Goodlatte Previews Tech-Focused Judiciary Agenda
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said the committee will endeavor to craft cybersecurity legislation, address music royalty issues, reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and reauthorize the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA), among other issues, outlining his key technology priorities at an event Tuesday hosted by the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus. The 10-term congressman began his term as Judiciary chairman this session after Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, reached his term limit last year.
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Cybersecurity will “absolutely” be part of the committee’s agenda this session, Goodlatte told reporters. “We definitely have several pieces of that related to criminal law, related to limitation of liabilities,” he said. “The Judiciary Committee definitely has a keen interest in its role in cybersecurity legislation.” His committee shares jurisdiction over the issue with a handful of other committees including the House Homeland Security and Intelligence committees. “I have been talking to Chairman [Mike] McCaul [R-Texas] of the Homeland Security Committee, Chairman [Mike] Rogers [R-Mich.] of the Intelligence Committee, and I'm continuing to work with them.”
The committee intends to “take up ECPA, and to examine it, and to look at reforming it,” Goodlatte told reporters. Last session, Congress passed Goodlatte’s bill (HR-2471) to modernize the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) but failed to advance legislation to reform ECPA (CD Nov 30 p5) . Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vt., said last week he intends to prioritize ECPA reform legislation as part of his committee’s agenda in the upper chamber (CD Jan 17 p9). Last year Leahy sought to pass an amendment to Goodlatte’s VPPA bill that would require law enforcement agencies to acquire a warrant to access electronic communications stored by third parties, such as email service providers. “We had discussions with Senator Leahy [about ECPA] well before I became chairman of the committee,” Goodlatte added.
There will “probably” be multiple committee hearings this session to examine music performance royalties, said Goodlatte. The issue gathered momentum at the end of last session following the introduction of the Internet Radio Fairness Act (IRFA) (HR-6480), a Pandora-backed bill aimed at bringing parity to the royalty rates paid by Internet, satellite and cable broadcasters (CD Nov 29 p3) . “We are definitely going to pursue the whole broad area of music licensing,” Goodlatte told reporters Tuesday. (See separate report below in this issue.)
The committee is “definitely going to be working on” STELA, which expires Dec. 31, 2014, said Goodlatte. The Senate and House Judiciary committees share jurisdiction with the Commerce committees over STELA, which could potentially become a vehicle to update other cable laws.
House Judiciary Committee Senior Counsel Jason Cervenak said the government can help incentivize businesses to secure their networks with legislation that offers liability and antitrust protections, at the event. “On the other side what we can do on the Judiciary Committee is work with law enforcement [agencies] to see what they need to investigate cybercrimes,” he said. The committee can increase criminal penalties for cybercrimes “but all that really does is add more years for the same crime. I think we need to give law enforcement better tools to investigate these kinds of things,” he said. The forthcoming White House cybersecurity executive order will “shake things loose,” said Michael Hermann, a legislative assistant to Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I. But the order “needs to be a starting point in the discussion.” House Intelligence Committee Senior Political Advisor Tom Corcoran said the executive order can’t offer liability protections or address information sharing barriers between businesses and the government. Following reports of serious cyberattacks on Saudi Aramco “the need has only gotten more dire to get something done on information sharing,” he said.