A coalition of trade groups and technology firms has called on congressional leaders to support a bipartisan bill in an effort to block the proposed changes to a rule that would authorize law enforcement officials to seek search warrants for remote “government hacking.”

The coalition asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) in a letter published Tuesday to back the Stopping Mass Hacking Act in order to provide Congress more time to consider the potential implications of the proposed amendments to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure before such changes take effect on Dec. 1.

The changes to Rule 41 would allow federal agents to apply for search warrants that would authorize them to find criminals whose computers’ locations are hidden, Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell wrote in a blog post published Monday.

The second proposed amendment to the rule would allow law enforcement authorities to apply for a consolidated search warrant that would permit them to investigate threat actors that breached computers that are located in at least five judicial districts, Caldwell added.

“This proposal is dangerously broad,” the coalition wrote in the letter that was also addressed to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California).

“It fails to provide appropriate guidelines for safeguarding privacy and security, and it circumvents the legislative process that would provide Congress and the public the critically necessary opportunity to evaluate these issues.”

A FireEye analysis has found that the volume of cyber attacks by China-based hacking groups on government and commercial networks in the U.S. and 25 other target countries has declined since mid-2014.

FireEye said in its “Redline Drawn: China Recalculates Its Use of Cyber Espionage” report the decline coincided with China’s efforts to centralize domestic cyber operations, the public exposure of Chinese involvement in espionage activities  and U.S.’ punitive measures against hackers.

The security firm examined the activity of 72 groups the company believes operate in China or support Chinese state interests and found that 13 active China-linked hacking groups launched multiple attacks to compromise networks run by corporations based in the U.S., Europe and Japan as well as targeted public and private organizations in Asia from September 2015 and June 2016.

China and the U.S. reached an agreement on Sept. 25 last year not to “conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property” to gain economic advantage, FireEye noted.

The federal government also launched efforts in 2014 to implement measures in response to suspected online economic espionage operations by Beijing against U.S. corporations, according to the report.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has launched its Data-Driven Discovery of Models program that aims to automate aspects of data science to help non-experts construct their own empirical models.

DARPA said Friday D3M looks to address a data science expertise gap the agency says is reflected by lack of results for predictive questions among popular search engines.

“The construction of empirical models today is largely a manual process, requiring data experts to translate stochastic elements, such as weather and traffic, into models that engineers and scientists can then ask questions of,” said Wade Shen, a DARPA program manager in the information innovation office.

“We believe it’s possible to automate certain aspects of data science, and specifically to have machines learn from prior example how to construct new models.”

Shen added D3M aims to cover the basics of model development to open opportunities for human intelligence among users with no data science background.

DARPA noted it projects a deficit of 140,000 to 190,000 data scientists globally in 2016.

A division of the Information Technology Industry Council has issued a document that details six recommendations to help state and local government agencies protect their digital infrastructure from cyber threats.

The IT Alliance for Public Sector’s State Cybersecurity Principals and Best Practices document calls on state governments to establish partnerships with industry through the procurement of IT products and services equipped with security tools and development of terms and conditions that seek to address data breaches, Liam Crawford writes in an ITAPS blog post published June 15.

ITAPS also recommends state government agencies implement security standards that the private sector recognizes as well as standardize security of cloud services and leverage the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program and other federal certification initiatives, according to the document.

States should also set up a governance structure that provides the chief information security officer authority to make data security requirements and critical decisions.

ITAPS also said state governments should facilitate sharing of cyber threat information through involvement in the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center and fusion centers as well as provide funds in support of workforce education and training on information security.