Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she would not advocate the...
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she would not advocate the White House’s use of a cybersecurity executive order to help secure networks from attack, in an email sent Wednesday. Collins, a sponsor of the Cybersecurity Act (S-3414), said that despite…
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the failure of the Senate to vote on her bill, issuing an executive order “could send the unintended signal that congressional action is not urgently needed.” On Wednesday, John Brennan, the assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism, suggested that the White House was considering such an option (CD Aug 8 p3). A spokesman for Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, separately called Brennan’s comments nothing more than “election year posturing,” in an phone interview Thursday. “There is not a member that doesn’t want to take action on cybersecurity. The problem is the approach. There is not broad agreement on the best approach,” the spokesman said. “This is a real propaganda war. It’s election year stuff.” Murkowski is a sponsor of an alternate Senate cybersecurity bill, the SECURE IT Act (S-2151) which aims to increase cyberthreat information sharing between the public and private sectors. SECURE IT co-sponsor Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., said that rather than taking “unilateral steps” to regulate cybersecurity, the president “should be focused on finding common ground with Congress, where there is broad, bipartisan agreement that cybersecurity legislation must be addressed this year.” House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., said: “There is no substitute for thoughtful legislation that addresses our country’s cybersecurity needs,” in an email Thursday. Ruppersberger, who sponsored the House-passed Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (HR-3523), urged the Senate to “regroup, focus on areas where there is agreement and pass the cyber legislation that our country so critically needs."