that.

Madam Chair, may I ask how much time we have on both sides?

Madam Chair, I have no more speakers, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

First thing, there were some comments that I would like to respond to.

First thing, this bill does not allow the wholesale violation of privacy rights. This bill is extremely important to our national security, but also important to our citizens of this great country, our privacy rights, and civil liberties.

The chairman and I have taken this very seriously, as have the members of our caucus. We know this is not a perfect bill--there will probably be additional changes. We will have more debate later on this afternoon.

Now, some of the things I want to address. During the drafting of this legislation we put forward a wide range of privacy protections. We worked for the last year with the White House, privacy groups, and business groups to come to a coalition to make sure that we get this bill right.

First, the bill severely limits what kind of information can be shared with the government. Only information directly pertaining to the threat can be shared, which is mostly formulas, X's and O's of the virus code. It's almost something that the companies deal with now in dealing with spam.

Second, the bill encourages companies to voluntarily strip out personal information that may be associated with these zeroes and ones. Occasionally, that does occur, and we have to deal with that, and we'll continue to deal with that issue.

There also are strong use limitations on the data. This information must be used for cybersecurity purposes or the protection of national security. The information cannot be used for regulatory purposes. For example, if there's evidence of tax evasion, that information cannot be used in a criminal proceeding, only in national security, only in the areas of life and limb, or for anything involving juvenile crimes.

The bill prohibits the government from requiring the companies to give information to the government in exchange for receiving the cyberthreat intelligence. That means that when we pass the information of the attacks--it's called the secret sauce--to the providers, it's only voluntarily. The government can't put any restrictions on that whatsoever. That really means that this is not surveillance at all.

The bill does not allow the government to order you to turn over private email or other personal information. This is not, again, surveillance.

The bill does not allow the government to monitor private networks, read private emails, censor or shut down any Web site. This is not

Madam Chair, I have a speaker on the way.

Mr. Rogers, do you have any more speakers?

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague from the State of Georgia, Mr. John Lewis, one of the most respected Members of our Congress.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

In closing, I want to say again that the purpose of this bill, as the chairman just said, is very basic and simple. We want to protect our citizens from attacks. We are being attacked as we speak right now. Just last year, it was estimated we lost $300 billion worth of trade secrets. We even know that one country is attacking a fertilizer company to find out how we make it better than they do. This is putting our businesses in jeopardy and jobs in jeopardy, and we know we sure need jobs.

More importantly, those of us who work in this field know how serious these threats are. The head of our FBI, whose responsibility it is to provide our domestic national security, has said that one of the most serious threats, if not a bigger threat, in terrorism would be a catastrophic cyberattack. We've already talked today about what that would be. We have Secretary Napolitano, the Director of Homeland Security, who has said the same thing: that it is one of the most serious issues our country has to deal with. It's unfortunate, but most of our citizens aren't aware of how serious this threat is.

So we've attempted to allow our intelligence community, which is one of the best in the world, to have the ability to see these threats coming in from other countries or from terrorist groups and to be able right now to give this information over to the private sector to protect us, you, me, our businesses. That's what this bill does. Nothing more. What we're attempting to do is to move the bill and get the bill to the Senate.

We can always do better in the area of privacy and civil liberties, and we're going to continue to do that. We can always do better in the area of homeland security and go further to protect those institutions and our grid systems and that type of thing; but this is the start, because the one thing that now is stopping our country and is stopping us from protecting our citizens is this Congress.

This Congress needs to pass this bill now. We need to move forward. We need to get it to the Senate. We need to start working with the Senate. Then hopefully we'll deal and work very closely with the White House and find a bill so that we can protect our citizens and also protect our civil liberties and privacy.

I also understand Mr. Lewis. We all respect him and what he has gone through. As a former prosecutor and lawyer who has worked on many search and seizure warrants and that type of thing, I can tell you this: there are no violations in this bill at all. That is not what this bill is about. If it were, I wouldn't be in favor of it.

