Joseph Lieberman

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I will.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank my friend from Rhode Island. I thank my friend for his interest in the area of cyber security and for his leadership. I have not talked about that yet--and I will right now--which is to say, following the advice of most of the experts of both political administrations and experts outside, one of the centerpieces of our original bill was to create a public-private process--government and people who live in these sectors of our economy--to draft best practices, not to have them imposed by the Government, and then to make it mandatory within a set period of time, and that these practices, these standards, would be general principles, not all do's and don'ts, to leave room for the private sector to come up with the best way they thought they could meet those standards. Opponents, particularly the business community, and some of our friends on the other side, have said to us that they fear that would be more regulation of business. Senator Collins, my ranking member and dear friend, is a leading advocate of regulation reform and lighter regulation on business. But she said over and over with such credibility and force: This is not regulation of business; this is protection of our homeland security, of our economy. You reform regulation when the regulations seem to be too much and get in the way of economic growth. We have a threat that is today stealing billions of dollars of American innovation, taking jobs elsewhere in the world. OK, we had it mandatory, but it was clear we were not going to get to 60 votes. I have said over and over, one of the problems we have in Congress now is people seem to say if they do not get 100 percent of what they want, they are not going to vote for a bill. So I had to listen to my own words because if they wait for 100 percent of what they want on a bill, everybody is going to end up with zero percent. We might as well try to get done what we agree on. So we took a big step, which was to make those mandatory standards voluntary. Then we threw in an incentive, which is a lot--partial liability, immunity from liability in the case of a cyber attack--as an encouragement for those companies that voluntarily opt into the standards that the voluntary process would set up that gets some immunity from liability for prosecution. Incidentally, President Obama has made very clear, first, that he totally gets the seriousness of this challenge to our security, this cyber challenge to our security and our prosperity. He has supported this legislation, but he has gone one step further now and said if we fail to pass legislation, he will issue an Executive order that does as much as an Executive order can do to protect America better from cyber attack and cyber theft. The President does have the authority to issue an Executive order that will establish standards for cyber security for all 18 critical infrastructure sectors under existing law and require those sectors to be implemented in certain areas where the regulators have the power to mandate such observance of the standards. A draft of such Presidential order is now being circulated, but the President does not have the power under existing law to offer a lot of the benefits that our bill would give private sector owners of critical infrastructure. For one thing the President does not have the ability to offer the private sector owners the liability protection I have just described. In addition, needed changes to law that permit private companies to share cyber security threat information among themselves and with the government will go unmade. So both sides in this debate have acknowledged that this is a critical piece in any bill. But it cannot be implemented by executive action. We are the lawmakers. We have the ability to protect our country better than the President does by Executive order. I have appealed to the President that if we are not able to act here that he should issue this Executive order. I am very encouraged by the work done on it, and I am confident that if we fail to act the President will act. I think he has a responsibility to act because if we fail to act we are leaving the American people extremely vulnerable to a major cyber attack. Therefore, although the legislation is preferable, an Executive order will certainly give the American people protection. I have more to say, but I note the presence on the floor of my colleague and partner in this pursuit, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Feinstein. If she would like to speak, I will yield the floor to her.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 1 minute and not have the time taken out of the Republican side.