Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), ranking member of
the Communications subcommittee for the Energy & Commerce Committee, said
she does not think the subcommittee is ready to introduce cybersecurity
legislation.
"I don't think we're ready for a bill
yet," she said in an interview for C-SPAN's Communicators series.
The
Senate has introduced a bill, and Eshoo said she thought the Senate was "a
little ahead of us" on this. She co-sponsored cybersecurity that came out
of the Intelligence committee, but pointed out that was specific to the
intelligence communities.
She
pointed out her subcommittee had held its first cybersecurity hearing last week,
and suggested it was still finding out what it didn't know. She called the
hearing one of the most instructive she had ever been a part of, a point she
made at the unusually bipartisan hearing as well.
She
said while it was not ready, it needed to get ready, and added that she would
work toward getting a cybersecurity bill passed this Congress, while
recognizing that it is tough to get anything done in an election year.
Eshoo
said she was glad the Stop Online Piracy Act was stopped in its tracks, but
added that the "hijacking of American genius" was a problem that
still needed to be resolved. "I just think the SOPA bill was far, far too
broad," she said.
Asked
to react to the FCC's rescission of LightSquared's waiver for a national
wholesale wireless broadband network, Eshoo said she thought LightSquared's was
an exciting proposal, and said she trusted that the FCC carried out unbiased
testing and that the decision was based on science and engineering.
