Protecting Cyber Networks Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARSON of Indiana. Madam Chair, I proudly supported this bill when we marked it in the Intelligence Committee. I am only bringing up this amendment today to address a basic transparency concern raised by my constituents after the markup, that the cybersecurity threat posed to our government, to our businesses, and to our personal information is massive and is growing every day.

This bill provides important tools to ensure that the lessons learned from a breach of one company can help strengthen the security of others. As a result, your Social Security and credit card numbers will be better protected.

Madam Chair, as someone who opposed CISPA last year, I feel like this iteration is a major first step forward in privacy protection and transparency. I am particularly happy with the robust protections of personally identifiable information.

Unlike past iterations, this bill mandates that cyber threat information is scanned and that personal information is removed not once, but twice, before it can be transmitted to other Federal agencies.

I am pleased, Madam Chair, that companies will share their cyber threat information with a civilian agency and not directly with the intelligence community. I am also happy that additional limitations are placed on the ways that cyber threat information can be utilized.

For all of the benefits of this bill, the American people still--rightfully so--expect oversight that is consistent and comprehensive. That is what this amendment is all about. It strengthens the oversight of the inspector general's monitoring of this kind of information sharing.

Now, with this amendment, the inspector general will oversee and report on the process for information-sharing procedures, for removing personal information, and any incidence in which this information was treated improperly.

It will ensure Congress and the public that sharing is happening properly and that the public is being protected. I hope that my good Republican colleagues will support this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. CARSON of Indiana. I thank Chairman Nunes and Ranking Member Schiff once again for their support in helping to keep our communities safer, but I still want to thank my Republican colleagues for supporting this amendment, and I thank them for their friendship. As a new member of the committee, Madam Chair, I have greatly appreciated the guidance--bipartisan guidance, if you will.

Every Member of this House, Madam Chair, has heard from constituents who are concerned about government surveillance and overreach. After everything we have heard about bulk collection over the last few years, the American people are right to be concerned about new authorities to collect data.

As the text plainly and repeatedly states, this is not a surveillance bill. We have protections in place to ensure that the intelligence community cannot collect and utilize your personal data. This amendment simply ensures that Congress and the public get to see this sharing process and see how it works if these protections happen to fail. I urge support for this amendment and the underlying bill.

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

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