I thank you, Mr. Rogers, for your cooperation and for working with us in this bipartisan manner. It is a very serious issue.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I claim time in opposition to the amendment; however, I do not oppose the amendment.

I agree with Mr. Issa's comments. This is a joint amendment of Mr. Rogers and me. The amendment would make it clear that while FOIA exemption protects information obtained under the bill, regulatory information required by other authorities remains subject to FOIA requests.

The chairman and I agree the law should not create a broad change. The type of information that is available under the Freedom of Information Act, we have a responsibility to protect classified information from disclosure, but we also understand the need to keep information open to the public. The amendment makes clear that information available under other authorities remains subject to FOIA, and I urge all Members to support this bipartisan amendment.

I yield to the gentleman from Utah.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

I rise to claim time in opposition, but I do not oppose the amendment.

I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson). He is on the Intelligence Committee and also a sponsor of this amendment.

Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment; although I do not oppose the amendment.

I also support this amendment. It is very important. It's another example of what we're attempting to do to protect the privacy and civil liberties of our citizens but yet have a bill that we clearly need to protect them from a national security perspective.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment, but I do not oppose the amendment.

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe).

Will the gentleman yield?

As we said before, our bill is extremely limited, and we're attempting again to allow our government, our intelligence community, to give the information that's necessary to protect our citizens from these cyberattacks.

Ours is the most active bill that is out there now. Our bill, hopefully, will pass and go to the Senate, and there will be a lot more negotiation. But there is a lot of work to do in other areas, too, such as Homeland Security; and I know there are other issues involved in the Homeland Security markup, I know that there are issues involving Judiciary.

I can say this: I know that the chairman and I for 1 year now have worked very openly with every group that we think would be involved in this bill. Because of different positions taken, including HLU, we listened. This bill is better, and we hope that it passes.

So we clearly will work with you, but we on the Intelligence Committee are very limited to our jurisdiction, and that's why a lot of these issues we can't deal with other than what is in our bill right now.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Chair, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 3523, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).

The main topic this week, as announced by the House Republican Leadership, is cyber security, a serious issue for our Nation. As we become more dependent on computers and technology for even common or routine actions that happen every day, we become at increased risk of great damage from a cyber attack. Nations or individuals who wish us harm know that, and so we must be vigilant.

What we are considering today is premised on the idea that greater information sharing of cyber threats between the government and the private sector will improve security. While this is a relatively uncontroversial idea in concept, the bill before us raises a number of concerns.

It is important to note at the outset that the bill allows companies to share information, including private e-mails and other Internet communications, with the government--notwithstanding any other law. So, protections in existing law, such as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and the Wiretap Act, are totally superseded. The government could get all of your information without a warrant or subpoena, and you would have little ability, if any, to stop it. Such a blanket exemption should give us great pause.

Unfortunately, the rest of the bill does not provide sufficient safeguards to justify this blanket exemption. To begin with, the definition of the cyber threat information to be shared is very broad. Suggestions have been made that define what should be included as cyber threat information in a narrow but sufficient way. These suggestions were not included in this bill.

At the very least, companies and other entities providing the government with information should be required to take some reasonable steps to remove personally identifiable information. Such reasonable steps need not be overly burdensome, but, again, even this limited protection was not included.

Once this information was shared with the government, it could be reviewed and used by any department. The Department of Defense, National Security Agency, and other defense and intelligence agencies thus would have access to the private, domestic internet activities of innocent Americans. This mixing of domestic information with military entities is dangerous and unprecedented. In fact, our policy has long- been to keep the military out of such domestic affairs. Information about cyber security should be limited to the relevant domestic government bodies, such as the Department of Homeland Security.

The power of government to use the information it receives would also be tremendously broad. One allowable use for this information is the hopelessly vague ``national security.'' In the past, the government has considered peace groups, civil rights activists, and other advocates to be ``threats'' to national security. It is easy to imagine how this term could be utilized for all the wrong reasons. The bill is supposed to be about cyber security, but allowing use of the information collected for national security purposes does not necessarily serve that purpose.

