ping to 39 and 40 for link to video, then mark 2hours 5 minutes, I couldn’t read of the name of the (tx?) Congressman questioning, but he raised what I think is one of the questions of the day:
“Why would you think a hostile actor like the Russians would be trying to hack systems where the information is publically available through a portal available to the public?”
Line of questioning:
Congressman: “ ‘Scanning and Probing’. Could you maybe give us a quick explanation what that is?”
JOHNSON: “When I started addressing this publically, somebody said to me, ‘you know, Jim Comey made a statement publically that there was scanning and probing of voter registration systems,’ and I said, that’s a good phrase, let’s use that phrase because I thought it captured what we saw. And eventually what we saw was success in infiltrating voter registration databases which I reported publically. But scanning and probing is basically looking into a locked box to see what’s inside.
Congressman: Or, it’s a passive tool that happens millions of times across the United States every single day. Would you agree with that?
JOHNSON: It can, yes. I don’t know if I would describe it as passive, but, yes.
Congressman: The voter registration data bases that we’ve talked about. Isn’t the information that’s contained within the voter registration databases publically available information?
JOHNSON: Not necessarily. It may depend on each state.
Congressman: “ ‘cause in Texas you can go down to the county office and get that information. And I’m curious as to why our hostile actors were, (and I definitely know that the financial systems, whether it’s on the federal level, that is, through FEC websites, every state has this information made available). Why would you think a hostile actor like the Russians would be trying to hack systems where the information is publically available through a portal available to the public?
JOHNSON: “I don’t know that in every case and in every state the information that was examined was publically available. My concern was that if a bad actor is doing this, it might be a prelude to wiping out or eliminating voter roles or altering them in some way.”
Congressman yields.
Very good questions by the Congressman.
I could tell Johnson was reaching and scrambling to cobble an answer together, vs say “Ummm, I guess I don’t really know why.”