§1708 Actions to Address Economic or Industrial Espionage in Cyberspace

Summary

The President must send a report to the listed congressional committees no later than 180 days after December 19, 2014, and then once a year through 2020. Each report covers the previous 12 months and must say which foreign countries carried out economic or industrial spying in cyberspace, which of those are the worst offenders (called “priority foreign countries”), what kinds of U.S. technologies or secret business information were targeted and, where possible, taken, and what products or services were made or offered using that stolen information. The report must also describe the spying and explain what the President did to reduce it and what progress was made. The report should be unclassified but may include a classified annex. The President may use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) to block or ban transactions and property of foreign people who knowingly request, do, support, help, or benefit from major theft of U.S. technology or proprietary information by cyber spying, when that property is in the United States or controlled by a U.S. person. This power does not allow sanctions on the import of goods. The President can use authorities in IEEPA sections 203 and 205 (50 U.S.C. 1702 and 1704) to carry this out, and penalties in section 206(b) and (c) (50 U.S.C. 1705) apply for violations. Nothing here limits other laws. Definitions used include: appropriate congressional committees (the named Senate and House committees listed in the law), cyberspace (networks including the Internet and computer systems), economic or industrial espionage (taking or copying trade secrets or proprietary information without permission, or knowingly receiving such stolen information), knowingly (actual knowledge or should have known), own (legal title or license), person (individual or entity), proprietary information (examples like bids, strategies, emails, financial data, designs, processes, source code, and R&D data kept confidential), technology (as defined in 50 U.S.C. 4618), trade secret (as defined in 18 U.S.C. 1839), and United States person (a U.S. citizen or resident, an entity organized under U.S. law, or a person located in the United States).