Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I would like to speak for 5 or 6 minutes on the cyber bill.

Unfortunately, I am here to express my distaste for the manner in which this bill has proceeded. I have an amendment that is not going to be voted on. Let me describe some of the characteristics of that amendment.

First of all, it is bipartisan. It is Senator Graham's and my amendment.

Second, it has had a hearing. We have had a hearing on it in the Judiciary Committee. Considerable work has gone into it.

Third, it has the support of the Department of Justice. It repairs holes in our criminal law for protecting cyber security that we worked on very carefully with the Department of Justice and which we have had testimony in support of from our Department of Justice prosecutors.

Last, it was in the queue. It was in the list of amendments that were agreed to when we agreed to go to the floor with this bill.

So I don't know how I am going to vote on this bill now. But if you have a bipartisan amendment that has had a hearing, that was in the queue, and that has the support of the Department of Justice and you cannot even get a vote on it, then something has gone wrong in the process.

I remember Senator Sessions coming to the floor and wondering how it is that certain Senators appoint themselves masters of the universe and go off in a quiet room someplace and decide that certain amendments will and will not be heard. I am very sympathetic to Senator Sessions' concerns right now.

Let me tell you what the substance of our amendment would do.

First, there are people out there around the world in this cyber universe of fraud and crime who are trafficking in Americans' financial information for purposes of fraud and theft. If they don't travel to America or if they don't have a technical connection to America, we cannot go after them. There is an American victim, but we cannot go after them. That is a loophole that harms Americans that this bill would close.

I cannot believe there is one Member of this institution who would oppose closing a loophole that allows foreign criminals access to Americans' financial information for fraudulent purposes but puts them beyond the reach of our criminal law. That is one part of what our bill does.

Second, it raises penalties for people who intrude on critical infrastructure. You can go all around this country, you can go to military installations that have way less security concerns than our critical infrastructure, like our electric grid, and you will see chain-link fences that say department of whatever, U.S. Government, stay out. You cannot go in there to picnic, you cannot go in there because you are curious, you cannot go in there for a hike, and the reason is because there is a national security component to what is going on in there.

Well, there is a huge national security component to our critical infrastructure, like our electric grid. All this would do is raise the penalties. You could still go in, but if you get caught doing something illegal there, then it is a little different if you are attacking America's critical infrastructure than if you are just prowling around in some other portion of the Web that does not have that.

Again, I think if that came to a vote, we would probably get 90 percent of this body in favor. Who is in support of allowing people to mess around in our critical infrastructure?

The third is botnet brokers. Botnets are out there all over the Internet. They are a plague on the Internet. There is no such thing as a good botnet. Everyone would be better off if they were removed. They are like weeds on the Internet. There are people who are brokers who allow access to botnets, and because our laws are so out of date, if you are just brokering access to a botnet for criminal purposes, there is no offense. Why would we not want to empower our Department of Justice to be able to go after people who are criminal brokers allowing access for criminals to botnets to use for criminal purposes against Americans? I don't understand that.

Lastly, botnet takedowns. A botnet is a weed. We wait until somebody actually encounters that weed and is harmed by it before we allow our Department of Justice to act. We should be out there taking down botnets on a hygiene basis all the time. We are limited because of this artificiality. That is the fourth piece of the bill. It empowers botnet takedowns like the Bugat takedown we just did. We should be doing a lot more of that. Again, unless somebody here is in the botnet caucus and is in favor of more botnets out there, this is something which would probably pass unanimously. Yet I cannot get a vote.

It is bipartisan, has had a hearing, is in the queue, is supported by the Department of Justice, and those are the four sub-elements of it. For some reason, the masters of the universe have gone off and had a meeting in which they decided this is not going to be in the queue. I object to that procedure.

I am sorry we are at this stage at this point because I think that on the merits this would win. This is a bipartisan, good, Department of Justice-supported, law enforcement exercise to protect people against cyber criminals. I don't know what the sense is that there is some hidden pro-botnet, pro-foreign cyber criminal caucus here that won't let an amendment like mine get a vote.

I will yield the floor. I see Senator Carper here, and he has done great work to try to be more productive than my amendment reflects. I hope we can sort this out to a point where an amendment like mine, which was in the queue in the original deal that got us to this bill, can now get back in some kind of a queue so that we can get this done.

I yield the floor.

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