This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, September 11, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Without cybersecurity legislation to give him direction, the president may be ready to write

new cybersecurity rules without

congressional permission. What that means for the rule of law and the power of

federal bureaucracies to compel behavior is unclear. to Jim Harper director of

information policy studies at the Cato Institute.

With Congress having failed to pass the cybersecurity legislation and thank heaven

for it the administration has determined that it should move

forward. For a reason I can't discern it made cyber security legislation a priority.

Literally don't know whether perhaps White House officials are taken in by the threat exaggeration

or what accounts for the White House prioritizing this, but they have.

And with Congress not moving, a leaked executive order apparently will that we learned about is going to instruct the Department of Homeland Security to convene a cyber security council among agencies which will

divide up regulatory authority on cybersecurity, just doing everything they can without congressional authorization.

Who knows exactly what that means,

but it's likely to be the kind of arm twisting that you often see

in the shadow of delegated legislative

authority. Among other things you're likely to see that agencies who don't

participate in the voluntary information sharing regime that they want to create.

Those companies that don't participate

will start finding it harder to win contracts.

The standards that will probably be set, quote unquote

...