Further, the bill makes enforcing even the limited restrictions it contains difficult. With respect to private entities, as long as they act ``in good faith,'' they are immune from any civil or criminal case in state or federal court. This low standard means that any time a company claims it thought it was following the law, persons harmed by the improper sharing of information will have no recourse.

The bill does allow for civil actions against government violations. Unfortunately, the ability to bring a lawsuit against the government, as provided for in the bill, is deficient in three ways.

First, the bill only would allow lawsuits against the government for breaches if filed ``not later than two years after the date of the violation.'' That time period is wholly unworkable, unfair, and unrealistic.

Second, as written the bill only would impose liability on the government only for ``intentionally'' or ``willfully'' violating its restrictions. While this is helpful, such a limited liability scheme ignores damages arising from negligence. Such negligent acts could involve the failure to properly protect sensitive information or the failure to act with due care in deciding what information should be used.

Lastly, the only remedy is monetary damages. Injunctive relief, which could force the government to change its practices, is not provided for.

I filed an amendment with the Rules Committee to solve these three problems regarding the ability to hold the government accountable. It was not made in order.

In fact, multiple amendments were filed with the Rules Committee which would have made significant improvements to this bill. They would have narrowed its terms, limited how information could be used, protected personal information, and so on. The Rules Committee chose not to make them in order. Some of the amendments the House was allowed to consider will improve the bill, but not enough to sufficiently protect our privacy and civil liberties.

In closing, I want to reiterate that I recognize the importance of the issue of cyber security. I agree with the proponents of the bill that we must improve our cyber security defenses.

But, I remain firmly committed to the notion that we can protect our security and maintain our liberty, privacy, and freedom. This bill puts our privacy at great risk, and unnecessarily so. As such, I oppose its passage and recommend my colleagues do the same.

Madam Chair, I rise in strong support of the Amash- Labrador-Nadler-Paul-Polis Amendment.

While I believe most Members agree both that a cyber attack could be devastating and that sharing information will help to fight that threat, the underlying bill is overly broad and intrusive. Our amendment will add at least a modicum of protection for Americans' privacy.

While the idea of privacy may seem quaint to some in this day of social networking and the Internet, most Americans still believe that they have a zone of privacy vis-a-vis the government. As such, it is important we protect private actions from the prying eyes of government. Moreover, the government has a history of misusing such information and so we need to be very circumspect in what we allow it access to.

Our amendment prohibits records or information regarding what books you bought or checked out of the library, your medical records, tax returns, and so on from being used by the government for any purpose if it obtained that information pursuant to this bill. There is no need for the government to have this most personal of information--I don't see how any of it could be possibly relevant to cyber security. And, if the information can't be legally used, hopefully that will discourage companies from sharing it in the first place.

The categories of information in our amendment are already given a protected status in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA requires a court order and the approval of a high-ranking FBI official to request these personal materials. If that is the standard under FISA, we should not let companies cavalierly hand such records to the government with no independent review at all.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

I want to thank the gentleman for yielding.

I rise in strong support of H.R. 3523, and I want to thank Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Ruppersberger for a bipartisan and inclusive process on an extremely difficult and technical issue. While I don't believe this legislation is perfect, and much work remains to be done, CISPA represents an important good-faith effort to come together as a necessary first step towards better cybersecurity for our Nation.

I have long worked on this issue for many years to raise awareness and to secure our Nation against the threats that we face in cyberspace. Quite frankly, we are running out of time. I believe it's important that we act now to begin our legislative response to this critical issue.

We all know how dependent we are on the Internet and how we use it so much in our daily lives, but the Internet was never built with security in mind. What's happening is our adversaries are using the vulnerabilities against us.

