Thread by @ericgeller

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee today approved an amended version of the House's Cyber Diplomacy Act, which recreates a high-level State Dept cyber office in response to Tillerson's closure of the previous one. foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…

Stand by for my analysis of changes.

Okay, let's go through a few of the major changes in this bill, which the committee approved by voice vote. (There is no ETA on Senate floor time for the bill yet.)

New (Senate) version: foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…

Old (House) version: foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…

One of the most interesting changes is the removal of several sections asserting nations' right to respond to cyberattacks with counterstrikes under international law.

The House bill expressed Congress's view that “countries that fall victim to malicious cyber activities have the right to take proportionate countermeasures under international law, provided such measure do not violate a fundamental human right or peremptory norm.”

The House bill also required POTUS's international cyber strategy to explicitly state that countries could, in response to cyberattacks, deploy these "proportionate countermeasures ... including exercising the right to collective and individual self-defense."

The House bill also required POTUS's cyber strategy to discuss "the applicability of international laws and norms, including the law of armed conflict," to cyberspace.

All three of those provisions are gone.

My guess is that the State Department urged the Senate to remove them so diplomats have a freer hand to discuss these issues internationally.

Previous talks at the UN broke down in part over countermeasures: thediplomat.com/2017/07/un-gge…

Other changes: The Senate bill adds a GAO report about cyber threats to Americans' personal information, and it adds a "sense of Congress" section criticizing Vietnam's new cybersecurity law reuters.com/article/us-vie… and urging Vietnam to delay its implementation.

Both bills suggest that the State Department make the official heading the new cyber bureau an assistant secretary (the current top cyber official is a deputy assistant secretary).

The House bill has this official report indefinitely to the Under Secretary for Political Affairs. The Senate bill says, "Do that for four years, and after that, you can keep it the same or have them report to someone higher up."

The Senate bill also changes the name of the new cyber office. It would now be called the Office of Cyberspace and the Digital Economy.

The new bill also specifies a few extra tasks for the head of the cyber office (e.g. leading interagency work on a "global deterrence framework") but these would naturally be part of their portfolio anyway.

Lastly — as far as I can tell in terms of noteworthy changes — the Senate bill modifies the requirement about the president reporting to Congress on international cyber agreements that were in place before the bill's enactment. POTUS now has 180 days to do it instead of 60.

okay brb eating lunch please read this thread if you're a cyber diplomacy nerd thx