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I want to respond to the concern of my friend from Texas that if cloture is granted on this motion, there will not be an opportunity to amend the bill. I understand why she is saying that, but I do want to say that Senator Reid has made it clear--I think twice today--that if cloture is granted, he is open to--he will allow amendments. He said he cannot allow endless amendments because we are in a lameduck session with limited time but that he will allow a finite number of amendments, if you will, on both sides. So I want to assure my colleagues and appeal to my colleagues to vote to at least consider this measure. I mean, our cyber enemies are at the gates. In fact, they have already broken through the gates. The least we can do is debate and vote on amendments to determine how we can strengthen our cyber defense. I thank my colleagues and yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, in the remaining time, I appreciate what my friend from Arizona said. I not only join him in that request, but I am confident because I have talked to Senator Reid about this--he said that if we invoke cloture tonight, he will allow a finite number of amendments. I do not want to encourage anyone. He said not 15. I took that to be some number less than 15. I think five amendments is well within the term ``finite.'' So I would ask my colleagues, give it a chance, and let's vote for cloture. I am sure Senator Reid will allow five amendments. Cloture Motion

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor the people and leaders of the Republic of China on Taiwan as they prepare to celebrate the hundred-and-first anniversary of the founding of their country on October 10. I would like to highlight Taiwan's economic successes over the last century--a success that has rightly been called a miracle. In just several decades, the people of Taiwan have transformed their economy from a recipient of American aid into one of our most important trade partners. The world economy relies upon Taiwan's computer chip foundries, and the whole world benefits from the entrepreneurial spirit and inventiveness of Taiwan's people. Looking forward to the future of our relationship with Taiwan, I believe it will be essential to take bold new steps to strengthen the ties between us. In particular, it is past time for Washington to negotiate a free trade agreement with Taiwan. That would be the first and most important step we could take to demonstrate our continued dedication to this relationship. I also wish to take this opportunity to congratulate Ambassador Jason Yuan, who has ably represented Taiwan in the United States for the past 4 years, on his new appointment to serve as Secretary-General of the National Security Council of Taiwan. I am deeply grateful for his hard work to further strengthen the ties between our two countries, and I wish Ambassador and Madame Yuan the very best of luck in their future endeavors. In closing, I urge my colleagues to join me in congratulating the people of Taiwan on their many successes, and to recommit ourselves to strengthening this essential relationship. As we look forward to Taiwan's national celebration, the people of both the United States and the Republic of China on Taiwan have much to celebrate.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Arizona for his very eloquent statement. I associate myself with it. It strikes me, as I listen, that it was no accident that these violent extremists launched this attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on 9/11, on September 11--a day of infamy in our history, a day when people across our country and around the world were commemorating the worst terrorist attack in our history, which was September 11, 2001. Those who perpetrated the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, which resulted in the death of our Ambassador Chris Stevens carried out an act of terrorism and barbarism that they hope will sow fear and hatred between Americans and Muslims, just as Osama bin Laden and his followers hoped that attack of 9/11, 2001, would do 11 years ago. But we did not let bin Laden succeed then, and we will not let these violent extremists who killed Chris Stevens yesterday in Benghazi succeed in dividing America and the West from Muslims and the Arab world. Good, well-intentioned people in both great communities will rise and join together to renounce these extremists and killers. I want to speak for a moment about Ambassador Stevens. Simply put, Chris Stevens was one of the finest, bravest, most spirited, most talented diplomats in our Nation's service. As a volunteer in the Peace Corps, he served in Morocco, where he was inspired to pursue a lifetime of service in the Middle East. When the uprising against Muammar Qadhafi began in February of last year, Chris was the deputy chief of mission at our Embassy in Tripoli, Libya. He was evacuated, along with other American personnel, from the country, but returned to Libya within weeks as the Special Envoy of the United States of America to the opposition there--courageously slipping into rebel- held Benghazi onboard a cargo freighter. It was an act of bravery that typified Chris Stevens' service to our country and his devotion to our Nation's ideals and his commitment to build bridges between Americans and Arabs, Americans and Muslims. Chris remained in Benghazi throughout the war, standing with the people of Libya during some of the darkest and most difficult hours in their struggle for freedom. He became, in fact, the bright symbol of America, a heroic and inspiring figure to many Libyans, as Senator McCain and Senator Graham and I heard during our visits, and was thus the natural choice of President Obama to become our Ambassador to Tripoli after the Qadhafi regime fell. This is also why his death at the hands of violent extremists in Benghazi, which was the seat of the revolution against Qadhafi, is so tragic and infuriating. Of course, we still do not know what happened at our consulate in Benghazi yesterday, but what is clear is that these