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Michael_Novakhov shared this story from  National Security : NPR.
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Senate Intel Committee Unveils Election Security Report In Wake Of Mueller Hearings
Senate intelligence committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., walked to the Senate with reporters. His panel has released a new report about election security.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
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J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Senate intelligence committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., walked to the Senate with reporters. His panel has released a new report about election security.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Updated at 2:59 p.m. ET
The Senate intelligence committee has released its report detailing Russia’s targeting of election systems in 2016 along with recommendations for protecting American elections from future foreign interference.
The committee’s final report on election security appeared Thursday as the 2020 presidential race gets underway in what promises to be a bitter and divisive election battle.
It also followed former Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller’s stark warning to lawmakers on Wednesday that Russia’s sprawling influence operation of 2016 was not a one-and-done.
“No, it wasn’t a single attempt,” Mueller said during some six hours of congressional testimony about his Russia investigation. “They’re doing it as we sit here. And they expect to do it during the next campaign.”
The Justice Department indicted 25 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for their alleged role in the Kremlin’s active measures campaign against the 2016 U.S. vote.
The special counsel’s final report documents in details those Russia efforts, which started as early as 2014 when Russian operatives traveled to the U.S. on an intelligence-gathering mission.
The Senate intelligence committee’s report, meanwhile, adds to the U.S. government’s now sizable reporting on Russia’s interference operations. Those efforts included the hacking of Democratic party computer systems, a social media disinformation campaign to sow discord among Americans, and the probing of state election infrastructure.
The committee and Department of Homeland Security have said Russian-affiliated hackers probed the election systems of 21 states. Officials say there’s no evidence that vote tallies were changed.
But in 2016, the U.S. political and election system also were slow to respond to a threat that few foresaw.
“Russian efforts exploited the seams between federal authorities and capabilities, and protections for the states,” the Senate report found. “State election officials, who have primacy in running elections, were not sufficiently warned or prepared to handle an attack from a hostile nation-state actor.”
In its report, the Senate intelligence committee says that must change.
Agencies at the federal, state and local level need to be more aware of cyberthreats and quicker to respond to them. And the committee provides several recommendations to help protect America’s future elections.
Cyber prescriptions
One, for example, is that U.S. intelligence agencies should put a high priority on attributing cyberattacks quickly and DHS should create clear channels of communication between the federal government and the states.
States and local jurisdictions, which administer elections in the U.S., need to replace old, outdated voting systems that are vulnerable to cyberattacks, the committee said.
There is a growing consensus in Congress about the need to protect elections from foreign interference, and several lawmakers — including the intelligence committee’s vice-chairman, Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia — have proposed legislation to address various aspects of the problem.
But those proposals still appear to face an uphill climb in Congress, in part because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., views many of the ideas as unnecessary.