Rogers Throws A Flag

Last week, as I noted in Bits and Bytes, the Chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, gave a speech at AEI in which he claimed a role for the FCC in advancing cybersecurity. Today, Rep. Mike Rogers threw a flag.  In a letter to the FCC, he wrote that the speech "lead[s] us [Rep. Pompeo was a co-signer] to be concerned that the Commission may be preparing to implement a new regulatory scheme that would significantly impact Internet service providers and other web service providers." In his speech, Wheeler said that if the new non-regulatory paradigm doesn't work, the FCC "must be ready" with "alternatives."  Another target for Rogers was the FCC's 2015 budget request.  The FCC has asked for $700,000 for a big data cybersecurity analytics program.  The justification is that "Big Data Cybersecurity Analytics will be a disruptive technology in the Cybersecurity arena, as traditional analysis and forensics techniques will be superseded by automation conveniences that reduce the burden of work on the analyst." In addition the FCC asked for $575,000 for a metrics program. The budget states that "FCC has initiated planning efforts to collect and analyze monthly metrics related to the cybersecurity threats addressed using data obtained from commercial sources." FWIW, that last bit sounds pretty duplicative.  I thought DHS was already collecting that data ...and, come to think of it, aren't DHS and NSA doing data analytics on cyber threats already?