attackers have to be apprehended and must be punished. I am encouraged but not surprised by the statements of Libya's leaders condemning this attack. I say I am not surprised because these statements of condemnation of those who killed Chris Stevens are consistent with what I know the leaders of the new Libya to be, what I know to be their profound admiration and love for Chris Stevens and their respect and gratitude for the United States of America. We look now to the Libyan Government to act swiftly and decisively and to our own government to provide the Libyans whatever support they need to find the attackers and killers. While a specific group of individuals was responsible for this evil act and their target immediately was the Americans in that consulate-- but really their target was the new order in Libya, and they were animated in this by an ideology that is now all too familiar to us that we cannot ignore or excuse. This hateful and violent ideology is a threat not just to the lives of Americans like Chris Stevens and the three others who died yesterday in Benghazi but to the future of Libya and the future of the Muslim world. It is the exact opposite of the ideals that inspired millions of Libyans to rise up last year against Qadhafi to realize their dreams of a life of dignity, democracy, and human rights. For that reason, it is imperative now for those Libyan people themselves to echo their leaders and condemn this violence and take on the extremists who have taken shelter in their midst and who threaten to hijack their revolution and imperil the future of their country, returning them to days as dark as under Qadhafi. I know the overwhelming majority of Libyans reject this violent extremist agenda. They want a good education for their children. They want foreign investment that will create jobs and raise their standard of living. After 42 years of despair and oppression under Qadhafi, they badly want again to be part of the world, part of the modern world. The United States should stand ready and willing to help them on that path. The fact is that the people who killed Chris Stevens yesterday in Benghazi do not represent the people of Libya or their elected leadership. But these killings require confronting the extremist minority that imperils this future, the fanatics who want a clash of civilizations between the Muslims and the West and who will try to justify their violence in the name of Islam. They are wrong. They are mistaken. They are on the wrong side of history. Finally, let me come back home and say--to echo what Senator McCain just said--that I know there will be some here in our country who in the wake of this attack will be tempted to argue that it shows that America's support for the Libyan revolution was naive or mistaken, that the Arab spring will ultimately be defined not by a desire for democracy and freedom among the people of the Middle East and Arab world but by the dark fanaticism of al-Qaida and its associates and that the United States should give up trying to support people in this part of the world and instead retrench back here at home. That would be terribly wrong. That would misunderstand the motivations of the people who have risen in the Arab world to overthrow the totalitarian governments that dominated their lives. They do not want the fanaticism of al-Qaida. They want the bright light of a democratic future. We cannot allow what happened yesterday to be a victory for the extremists and the terrorists because to do so would be a betrayal of everything Ambassador Chris Stevens stood for, which is to say a betrayal of America's best ideals. I note the presence on the floor of the Senator from South Carolina. I would yield to him at this time.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I could not agree more with my friend from Arizona. It would really dishonor the service of Chris Stevens and the other three Americans who served us in Libya if their murders by these extremists led us to retrench and pull out of Libya and stop supporting the new Libyan Government, democratically elected, pull out of other parts of the Arab world. That would be exactly the opposite of what Ambassador Stevens devoted his life to. As I mentioned, inspired by his experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco, he devoted the rest of his life to service on America's behalf in the Middle East. The last thing he would want this murder to do is to lead us to pull out, leave the area. It would also be the fondest hope of the attackers, the extremists. Why do they attack? They attack to kill individual people, but they really attack to, as I said before, push America out and create a war between the Western world, America, and Islam. It is not natural. It is not the direction in which history is going. History is going much more toward integration. In fact, the revolution in Libya, which has gone so successfully when you consider the 40 years of dictatorship under which they lived--they held a free election. They elected what I would describe as a moderate rule-of-law slate to run the country. But those uprisings in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and now in Syria are the most profound rejection and defeat for the extremism of al-Qaida and its allies and presumably this group who attacked the American consulate in Benghazi yesterday. I understand that the results of some of the first elections are unclear, in some sense unsettled to some people here, but the fact is they have chosen democracy. People are self-governing, and they are looking for a better life. That is exactly the opposite of what bin Laden, al-Qaida, and I would guess the people who killed Chris Stevens yesterday desire. Senator McCain is absolutely right. I can almost hear Chris Stevens saying: Come on. Get up. Stay in the fight. Do not surrender to the crazies, to the fanatics, to the violent extremists. Stand with the overwhelming majority, with the people of Libya, who want what we want--a better future for themselves and their families.