House passes several homeland security bills

The House passed eight bills last week that address the Homeland Security Department’s management and use of information and technology. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said he hopes the measures will appear in the House-Senate conference on the DHS authorization bill.

The bills would:

• Require DHS to use of open-source information to develop and disseminate open-source homeland security information products (H.R. 3815).


• Require DHS to work to prevent over-classification of information. (H.R. 4806).


• Promote the implementation of the Controlled Unclassified Information Framework (CUI) at DHS. The CUI framework was laid out in by President Bush in May.  (H.R. 6193)


• Remove restrictions on how state and local authorities can spend DHS grants to support intelligence fusion centers. (H.R. 1694)


• Require each DHS component agency to have a privacy officer  (H.R. 5170).


• Levy new requirements and give new authority to DHS’ chief information officer and require DHS to examine contractor security policies (H.R. 5983).


• Clarify the criteria for certain radiation detection monitors that are to be deployed by the Customs and Border Protection agency (H.R. 5531).


• Authorize a Coast Guard program to test the use of mobile biometric identification technology for use on people attempting to enter the country illegally (H.R. 2490).