Talks heat up behind cybersecurity law

Senators are beginning talks on pushing cybersecurity legislation, hoping for a successful run this time.

Top Senate staff members have been in discussions for several weeks, working to parse language from at least two separate cybersecurity bills that were introduced but not passed in the previous Congress, while senators have just joined the talks, according to Molly Wilkinson, counsel for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, introduced the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010 last June. The committee approved the legislation by voice vote in December, but it died in the full Senate. A similar bill, the Cybersecurity Act of 2010, was introduced by Sens. John Rockefeller (D-WV), chairman of the Commerce Committee, and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), a committee member, in April 2009. The panel approved the legislation, but the Senate never acted on it. Now, Wilkinson said, staff members from the two committees, as well as the intelligence committee and others, are trying to find the best of both bills and merge them into one.