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I would suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Robert Morus, an intern in the office of the Senator from Oregon, be granted the privilege of the floor for the balance of the day.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I think that is the situation we are in, because the vote is set to go off in a little more than 15 minutes. I have not spoken yet.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes; I yield to my friend from Indiana.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the vote we will have in about 10 minutes. I am going to be real personal in my statement. This is one of those days when I fear for our country, and I am not proud of the Senate. We have a crisis, one we all acknowledge. It is not just that there is a theoretical or speculative threat of cyber attack against our country--it is real and happening now. Most people don't know it because a lot of people who are attacked don't want to announce it because they are embarrassed. A lot of companies are attacked that control critical cyber infrastructure and have, in fact, what I called yesterday secret cyber attack cells planted in their system to control the kind of systems we depend on for the quality of our life and, in some ways, for our lives. GEN Keith Alexander, Director of Cyber Command at the Pentagon, said the other day that when it comes to cyber war, we are today where we were in 1993 in our war with Islamist terrorism after they blew up the truck bomb in the parking garage at the World Trade Center. We were attacked. It shook us up for a while, but then people forgot about it. At least in that case we knew we had been attacked. Now we are attacked every day and most people don't know it. Maybe there is a story in the paper one day and they read it and it is on TV and then they forget about it. Are we going to act before we get to the cyber 9/11, as we obviously did in the attacks in a war we were in without acknowledging it with Islamist terrorism? We pretty much all agree on that. Yet we have descended once again to gridlock, to partisan attack and counterattack. The end result of that is a lot of sound and fury that will accomplish nothing, and we will leave our country vulnerable. The fact is that as the majority leader announced earlier in the week, we have been on this for a long time. Senator Collins and I have tried to be flexible. We have been open to compromise, not of principle and how much we thought we could get passed through the Senate, but because the threat is so urgent, we cannot afford to insist on everything we thought was in our best interest. We made a mandatory system voluntary, but that has not been enough. Senator Reid said if there was an agreement on a finite list of amendments, and they are germane and relevant to the bill--not taking your favorite political shot through the bill or a political message opportunity--then he would take it up in September. As soon as we come back, we would have limited time on it and go to final passage and the Senate would work its will. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to agree on such a list. There are still nongermane, irrelevant amendments on the list. Our friends in the Republican caucus have whittled the list down to 58. Frankly, I don't worry about the number as much as the majority leader was right that this bill and the threat of cyber attack and cyber theft is too important to use as a vehicle for political shots at one another. We are approaching a cloture vote, and now it looks like it is going to lose. I hope not. Hope springs eternal for at least 25 minutes more. I say to my friends, if they believe we are in a cyber war and we are inadequately defended--particularly the part of our cyber infrastructure controlled by the private sector--then vote for cloture. It is the only way we are going to get to this bill. Vote for cloture. Remember something. We are just one of two Chambers of the Congress of the United States. Whatever passes the Senate still has to go to a conference with the House. The House's approach on this is very different, and we are going to have to do even more negotiating and give-and-take. I appeal to my colleagues, make a principles vote and vote in a way that says to the country and to your constituents two things: One, you recognize we are in a cyber war now and we are inadequately defended. Second, by voting for cloture, which means we will take up the bill, you are saying we are willing to work together across party lines to try to get something done. In my opinion, it is the only way we are going to get to this bill. If cloture is not granted, as disappointed and angry as I am going to be, I will not be petulant. I will be open today, tomorrow, and as long as we have an opportunity in this