[Congressional Bills 109th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 5003 Introduced in House (IH)]







109th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                H. R. 5003

To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to provide for the full and 
               efficient use of open-source intelligence.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                             March 16, 2006

Mr. Simmons (for himself and Ms. Zoe Lofgren of California) introduced 
  the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Homeland 
                                Security

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to provide for the full and 
               efficient use of open-source intelligence.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Homeland Security Open Source 
Intelligence Enhancement Act of 2006''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds the following:
            (1) Open-source intelligence is intelligence that is 
        produced from publicly available information and is gathered, 
        exploited, and disseminated in a timely manner to an 
        appropriate audience for the purpose of addressing specific 
        intelligence and information requirements.
            (2) With the ``information revolution'', the amount, 
        significance, and accessibility of open-source information has 
        expanded significantly, but the Department of Homeland Security 
        has not expanded its exploitation efforts and systems to 
        produce open-source intelligence.
            (3) The dissemination and use of validated open-source 
        intelligence inherently enables information sharing because 
        open-source intelligence is produced without the use of 
        sensitive sources and methods.
            (4) Open-source intelligence products can be shared with 
        the American public and foreign allies because of the 
        unclassified nature of open-source intelligence.
            (5) The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the 
        United States, in its final report released on July 22, 2004, 
        identified shortfalls in the ability of the United States to 
        use all-source intelligence, a large component of which is 
        open-source intelligence.
            (6) In the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act 
        of 2004, Congress called for the coordination of the 
        collection, analysis, production, and dissemination of open-
        source intelligence.
            (7) In a report to the President released on March 31, 
        2005, the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the 
        United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction found that 
        ``the need for exploiting open-source material is greater now 
        than ever before'', but that ``the Intelligence Community's 
        open source programs have not expanded commensurate with either 
        the increase in available information or with the growing 
        importance of open source data to today's problems.''

SEC. 3. FULL AND EFFICIENT USE OF OPEN-SOURCE INTELLIGENCE.

    (a) Requirement.--Subtitle A of title II of the Homeland Security 
Act of 2002 (6 U.S.C. 121 et seq.), is amended by adding at the end the 
following:

``SEC. 203. FULL AND EFFICIENT USE OF OPEN-SOURCE INTELLIGENCE.

    ``(a) Use by Under Secretary and Assistant Secretary.--The 
Secretary shall ensure that, in meeting their analytic responsibilities 
under sections 201(d) and 204(c) and in formulating requirements for 
additional information, the Under Secretary for Intelligence and 
Analysis and the Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection make 
full and efficient use of open-source intelligence by acquiring, 
gathering, processing, and analyzing open-source information to produce 
open-source intelligence products.
    ``(b) Critical Infrastructure Analysis.--The Secretary shall ensure 
that the Department makes full and efficient use of open-source 
information to analyze United States critical infrastructure nodes from 
the perspective of terrorists using publicly available information. The 
Secretary shall share the results of the analysis with appropriate 
Federal, State, local, tribal, and private-sector officials.''.
    (b) Clerical Amendment.--The table of contents in section 1(b) of 
such Act is amended by by adding at the end of the items relating to 
such subtitle the following the following:

``Sec. 203. Full and efficient use of open source intelligence''.
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