On the recordApril 26, 2012
I want to thank Chairman Rogers and Chairman Ruppersberger for their hard work on this important piece of legislation. I am among those folks who, when I first learned of this legislation, had some concerns to make sure that it was balanced and it did the right things. Also as a former Army officer, I recognize the deep national security implications of the cyberthreat, but I also wanted to make sure that we also did everything that was necessary to protect everyone's privacy rights. This is a simple amendment. It makes clear that the liability protection in the bill with respect to the use of such systems only extends to the identification and acquisition of cyberthreat information and no further. This is an unprecedented threat from countries like China and Russia. These are hostile nations, and they're committing resources, unprecedented resources, to attack U.S. networks each and every minute of every day. While this new threat is being developed by our foreign enemies, organized criminals and foreign hackers also just as easily deploy malicious cyberattacks to disrupt stock markets, transportation networks, businesses, governments, and even our military operations. A devastating cyberattack could easily be unleashed from the remote comfort of enemies' computers thousands of miles away from our Nation. We must take this threat very, very seriously.…