session, to work with my colleagues to try to reach an agreement that will help us improve our cyber defenses. Sometimes in moments of disappointment, I go back to the great Winston Churchill. I will just read a few comments from him. These were all in the 1930s when he was in the House of Commons and was concerned that England and the world faced a threat which they were not acknowledging, the rise of Nazi Germany. First, he said this--and I hate to say it, but it relates to where we are today. He said this about those who refused to act decisively to counter the clear and growing threat of a resurgent and rearmed Nazi Germany during the 1930s: ``They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity.'' I am afraid that is the message we are going to send to the country and to our enemies if we don't get together and pass a cyber security bill in this session. Churchill said he was staggered, after his long parliamentary experience with the debates he had gone through on this question during the 1930s, by two things: ``The first has been the dangers that have so swiftly come upon us in a few years, and have been transforming our position and the whole outlook of the world.'' That is where we are with regard to cyber war, although most people don't understand that. We do. He said: Secondly, I have been staggered by the failure of the House of Commons to react effectively against those dangers. That, I am bound to say, I never expected. I say that unless the House [finds its resolve] we will have committed an act of abdication of duty. I end with those words. I think it is that serious. If we don't find a way either by voting for cloture today to get on the bill so we can negotiate or continuing to negotiate if cloture fails, it will be quite simply a colossal abdication of duty to the people of the United States and their security.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Nor do I.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I understand the time is divided between the two leaders. But I think there is 15 minutes for the proponents and for those opposed. I would ask unanimous consent that that be the case.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I rise to speak about the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, which is numbered S. 3414. Last night, the majority leader, Senator Reid, filed a cloture motion which would ripen for a vote on tomorrow. Senator Reid said he was saddened to have to file that motion. He also used a word we don't hear much when he said he was ``flummoxed'' by the need to file a cloture motion on bipartisan legislation that responds to what all of the experts in security in our country from the last administration and this one say is a critical threat to our security, which is the lack of defenses in the cyber infrastructure that is owned by the private sector. Senator Reid was saddened, as I was, that he had to file for cloture because, of course, there can be disagreements about how to respond to this threat to our security and our prosperity. Hundreds of billions of dollars of American ingenuity and money have already been stolen by cyber thieves operating not only from within our country but, more often, from outside. So you can have differences of opinion about how to deal with the problem. But the fact that people started to introduce totally irrelevant amendments, such as the one to repeal ObamaCare-- well, that is a debatable issue. We have debated it many times, as the House has, but not on this bill, which we urgently need to pass and send to the House and then go into conference and then, hopefully, pass something and send it to the President. I was at a briefing with more than a dozen Members of the Senate, representing a wide bipartisan group and ideological group, with leaders of our security agencies--cyber security agencies, including the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, NSA, and they could not have been clearer about the fact that this cyber threat is not a speculative threat. The fact is we are under attack over cyber space right now. In terms of economics, we have already lost an enormous amount of money. GEN Keith Alexander, Chief of U.S. Cyber Command, described the loss of industrial information and intellectual property, and just plain money, through cyber theft as ``the greatest transfer of wealth in history.'' That is going on. We are also under cyber attack by enemies who are probing the control systems, the cyber control systems that control not the mom-and-pop businesses at home, not the Internet systems over which so many of us shop these days, but the cyber systems that control the electric supply, that control all of our financial transactions, large and small, that control our transportation system, our telecommunication system--all the things we depend on to sustain our society and our individual lives. That is who we are talking about here. It is the greatest transfer of wealth in history. But our enemies are already probing those private companies' cyber systems that control that kind of critical infrastructure I have described. There is some reason to believe that because of the vulnerability of those systems and lack of adequate defenses, they have already placed in them malware, bugs--whatever we want to call it. In the old days, we used to call it a sleeper cell of spies and, more recently, in terms of terrorism, a sleeper cell of terrorists. Let