Jimm Phillips

House Commerce Committee leaders will meet with key agencies’ spectrum officials by the end of this month, said David Redl, the committee majority’s chief counsel, during a Law Seminars International conference Monday. Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Ranking Member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said last month they planned to begin meeting with officials from the FCC, NTIA and Department of Defense amid concerns that federal agencies were not making sufficient progress in determining what spectrum could be reallocated or shared for commercial uses (CD June 28 p5). The frustration among both Republican and Democratic leaders on the committee is “telling” given the partisan environment in Washington, Redl said. “We think this will be a good chance to get together and see” what the agencies’ timeline looks like, he said. Although the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology recommend to the White House last year that it shift its efforts toward spectrum sharing, House Commerce Republicans continue to prefer “clearing” federal spectrum, Redl said.

A preliminary Department of Homeland Security analysis of cybersecurity incentives found that grants to non-price-regulated industries, as well as including the cost of cybersecurity in the base rate for services in price-regulated industries, were the “most effective and efficient” incentives to encourage industry participation in the Obama administration’s efforts to improve cybersecurity in critical infrastructure -- but they also respectively carry the highest cost for the government and consumers, according to a copy of the study we obtained Friday. The document, circulated May 21 among members of the DHS Integrated Task Force’s incentives working group, was a precursor to formal incentive recommendations DHS submitted to the Office of Management and Budget June 12.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology believes President Barack Obama’s executive order on cybersecurity was “quite explicit” in emphasizing that the Cybersecurity Framework the agency is developing in consultation with critical infrastructure industries needs to be voluntary, Charles Romine, NIST director-Information Technology Laboratory, told a House Homeland Security subcommittee Thursday. Chairman Pat Meehan, R-Pa., had said he was concerned that some language in the executive order could be interpreted to give agencies the authority to impose regulations via the framework. NIST has a long history of developing frameworks that have governed industry practices in a purely voluntary way, and the agency believes that approach will be effective in developing the framework this time, Romine said. “I'm not concerned about this being a hidden way of getting regulatory authority.”

The departments of Homeland Security (DHS), Commerce and Treasury hope their reports on possible incentives to encourage the private sector to adopt voluntary cybersecurity standards will be made public by the end of the month, said Jeanette Manfra, DHS deputy director running the task force implementing President Barack Obama’s Cybersecurity Executive Order, during a Wiley Rein program Wednesday on implementation of that order. Among other things, the order tasks DHS with overseeing the private sector’s implementation of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) forthcoming voluntary Cybersecurity Framework, including implementation of incentives (CD Feb 14 p1). DHS, Commerce and Treasury submitted separate reports to the Office of Management and Budget June 12 that examined the feasibility and effectiveness of possible incentives, but they have not yet been made public while they undergo an internal review (CD July 8 p9).

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday she will resign in September. Napolitano, who was one of the first cabinet officials President Obama appointed at the start of his first term in 2009, said she’s stepping down to become president of the University of California system. While Napolitano’s departure is unlikely to fundamentally alter DHS’s role in federal cybersecurity matters, it may slow progress on implementing President Obama’s cybersecurity executive order, industry experts told us.

Senate Commerce Committee leaders circulated draft cybersecurity legislation that’s meant to be a “bipartisan consensus,” a committee official told us Thursday. The bill, backed by Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Ranking Member John Thune, R-S.D., is expected to be marked up by the end of the month, said the official. The draft is the Senate’s first attempt at enacting cybersecurity legislation in the 113th Congress. The House passed a revised version of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (HR-624) in April, but industry officials have said they don’t believe it will pass the Senate, and the White House has threatened a veto.

All federal cybersecurity efforts that don’t directly relate to defense should be consolidated within the Department of Commerce, former Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., told the House Commerce Committee’s Oversight subcommittee Tuesday. The subcommittee hearing focused on determining ways to best solve cybersecurity threats to U.S. intellectual property.

Congress should expand its efforts to address international intellectual property theft beyond cybersecurity legislation, former Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., a member of the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property (IP Commission), is expected to say this Tuesday in testimony before the House Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations subcommittee. The IP Commission is working on issues including recommend policies that will mitigate intellectual property theft by China and others (http://1.usa.gov/11wjHmO). The subcommittee is holding the hearing to determine the scope of cybersecurity threats to U.S. intellectual property and technology, and the best legislative ways to address those threats.

FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez’s remarks Thursday in favor of a possible FTC investigation into the business practices of patent assertion entities (PAEs) are “obviously going to have some impact” in the federal government’s ongoing debate over how to best address the issue of abusive patent litigation, said American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) Executive Director Todd Dickinson, former director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). “It keeps the iron in the fire,” he told us.

FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said the commission should use its authority under Section 6(b) of the FTC Act to investigate the business practices of patent assertion entities (PAEs) to examine whether those practices harm competition and consumer interests. Section 6(b) of the FTC Act gives the agency the authority to do a full investigation of an industry’s business practices, including issuing subpoenas, and report their findings to Congress and the public. Ramirez said at a Thursday joint Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and American Antitrust Institute (AAI) event that she supports conducting an investigation, but did not say she would formally ask the commission to vote to start one.