I've also been very clear that we need to have robust privacy protections that must be included to safeguard personal information and also defend civil liberties in any cybersecurity response that we do enact. I'm pleased to say this legislation has been strengthened in that regard, and I believe more can be done as we continue this important debate.

That being said, the efficient sharing of cyberthreat information envisioned by this legislation is vital to combating advanced cyberthreats and stemming the massive ongoing theft of identities, intellectual property, and sensitive security information.

This legislation clearly and simply will allow the government to provide classified information threat signatures to the private sector and also allow the private sector to share with us the cybersecurity attacks that they are experiencing, sharing that with the government so we have better situational awareness. If you look at this, it basically gives us radar, if you will, in cyberspace, sharing information back and forth on cyberthreats that are facing the country.

This bill is a good step, but it's only a first step. Voluntary information-sharing is helpful and it's needed, but it does not, on its own, constitute strong cybersecurity.

I thank the gentleman for the additional time.

I have long maintained that we must also move forward on legislation that establishes minimum standards for the cybersystems that govern our critical infrastructure, particularly the electric grid and our water systems.

With that, I again want to thank Chairman Rogers and Mr. Ruppersberger for their outstanding efforts, and I ask my colleagues to support this important cybersecurity information-sharing legislation.

I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The bill that we are considering today creates a voluntary information-sharing network, which could provide owners and operators of critical infrastructure with valuable threat information that would help them to secure their networks from cyberattacks.

Unfortunately, the legislation specifies that it applies only to ``private sector entities and utilities.'' While ``utilities'' is defined extremely broadly in the legislation as any entity that provides ``essential services,'' including telecommunications and transportation providers, there remains the possibility that the definition may exclude pieces of our critical infrastructure that have significant cybervulnerabilities.

My amendment, which I am offering with my good friend Mr. Lungren from California, strikes the uses of the word ``utilities'' and replaces it in each instance with the phrase ``critical infrastructure owners and operators.'' This is a commonsense way to avoid potential confusion and to eliminate any possibility that critical entities could be denied the opportunity to opt into this voluntary information- sharing framework and thereby share and receive the valuable classified threat information that will be available under CISPA.

This amendment will not significantly expand the scope of the legislation, but instead will help prevent interpretations of language that could be contrary to the committee's intent, which I believe is the same as mine.

Now, while I recognize that any regulation of critical infrastructure would be outside the Intelligence Committee's jurisdiction, I nonetheless want to take this opportunity to voice my strong conviction that our efforts must not stop with the legislation that we are considering this week.

Just as the airline industry must follow Federal Aviation Administration safety standards, the companies that own and operate the infrastructure on which the public most relies should be accountable for protecting their consumers when confronted with a significant risk. I, along with many Members on both sides of the aisle and experts within and outside of government, have come to the same basic conclusion: the status quo of voluntary action will not result in strong cyberprotections for our most valuable and vulnerable industries. The Secretary of Homeland Security emphasized last week that our critical infrastructure control systems, which are mainly in private hands, must come up to a certain baseline level in cybersecurity standards.

With increased public awareness helping to build momentum for legislative action, we have a real chance to address these threats. I hope that we will not look back on this moment years from now, regretting a missed opportunity after the damage has been done. While the amendment we are offering today will not by itself provide the protections that Mr. Lungren and I ultimately believe are necessary for our critical infrastructure, it is a useful first step, and I am thankful to Mr. Lungren for joining me in this effort.

With that, Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the chairman of the Intelligence Committee for his thoughts. I respectfully disagree. The word ``utilities'' is important, but I believe ``critical infrastructure,'' out of an abundance of caution, is a better term than ``utilities''.

How much time do I have, Madam Chair?

I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished chairman on the Department of Homeland Security Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren).

I yield the gentleman an additional 15 seconds.

Again, I thank the chairman of the Intelligence Committee for his thoughts. I want to be very clear that this term substituting ``critical infrastructure'' for ``utilities'' does not lend to regulating critical infrastructure. It just allows for the broadest possible definition of information-sharing among those entities that are deemed to be critical infrastructure.