me put it personally, without stating it definitively on the floor. I worry that enemies of the United States have already placed what I call cyber sleeper cells in critical cyber control systems that control critical infrastructure in our country. Everybody will say that some companies that own critical infrastructure are doing a pretty good job of defending it and us, but some are not. That is one of the reasons this bill has occurred--to try to create a collaborative process where the private sector and the public sector can act together in the national interest. The businesses themselves that control cyber infrastructure--God forbid there is a major cyber attack on the United States--are going to be enormous losers. They are going to be subject, under the current state of the law, to the kind of liability in court that may bring some of them down. It may end their corporate existence.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I would be glad to yield to my friend from Delaware for a question. He is the cosponsor of our main bill, S. 3414.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Senator from Delaware very much. I think he crystallized the moment we are in. I mentioned that Senator Reid filed a cloture motion that will ripen tomorrow. Again, he did it in sadness, and I was sad he had to do it. This is an issue on which I had hoped we would overcome gridlock-- special interest driven, ideologically driven, politically driven--but we couldn't do it, so the majority leader did exactly what he had to do, in my opinion, in the national security interest. This does two things. One, as my colleagues know and I repeat just to remind them, we have a 1 p.m. deadline when any Member of the Senate can file a first-degree amendment to this bill. That is important to do. And I want to say that the managers of the bill--Senator Collins' staff, the Republican cloakroom, my staff, the Democratic cloakroom-- are going to be working on these amendments to see if we can begin to move toward a finite list so we can give some sense of certainty. Senator Reid has been very clear. He has not wanted to, to use an idiom of the Senate, fill the tree, which is to say limit amendments. He has wanted to have an open amendment process, which really ought to happen on a bill of this kind, but open for germane and relevant amendments, not amendments on repealing ObamaCare or, I say respectfully, on enacting more gun control. Those are both significant and substantial issues, but they are going to block this bill from passing if people insist on bringing them up here. So the first and positive consequence of Senator Reid's cloture motion--one we all signed--is to require that amendments people have been talking about filing have to come forward by 1 p.m., and bipartisan staffs will be working to winnow that down to a finite list. Second, if we don't have an agreement on a finite list and we cannot vitiate the cloture vote for tomorrow, then Members of the Senate-- every one, in their own heart and head--will have to make the decision as to whether to vote against taking up this bill while all the nonpolitical experts on our security--GEN Keith Alexander, Director of Cyber Command within the Pentagon, head of the National Security Agency, and one of the jewels and treasures of our government protecting our security, appealed to Senators Reid and McConnell in a letter yesterday stating that this legislation is critically necessary now. This legislation will give our government and the private sector operators of critical cyber infrastructure powers they do not have now, authorities they do not have now to collaborate, to take action, to share information, to adopt what General Alexander in a wonderful phrase said is the best computer hygiene, the best cyber hygiene to protect our country. So that is the question facing Members of the Senate in the face of that kind of statement of the urgency of some form of cyber security legislation in this session from the Director of Cyber Command, an honored, distinguished veteran of our uniformed military--U.S. Army in this case. Are we going to find it hard to get 60 Members of the Senate to vote to take up this bill and debate it? I hope not. For me, it would be hard to explain--I will put it that way--why I would vote against it no matter what the controversy is. I would say to my friend from Delaware, who has been involved, that I will yield to him if he wants to make a statement, but we have been working really hard with three groups: the group who sponsored S. 3414, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012; the group who sponsored SECURE IT, Senators Hutchison, Chambliss, McCain, et al.; and the third group, the bipartisan group that sprung up because of the urgency of this clear- and-present danger to America, led by Senator Kyl and Senator Whitehouse, who is also on the floor and really has played an important role in bringing the two sides--if I can put it that way--closer together. Frankly, there was a chasm that separated us at the outset. We have changed our bill. We have made it much more voluntary--carrots instead of sticks, as the Senator and I have said. But still there are differences, and I would just say shame on us if we can't bridge those differences on national security, of all topics. So this is an important day to see if we can come together. Senator Collins and I are ready and willing to meet