Goodlatte Endorses Limited Liability for Cybersecurity Attacks
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said he will introduce legislation that would limit carriers’ liability in cybersecurity attacks. “We are working on it and we hope to have it soon,” Goodlatte said after hosting a luncheon at the State of the Net conference. “We need to be looking at ways to encourage folks to try new ideas in the area of cybersecurity.” He said he hoped legislation -- modeled on laws passed to calm fears of a Y2K meltdown -- would help businesses “step up their game.”
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Goodlatte, co-chair of the Congressional Internet Caucus, also said he wants to “revisit” the FCC’s net neutrality order, but stopped short of promising to bring FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in for hearings. “I think we should definitely look into this,” Goodlatte said of the neutrality order that was approved late last month, over objections from commission and Congressional Republicans (CD Nov 22 p1). Some Republicans have suggested using the rarely invoked Congressional Review Act to overturn the neutrality order (CD Dec 22 p5). Goodlatte said he and former U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., pondered legislation more than a decade ago that would have used existing antitrust laws to ensure open access to the Internet. “It’s not a new issue for the committee,” Goodlatte said. “We ought to revisit that.”
Asked about last summer’s aborted cybersecurity legislation in the Senate that would have given the president authority to shut down parts of the Internet if a massive cyberattack were under way, the Virginia Republican said he “would be very cautious about that.” “The so-called ‘kill switch’ is not a realistic look at how the Internet works,” Goodlatte said. He also said he wanted to toughen the criminal code so hackers would face stiffer penalties.
Joining Goodlatte on the dais were White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt and AT&T Senior Vice President and Chief Security Officer Ed Amoroso. Amoroso said cybersecurity leaders should “raise their game … pretty quickly” because hackers have grown increasingly sophisticated. Asked about government’s role in cybersecurity, Amoroso reiterated his advice (CD Nov 8 p8) that government use its procurement power to leverage better security: “The first priority is to manage the government infrastructure better.”
State of the Net Notebook
Calling net neutrality a “poor policy,” Neil Fried, House Commerce Committee counsel, said the committee plans to challenge the FCC’s order by using the Congressional Review Act. There’s a procedural window, he said on a State of the Net panel late Tuesday. Once details of the net neutrality rules are released, a 60-day clock will start, he said. Roger Sherman, chief Democratic counsel to the House Communications Subcommittee, said the FCC’s order is balanced and takes into consideration interests including those of public interest groups and the industry. He urged regulators to focus on other important issues like spectrum, intercarrier compensation and access revamp. “Most people are fairly confident that President [Barack] Obama would veto this,” he said. While the committee wants to move forward with other issues like spectrum, it’s not comfortable with the way the FCC uses its authority, Fried said, adding that other priorities like spectrum auctions also involve the commission’s authority. The speakers agreed that spectrum is a bipartisan issue. Privacy also is a bipartisan issue, but it will be hard to reach consensus, Fried said.
Besides opposing the FCC’s net neutrality order, it’s unclear what tea party supporters will do about tech issues, participants said on a panel at the State of the Net Conference. “I think you're dealing with a blank sheet of paper on these issues with the tea party,” said former Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., the Republican Main Street Partnership’s CEO. The movement grew out of frustration with debt and taxes, and those will provide their political standards, he said. Don’t look for big tech bills to pass this Congress, Davis said. “This is basically spring training for the 2012 presidential election,” he said. Many tea party leaders come from the South and West and bring the regions’ cultural conservatism with them, Davis said. The new House will favor free trade more than the previous one because the tea party’s success has reduced the influence of unions, he said. Other predictions: gradual changes to patent law instead of comprehensive overhaul, new privacy protections for children but hands-off consenting adults, and inaction on Internet gambling. The tea partiers will err on the side of less government intervention versus regulation, said former Rep. Rick White, R-Wash., a co-founder of the group. Tea party supporters will follow their political leaders in Congress, he predicted.