With that, I thank Chairman Lungren for his support of this bipartisan amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, let me thank you for your courtesy. Let me thank the chairperson for his courtesy and the ranking member for his courtesy. I was very appreciative, with the overlapping committee work, for the courtesy of the floor. I thank you very much.

Let me hold up the Constitution and say that I believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, particularly, that protects us against unreasonable search and seizure. And I also recognize the bipartisan effort of this particular legislation and recognize that we may have disagreement.

My amendment ensures that comprehensive policies and procedures are implemented by the Department of Homeland Security to protect Federal systems from cybersecurity threats and minimize the impact on privacy. What it does not do is allow Homeland Security and the Justice Department to spy on Americans.

Let me be very clear. It does not allow the infrastructure of Homeland Security and the Justice Department to spy on Americans. I would not adhere to that.

It is a shame that oversight of our Nation's critical infrastructure, however, was not included in this bill. The hard work that has been done by the Committee on Homeland Security, Mr. Lungren and Ms. Clarke, joined with other Members, was worthy of consideration.

I understand the strictures that we're dealing with. My amendment is designed to put in place comprehensive privacy protections in order to prevent any gross infringement of an individual's civil liberties or privacy rights. It allows the Department of Homeland Security to protect Federal systems that enable air traffic controllers to operate.

Madam Chairperson, we know the climate that we live in. God has blessed us, if I might even say that, but more importantly, the hard work of men and women who happen to be Federal employees, that no action has occurred on our soil since 9/11.

This amendment would allow the Department of Homeland Security to protect Federal systems that enable air traffic controllers to operate, that enable Congress to operate, that enable all Federal agencies to operate.

My amendment is intentionally narrowly tailored to go after known or reasonable threats to our Federal systems. Let me be very clear. This is not a reflection on this legislation from the extent of hard work.

I am just saying that, coming from my perspective, I would hope that we would look at infrastructure.

I am not advocating for the bill. I am advocating for an open discussion on this issue that certain elements have to be resolved in dealing with the cyberthreats that we face. I've long been an advocate for protecting the right to privacy and the civil liberties of all Americans--that is very much a part of this amendment--but I am also mindful of the importance of the infrastructure.

As we assess cybersecurity measures and take steps to implement legislation, I believe we must be sure to strike the proper balance between effective and strong security for our digital networks and protecting the privacy of individuals as well as infrastructure that involves transportation. I am ever mindful that we must be careful not to go about strengthening cybersecurity at the expense of infringing on people's privacy rights and civil liberties, which is why my amendment is narrowly tailored and sets clear restrictions on the scope of communications addressed and why and how that information can be used.

Our Nation's critical infrastructures are composed of public and private institutions in the sectors of agriculture, food, water, public health, emergency services, government, defense industrial base, information and telecommunications, energy, transportation, banking and finance, chemicals and hazardous materials.

I ask my colleagues to support the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

What an exaggeration. I know that they have been propelled by all of the media that has given them great support.

They know that the underlying bill, in fact, is considered an invasion of privacy; but if you look at my amendment, it is only when the communication is associated with a known or a reasonably suspected cybersecurity threat. It is narrow, but more importantly, it has a privacy provision. I believe in privacy. Let me just say that I was not going to be denied the right to come to the floor to be able to frame what we should be doing--looking at infrastructure and the complement of making sure that privacy is protected.

This particular book, even with the amendments they have, will probably not draw this to the point of acceptance. So I would argue that this is a productive debate but that the amendment that Jackson Lee has submitted does not, in fact, at all violate privacy. I would say to them that I look forward to being able to address this question as we go forward.

I am going to ask, at this time, unanimous consent to withdraw this amendment for the misinterpretation that my friends on the other side of the aisle have predicted or thought that they were going to put on this particular amendment.