with the sponsors of the other bills--Senator Kyl, Senator Whitehouse--to see if we can come to some kind of agreement on critical parts of this legislation and to come up with a finite list we can support. Just a final word. I wish to thank the majority leader, Senator Reid. Senator Reid has a tough job, and it is obviously battered by the political moment we are in, whenever we are in it. And of course this is a particularly political moment--partisan--because of the election season and the campaign we are in. But I have known Harry Reid for quite a while, and I have the greatest confidence and trust in him and an awful lot of affection. He is a personal friend. He got briefed about the cyber security threat more than a year ago, and he called me in and we talked about it. He said he was really worried, that we had to do something in this session of Congress to protect our security, and he has been steadfast in that belief and has refused to give up. Senator Reid filed the cloture motion to bring this to a head and hopefully to get to that finite list of amendments. And I think he is going to stretch, within the process and time, the great authority and power the majority leader has--some people say it may be the only power these days, but I think he has more because of his skills--in controlling the schedule. I think if there is a hope that we can bring a bill together and pass a cyber security bill, Senator Reid is going to give us every opportunity to do that. So I wanted to put on the record my thanks to him for his own commitment to improving the cyber security of our country because he has listened to the experts and they have convinced him. This is rising to be a greater threat to America than any other threat we face today, and that is saying a lot, but I believe it. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor for my friend from Delaware.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Again, I thank our friend from Rhode Island for the extraordinarily constructive role he has played--unusual here, unfortunately--in bringing the group of eight Members, four Democrats and four Republicans, together. Senator Whitehouse, along with Senator Kyl of Arizona, created a bridge that really invited Senators Collins, Feinstein, Rockefeller, Carper, and me to come halfway across to change our bill from mandatory to voluntary. So my answers to the Senator's two questions are yes and yes. We are a lot closer than we were really just a month ago--a matter of weeks ago. There is a remaining difference, and it is real. But considering where we have come from, if we show a willingness to compromise--and again, as I have said over and over, not a compromise of principle-- that acknowledges that if everybody in the Senate insists on getting 100 percent of what they want on a bill, nobody is going to get anything because nothing is going to pass. So we have come back from our 100 percent quite a lot, and we are still open to ideas that will enable us to achieve what we need to achieve here in improving our cyber security, which means changing where we are now. That is why, as my friend from Rhode Island knows, we are going to keep meeting today with the other leading sponsors of the bill and with the peacemakers in between to see if we can find common ground and avoid what I think could be a very disappointing cloture vote--a very divisive, very destructive cloture vote--tomorrow. The second point is a very important one; that is, the House has acted, but it has only acted with regard to information sharing. This is important, but it is only half the job. The information sharing, in brief, says that private companies that operate critical infrastructure can share with other private companies if they are attacked or as they begin to defend themselves so they mutually can strengthen each other. They can also share with the government, and the government, particularly through the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency, can help the private sector strengthen itself. Those kinds of communications, which are critical and would seem natural, don't happen now in too many cases because the private sector is anxious about liability that it might incur. Even the public sector is limited in how much it can reach out or help. So it is important that the House has addressed that part of it. I will say--and not just parenthetically--that there has been very significant concern of a lot of Americans and a quite remarkable coalition of groups--remarkable in the sense that it is right to left, along the ideological spectrum--about the personal privacy rights of the American people, that they not be compromised as a result of this information sharing. Those privacy advocacy groups are not happy with the House information-sharing bill. I am pleased they have praised what we have tried to do as a result of negotiations with colleagues in this Chamber who are concerned about privacy. The point Senator Whitehouse makes is so true, but that is only half the job. Everybody who cares about cyber security has said it. There was, I must say, an encouraging, inspiring, for us, editorial in the New York Times today, supporting essentially S. 3414, the underlying bill, and crying out to us to take action and not get dragged down into gridlock by special interest thinking. But here is a statistic that jumped out at me. I saw it once before, but we have not heard it in this debate. In