Latest in Election security
Today, the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on securing America's elections. The committee will hear testimony from Matthew Masterson, a senior cybersecurity adviser at the Department of Homeland Security; Nikki Floris, the deputy
The Senate Intelligence Committee released a redacted report on Russian active measures campaigns in the 2016 election. This document, reportedly the second of five volumes, is titled, “Volume 2: Russia's Use of Social Media with Additional Views.” The complete document is available here and below.
The good news is that national security bipartisanship in Congress lives. The bad news is that the only place it lives is in the pages of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian election interference.
The Senate Intelligence Committee released a redacted report on Russian active measures campaigns in the 2016 election. This document, reportedly the first of five volumes, is titled, “Volume 1: Russian Efforts Against Election Infrastructure with Additional Views.” The complete document is available here and below.
The years since the 2016 election have been a national trauma that the U.S. shouldn’t be eager to revisit. Yet almost no policy changes have been made as a result of what the country has learned from the Mueller investigation and related events. In this post, I’d like to start assembling a menu of possible reforms that address the lessons learned from what Lawfare sometimes calls L’Affaire Russe.
Introduction
In the wake of Russia’s interference in U.S. elections, questions persist as to whether Russia changed vote totals and changed the outcome of the election.
In the swirl of news this week, it would be easy to miss recent announcements from two of America's largest and most influential technology companies that have implications for our democracy as a whole. First, on Tuesday morning, Microsoft revealed that it had detected continued attempts at spear-phishing by APT 28/Fancy Bear, the hacking group tied to Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (known as the GRU).
The 2018 “techlash” shows no sign of slowing. The last week of July saw the release of two papers containing proposals for significant increases regulation of tech companies, particularly with an eye toward protecting the integrity of political processes and elections.
A recent Ipsos/Reuters poll found that 56 percent of Americans strongly agree or somewhat agree that Russia interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Donald Trump. Within that group, only 32 percent of Republicans but 81 percent of Democrats shared that sentiment. It is hardly a surprise, but a partisan divide on this point is quite apparent.