Independent U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of ME asked Jeanette Manfra of the Department of Homeland Security if states and localities are adopting “best practices” suggested by the department.
Democrats on the Senate panel, however, are frustrated by DHS Secretary John Kelly’s unwillingness to disclose more detail about the states that were targeted or compromised previous year.
A day earlier, former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told the House intelligence committee that in the late summer and into the fall, he was very concerned about the meddling in state election systems and that the department encouraged states to seek assistance from DHS.
“I don’t want to beat a dead horse”, Gowdy told Johnson during a House Intelligence Committee hearing.
Here are the key takeaways from the hearings. Priestap reiterated that he believes Russia’s broader efforts – which included “information warfare” and dissemination of fake news stories – will continue in future elections. “That is a fact, plain and simple”, Johnson testified in the House.
“Hope we err on the side of disclosure”, he said. Dianne Feinstein of California, said it was an introductory meeting aimed at working to ensure the congressional investigations don’t conflict with the one led by Mueller.
Johnson testified that the DNC told Homeland Security that it had its own firm looking into the hack that the former Obama cabinet official referred to as “unprecedented in scale and scope”. Manfra only said that the system owners in the states “are aware of the targeting”.
“What we can assess is that those vote tallying systems, whether it was the machines at a kiosk that a voter uses at a polling station or the systems that are used to tally votes were very hard to access and particularly to access them remotely and then given the level of observation for vote tallying at every level of the process that adds into that we would have identified issues there, and there were no identified issues”, Manfra said.
Both Arizona and IL past year confirmed that their voter registration systems had been attacked by hackers.
FESSLER: Lawson then made the startling admission that she still doesn’t know whether her state was among the 21 targeted.
Jeanatte Manfra, the acting deputy undersecretary of cyber security at the Department of Homeland Security, declined to identify which states had been targeted, citing confidentiality agreements.
FESSLER: But with democracy under attack, lawmakers said they were frustrated by the lack of information.
The committee’s ranking Democrat, Sen.
“If you read the way I wrote the statement on January 6, it’s pretty much confined to the election process itself, election infrastructure itself, not the politicians, not the political parties”, Johnson said.
With #Obamacare Americans are stuck with higher costs, more taxes, and fewer choices.
“A small number of networks were exploited – they made it through the door”, Liles said. I have never met with or had any conversation with any Russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States.
So far, no secretaries of state have been cleared to receive classified details of the Russian operation, said Connie Lawson, secretary of state in IN and president-elect of the National Assn. of Secretaries of State. “We have seen no evidence that vote casting or counting was subject to manipulation in any state or locality, nor do we have any reason to question results”.
Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of MI, described the work he and colleagues had done exploring state computer systems with a view toward helping improve their security. He described proof of concept examples – instances carried out in academic settings that have not been conducted during real elections. He said, however, that none of those attacks involved vote tallying. “These capabilities are certainly within reach for America’s enemies”.
“They weren’t going to give you the server”, he continued.
Lawson also told the Senate intelligence committee Wednesday that the government is not sharing classified details about the breach with state officials.
“Secretaries of state took part in three calls where”.
MARK WARNER: We are not making our country safer if we don’t make sure that all Americans realize the breadth and the extent of what the Russians did in 2016 and frankly, if we don’t get our act together, what they will do in 2018 and 2020.
West Virginia Democrat Sen.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Tuesday refused to say whether Mr Trump believes Russian Federation interfered in the 2016 election.