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President-elect Donald Trump named a trio of congressional cyber leaders to his transition team, including House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA). The appointments could give some indication of a serious cyber focus for the incoming Trump Administration, whose cyber positions have been largely opaque.

Rep Nunes, who co-sponsored the House version of cyber information sharing legislation that became law in 2016, has been floated as a possible successor to James Clapper as director of national intelligence. Rep Nunes has led the intelligence committee since the beginning of the current Congress. He will serve on the transition team’s executive committee. Rep Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) will serve as a vice chair of the transition team. Rep Blackburn is vice chairwoman of the House Commerce Committee and co-sponsor of a bill that would create a national standard securing customer data and a standard benchmark for when companies must notify customers about a breach. Also on the executive committee is Rep Tom Marino (R-PA) who serves on the House Homeland Security Committee panel with responsibility for cybersecurity.

As President-elect Donald Trump fills out national security and law enforcement posts in his new cabinet, the future of encryption may hang in the balance. On the campaign trail, the president-elect was a committed foe of cop-proof encryption systems that shield customer communications even from the communications provider. Most prominently, he urged supporters to boycott Apple over the company’s refusal to help the FBI bypass a security feature that prevented cracking into the encrypted iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook.

Supporters of strong encryption are also aware the president-elect has reined in some of his more controversial positions. They’re watching closely to see if his encryption stance may soften once he’s in the White House. “I think that’s going to be a prominent topic for a lot of the individuals engaged with the new administration, to make sure there’s a full understanding of the impact [of the encryption debate],” Ann Barron-DiCamillo, former director of the Homeland Security Department's Computer Emergency Response Team told Nextgov. “Understanding that impact and not just talking about it during a campaign is a very different place.”

Sens Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Chris Coons (D-DE) slammed the Justice Department for ducking lawmakers’ questions about an upcoming expansion of FBI hacking powers.

Sens Wyden and Coons were among 11 senators and 12 House members who queried DOJ about the hacking powers expansion in Oct. The department’s reply, which arrived Nov 22, should be “a big blinking warning sign about whether the government can be trusted to carry out these hacks without harming the security and privacy of innocent Americans’ phones, computers and other devices,” Sen Wyden wrote. Sens Wyden and Coons are also cosponsors of a bipartisan bill that would put a nine-month hold on the powers expansion, which will go into effect Dec 1 unless Congress intervenes. The expansion is an update to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Under the revised rule, a federal judge would be able to issue a warrant allowing police to hack into computers in multiple judicial districts rather than just the district in which that judge presides. Judges could also issue warrants to search a computer or device when the user has masked the device’s location.

President-elect Donald Trump will ask the Defense Department and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff “to develop a comprehensive plan to protect America’s vital infrastructure from cyberattacks and all other form of attacks,” according to a video posted Nov 21. President-elect Trump included the plan in a list of “executive actions we can take on day one to restore our laws and bring back our jobs.” Other items on the list included withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, removing rules that limit energy exploration and ramping up visa fraud investigations. The cyber protection pledge may be a slight modification of a plan the incoming president posted to his campaign site in October. That plan called for an investigation of cyber vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure conducted by a “cyber review team” that would include members from the military, law enforcement and the private sector.

Five Sens introduced legislation to delay a controversial change to criminal search procedures that could allow the FBI to drastically increase its hacking operations. The legislation, proposed by Senate Judiciary Committee members Sens Chris Coons (D-DE), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Al Franken (D-MN), among others, would put a nearly nine-month pause on the new rule, which would allow a single judge to issue a warrant allowing police to hack into computers in multiple judicial districts rather than just the district in which that judge presides. Judges could also issue warrants to search a computer or device when the user has masked the device’s location under the new rule, an update to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Companion legislation was introduced in the House by Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI) and committee member Rep Ted Poe (R-TX)

Donald Trump’s stunning victory may have overshadowed key congressional races, a handful of which could shape the president-elect’s tech agenda. In one race late Nov 8, Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX), managed to stave off a Democratic challenger. Rep Hurd has championed legislation that aims to fund IT modernization through new agency-based working capital funds, as well as a federalwide fund to which agencies could apply. In a Congress that now remains under Republican control, here are a few members who could influence future IT legislation in Trump's administration.

Sen Ron Johnson (R-WI) stays chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In a contentious race, Sen Johnson took 50 percent of the vote and defeated challenger Russ Feingold, a former Wisconsin senator whom Johnson unseated in 2010. As HSGAC chair, Sen Johnson has urged the White House to establish real-time automated monitoring for cybersecurity threats. In 2014, he introduced a measure requiring federal agencies to quickly deploy Einstein, the Homeland Security Department's cybersecurity system.