a Times editorial today entitled ``Cybersecurity at Risk,'' this sentence: ``Last year, a survey of more than 9,000 executives in more than 130 countries by the PricewaterhouseCoopers consulting firm found that only 13 percent of those polled had taken adequate defensive action against cyberthreats.'' That is worldwide. But I can tell you from what I know, the number in our country is not much better. That is why we need this set of standards, best practices, computer hygiene--no longer mandatory but we create an incentive. It is as if a company chooses to go into what my friend from Rhode Island has quite vividly described as Fort Cyber Security. We are going to build Fort Cyber Security of the best practices to defend cyber security, and we are going to leave it to the companies that operate critical infrastructure totally on their own whether they want to go into Fort Cyber Security. If they do, they will have some significant immunity from liability in the case of a major attack. My answer to the Senator's questions are yes and yes. I just want to come back to something the Senator said at the outset of his remarks. I never know how much this argument weighs on Senators' minds, but once again it is being made here, which is this bill has received no hearings; it is not ready for action. Good God. I went back and looked at the Record. I attended my first hearing on cyber security held in what was then the Governmental Affairs Committee--it is now the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee--chaired then by Senator Fred Thompson in 1998, 14 years ago. I can tell my colleague that in recent years, Senator Collins and I have held 10 hearings on the subject of cyber security. That is only in our committee. That is not counting judiciary, intelligence, commerce--I think foreign relations may have held some hearings on it too. In fact, we held a hearing just earlier this year, I believe it was March, on cyber security and the legislation that we knew we were going to bring forward. This has been heard. I wish to say this too. I mentioned Senator Reid's commitment to doing something about cyber security. Last year--I am trying to think, but I cannot remember a time on another bill where I saw this happen-- Senator Reid asked the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, to join him in calling in the Democratic chairs and the ranking Republican members of all the relevant committees, relevant to cyber security that we just talked about, and made an appeal that we work together to bring one bill which he would then, as he has done before when a subject covers more than one committee, blend into a single bill and bring to the floor under majority leader's authority pursuant to rule XIV of the Senate rules, which he has done today. So there has not been a specific hearing on this bill, but Lord knows there have been a lot of hearings and this bill has been vetted and negotiated not only with many Members of the Senate but by our committee and all the other committees--by stakeholders, private stakeholders, by some of the very businesses and business organizations that now seem to be the main block to moving forward on the bill. I probably responded to my friend at greater length than I might have or perhaps more than he expected, but his questions were right on target, and I thank him for giving me the opportunity.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Basically, I would say I agree. There is not much I could add to that. This is not legislation that is a solution in search of a problem. This is a real problem. Again, we are hearing it from all the cyber security experts. If the private sector owners of critical cyber infrastructure-- electric power grids, telecommunications, finance, water dams, et cetera--if they were taking enough defensive action, we wouldn't want to act, but they are not. And we understand why. We have talked about this. A lot of the CIOs--chief information officers--in companies get frustrated that their CEOs don't want to devote enough time and resources to beefing up their cyber defenses. The Senator said something very important, which is cyber theft and cyber attack is so insidious that a lot of people and companies who are victims of cyber attack don't even know it. My great fear is that there is a lot of malware or bugs--I called it cyber cells earlier--planted in some of our critical cyber control systems in our country waiting for the moment when an enemy wants to attack us. Senator Reid yesterday pointed to the terrible tragedy in India where the power system has gone out. There is no evidence there was a cyber attack, but I saw today that 600 million people are without electricity. It has had a terrible effect on quality of life, on the economy, et cetera. Unfortunately, this is what an enemy who is capable today could do to us, and they are out there.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank my friend. And, of course, I agree. That is why we are legislating--but we are trying to legislate as minimally as we possibly can--to begin to solve this problem. I yield the floor. The Senator from Maryland is here. The Senator from North Dakota is here.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. In the order of fairness, we yield to my friend from North Dakota.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 1, 2012, at 9 a.m. in room SR 328A of the Russell Senate Office Building.