Posted on 02/21/2018 6:50:39 AM PST by saywhatagain
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday announced he would create a task force to examine how his Justice Department can better combat global cyber threats, including efforts to interfere with elections or damage critical infrastructure.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
“The internet has given us amazing new tools that help us work, communicate, and participate in our economy, but these tools can also be exploited by criminals, terrorists, and enemy governments,” Sessions said in a statement.
The task force, composed of representatives from different branches of the Justice Department, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, will examine use of the internet to spread violent ideologies and recruit followers, how hackers breach private corporate and government data, and law enforcement challenges posed by strong encryption.
Some security experts expressed skepticism about the task force, saying it lacked focus or a clear mission purpose.
“This step basically takes a number of really complicated parallel issues in ‘hard’ cybersecurity and ‘soft’ information security and throws them into the same amorphous task force,” said Graham Brookie, a cyber security aide in the Obama administration who now works at the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council think tank.
U.S. intelligence officials have said Russia believes it successfully undermined U.S. democracy in the 2016 presidential election and would try again.
U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller last week charged several Russians with conducting a criminal and espionage conspiracy through social media by boosting Republican Donald Trump and denigrating Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Russia has repeatedly denied the allegations.
Trump has repeatedly dismissed the Russian cyber threat, and called Mueller’s investigation of possible collusion between his campaign and Moscow a “witch hunt.”
Sessions, who recused himself from overseeing the Mueller probe after failing to disclose meetings with Russian officials, said last October “probably not” when asked by a U.S. senator if enough was being done to tackle Russian interference.
I’d be pretty scared if I was one of those 13 trolls. This will surely score political points with the screaming left.
We don’t, already, have such a Cyber Command? I imagine we have a bunch across the “17 Intelligence Agencies”. Whats special about this one?
Squirrel. When will we clean up the voter registration lists?
The real threat is the voter fraud perpetrated upon us by evil politicians and state houses and judges. They all have smacked down every attempt at restoring integrity to our elections. Every attempt to instill honesty into the system has been met with "racist" and "hater" and lengthy litigation and judge shopping.
At some point, I think around 2012...one of the military cyber units tried to hustle up the idea of making them the head of some national cyber task force. Various folks came out against the idea. I doubt if anyone would support it now.
Even if it existed...what exactly would they have done with the Russian business? All of that was legit business dealings with Facebook.
It takes Government 4 months just to figure out who turned on the light. But whatever
Thinking this is not your normal run-of-the-mill investigation. First . . .Attorney Sessions let everyone know he is awake and breathing. That in itself is noteworthy. /s
Secondly, we know or have been told Jack and ES are on the run as a result of state secrets being transferred between government officials and the media. Thinking some of the arrests (indictments) that we hear are coming will occur around June / July. Hmmmmm good timing for the mid-terms.
just saying. what do i know?
All ballots should be in English....another requirement for voting.
And we need to go back to paper ballots.
You and I know that electronic voting will lead to on line voting and then we are sooooooooo scr****.
Furthering the Hillary narrative, and taking one step closer to complete Federal control of all elections... Just for cyber-security of course.
There is NOTHING that they said that hadn't been said by an American first.
That stooge Sessions has his head so far up the swamp’s back side he can’t see anything. Trump this morning is asking us to ask Sessions WTH is going on. I ask Trump why is that stooge still employed?
Problem is that all the emphasis will be placed on protecting voting systems to placate Democrat conspiracy theorists.
The REAL effort needs to be in protecting the power grid and SCADA systems which control nuclear power plants, dams, sewage treatment facilities, etc. etc.
Didn’t the 911 Commission Report address this issue?
It certainly looks like just more misdirection to protect the swamp and its many miscreants. Sessions needs to focus on the protecting and strengthening the rule of law, especially as it relates to DC critters.
Lol! Exactly!! Now we can run with this election integrity stuff to avoid Russian,...and other....influences.
Though Dost Protest Too Much!
Sheesh.
Jeff, the only thing you should be forming right now are grand juries.
5.56mm
I may be alone in this, but I am pleased with Sessions approach.
1) He’s not just doing election stuff, he’s also focusing on critical infrastructure (power grid). That is a good thing.
2) Hillary has placed a focus on how fragile our elections are. Thanks Hillary. I suspect that, along with cybersecurity steps, we will also get Voter IDs out of this, with freshly scrubbed voter rolls.
This is going to hurt Democrat voter fraud efforts.
The Left is, probably intentionally, missing the point of this whole routine:
Russia is not manipulating our elections to affect the outcome; Russia is manipulating our social media to divide Americans. Thanks to MSNBC, CNN, NYT, WaPo, FBI leaks, CIA leaks, and the political Left, Russia is more successful than they ever could have imagined.
Too much corruption in the DOJ. Also the rumor on the street . . . .to date the investigation has uncovered over 8 million fraudulent votes! will see.,
DHS to Continue to Look Into Voter Fraud
WHEN PRESIDENT Donald Trump dissolved an embattled White House committee investigating allegations that millions voted illegally in the 2016 election, he blamed its failure on the resistance of blue-state elections officials to hand over sensitive voter data.
"Despite substantial evidence of voter fraud, many states have refused to provide the [Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity] with basic information relevant to its inquiry," according to a White House statement announcing the decision Wednesday.
In his executive order, however, Trump didn't shut down the investigation or acknowledge that voter fraud is a non-issue, as his critics had demanded. Instead, he turned the investigation over to the Department of Homeland Security, a cabinet-level agency that has access to much of the data the commission requested but couldn't get from the states.
The move triggered alarms among voting and civil rights advocates, who point out that the commission's work -- which many on the left viewed as a pretext for a new round of voter-ID laws -- can now continue behind closed doors, exempt from open meetings and public-records laws.
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