Since President Barack Obama was elected eight years ago, a great deal about technology has changed inside and outside the federal government.

“I think if I were to summarize [Obama’s legacy], it would be a seat at the table,” said Aneesh Chopra, whom Obama appointed as the first U.S. chief technology officer in 2009. As an assistant to the president, Chopra reported directly to President Obama, ensuring ideas from the CTO—often focused on innovation—are heard. “In prior administrations, the notion of the role of technology was largely relegated to back-office procurement activity,” Chopra added. “It was largely an operational conversation around how governments perform.” Instead, President Obama sought innovation from tech gurus and others because, as Chopra said, “policymaking has to take into account how technology will advance” complex and important issues like health care and economic growth.

In other words, President Obama helped take technology out of the back office and into the forefront of government. “Kudos to this administration for dragging the government into the digital era,” said Trey Hodgkins, senior vice president of the Information Technology Alliance for Public Sector.

The presidential nominees agree that the nation’s cybersecurity will be a priority for the winner of the November election. And that’s where the agreement ends. During the “Securing America” segment of Sept 26’s presidential debate, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump offered some of their thoughts—and colorful quotes—on who is attacking US institutions and how to fight them. Here’s what we learned:

• Clinton said the nation faces two types of cyber adversaries: hacking groups motivated by profit and "increasingly" states.
• Clinton attributed the Democratic National Committee e-mail breach to Russia, a step the White House has not publicly taken despite pressure from lawmakers.
• Trump questioned whether Russia orchestrated the DNC breach, offering China or “someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds” as alternatives.
• Clinton shared a positive view of the nation’s cyber capabilities: “We need to make it very clear, whether it's Russia, China, Iran or anybody else, the United States has much greater capacity. And we are not going to sit idly by and permit state actors to go after our information, our private-sector information or our public-sector information, and we're going to have to make it clear that we don't want to use the kinds of tools that we have.”
• Trump appeared to have doubts: “As far as the cyber, I agree to parts of what Secretary Clinton said, we should be better than anybody else, and perhaps we're not.”
• Trump’s 10-year-old son Barron Trump is good with computers: “He is so good with these computers, it's unbelievable.”
• Trump said the US has lost control of the Internet: “And I think Secretary Clinton and myself would agree very much when you look at what ISIS is doing with the Internet, they're beating us at our own game. ISIS. So we have to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare.”
• Clinton suggested partnerships to avoid social media recruiting: “I think we need do much more with our tech companies to prevent ISIS and their operatives from being able to use the internet to radicalize, even direct people in our country and Europe and elsewhere.”

The Hillary Clinton e-mail saga continues. On Sept 23, the House Oversight and Government Reform committee voted 19-15 to hold Bryan Pagliano, formerly a tech aide for Clinton while she served as Secretary of State, for failing to testify about Clinton’s private e-mail server that he maintained. “Mr. Pagliano is a crucial fact witness in this committee’s investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server to conduct government business,” said Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT).

Pagliano, through his attorney, previously warned that were he to testify publicly, he would simply invoke his Fifth Amendment rights. Nonetheless, the resolution passed along party lines. “Mr. Pagliano’s attorney asserts because his client took the Fifth before the Select Committee on Benghazi, he shouldn’t be required to provide testimony to this committee. This is not a good faith argument,” Chairman Chaffetz said. Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) accused Republican counterparts of seeking a “photo op” and “ready-made campaign commercial.” “No matter what anyone says, that is not a legitimate legislation purpose,” Ranking Member Cummings said.

One week after Rep Will Hurd (R-TX) introduced new IT legislation to the House of Representatives, designed to thrust government into 21st-century technologies, the Modernizing Government Technology Act passed on a voice vote. “Many parts of the federal government’s IT infrastructure are stuck in the Stone Age,” said Rep Hurd, who chairs the House IT Subcommittee. “The MGT Act will save taxpayer dollars, increase government accountability, and help government be more efficient in serving the American people.”

The MGT Act is essentially a combination of two prior pieces of legislation, taking portions of its language from the MOVE IT Act Hurd introduced earlier this summer and the White House-backed IT Modernization Fund introduced by Rep Steny Hoyer (D-MD) in the spring. The bill calls for the creation of working IT capital funds in CFO Act agencies, allowing agencies to bank savings from modernization efforts afoot. As a whole, government spends approximately 80 percent of its $90 billion IT budget on legacy systems. Agencies that are able to show savings from modernization efforts would be rewarded under this bill, allowing them to use savings to fund other modernization efforts, such as moving to the cloud.