Through early Monday evening, 21 amendments had been received
for S 3414, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 that is getting vetted this week in
the Senate.
Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Me.) had the most amendments at
presstime with nine proposed changes, including attempting to add a provision
that would allow FCC commissioners to add an electrical engineer or computer
scientist to the staff. It would also require the FCC to team with the National
Academy of Sciences on a study of the FCC's "technical policy decision-making
and the existing technical personnel at the FCC."
The goal is to determine whether the commission has the
resources to evaluate technical impacts of its ratings and the timeliness of
its decision-making, then recommend how to streamline that process.
The study would also compare FCC decision-making processes
with those of regulatory bodies in Europe, Canada, Australia and the United
Kingdom.
Among her other amendments was one that would require
evaluation of the implementation of Domain Name System Security Extensions,
plus a handful that appeared to be directly related to the bill.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid agreed to allow amendments
to the bill so long as they were germane to the underlying bill, which provides
for cybersecurity standards and protections from liability for companies that
share cybersecurity information.
