Nearly one year ago, President Barack Obama declared a national emergency due to continued cyberattacks against U.S. interests, including critical infrastructure like financial institutions and private industry.
On March 29, days before the prior declaration was set to expire, the president renewed that declaration, sending a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan and submitting a notice to the Federal Register.
The original declaration — established by executive order 13694 on April 1, 2015 — gave the administration added authority to impose sanctions on foreign nationals perpetrating cyber crimes against the U.S.
“Significant malicious cyber-enabled activities originating from, or directed by persons located, in whole or in substantial part, outside the United States continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States,” Obama wrote in his letter to Ryan.
In the notice on the Federal Register, Obama said the powers granted by the declaration need to be extended at least another year, prolonging the national emergency into the next administration.
“This will enable us to have a new way of both deterring and imposing costs on malicious cyber actors, wherever they may be and across a range of threats,” Michael Daniel, special assistant to the president and cybersecurity coordinator, said prior to the signing of the original order.
Specifically, the order allows the U.S. to level sanctions against individuals, rather than the governments or organizations they work for.
“Before we had country-specific executive orders that allowed us to designate … officials of the government,” John Smith, acting director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at Treasury, said last year. “Now we can target directly those [cyber] activities and not indirectly officials of a government where we may have a sanctions program.”
Treasury finalized the rule for imposing said sanctions in January, though the administration has yet to outwardly use these powers.
Source: Federal Times