Transcripts For CSPAN3 House Judiciary Committee Hearing On Election Security 20240713

Officials. The house judiciary hearing runs about two and a half hours. The committee on judiciary welcomthe judiciarywill come to. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare recess of the committee at any time. The committee on judiciary welcomethe judiciarywill come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare recess of the committee at any time. We welcome everyone this to this mornings hearing on securing americans election part two oversight of Government Agencies. I will now recognize myself for an Opening Statement. Last month this Committee Held apart one of the series of hearings on securing americas elections. In that hearing, three witnesses have been jointly selected by the committee testified unequivocally that our nations elections are under attack. The former director on the National Security council under both president clinton and president george w. Bush warned we must take bold, decisive and expeditious steps to address the Cyber Threats. We must treat elections activity as an imperative for safeguarding our democracy. Secretary of state kathy from the commonwealth of pennsylvania and moderated elections activity is a race without a finish line and our adversaries are not slowing down. This testimony has been confirmed by the leaders of our Intelligence Community. Last month the director of National Intelligence testified that the foreign actors wouldve viewed 2020 u. S. Elections as an opportunity to advance their interest. We expect them to refine the capabilities and a new tactics as they learn from each others experiences and efforts in the previous elections and in short there is no question that our elections that are the cornerstone of the free and Democratic Society are exposed. Protecting the nations democratic process from before an attack must be among the top priority is. And we are committed to doing the work. Today we have representatives from the four federal agencies leading the charge on election committee. The department of Homeland Security, the federal bureau of investigation by the department of justice and the Election Assistance Committee commission, im sorry. At the core, elections are run at the state and local level. But the federal government must provide critical support to both the states to defend themselves from hostile foreign actors. Protecting our elections requires a whole of Society Approach that relies on coordinated actions by Government Agencies at all levels including the agencies represented here today. Federal agencies responsible for protecting the elections have made significant progress since 2016. These efforts are important and commendable, but significant vulnerabilities in the system remain. To start, our efforts must be integrated and coordinated. A simple goofle search of report Election Security issues turns up results for over 20 different groups across the agencies and others. These agencies and others. There must be clear lines of authority to ensure the states know which of the multiple programs across these agencies is in charge. Equally important, we must do more to ensure better federal and state collaboration that requires earning the trust of the states. At a public speech october 3, 2018, dhs director explained that in 2016 when the federal government called for state officials to alert the threats, there was as he said, no trust and no certainty or confidence in the ability of the federal government. One way to strengthen trust is to enhance transparency. In 2016 the specific intent was not initially made public. Today we can do better if we can educate state and local officials and the public about influence operations by bringing our adversaries tactics to light we can prevent them from succeeding. In addition, we must ensure that the development and maintenance of the system matches the nature of the Cyber Threats. For example, current federal guidelines for the certification process was created in 2005 and are woefully out of date. And mr. Byrd of microsoft testified last month the process is more than a decade old, and it is too slow and too burdensome to enable them to respond as quickly as needed to our agile adversaries. Finally, most importantly, we must ensure that the state and local officials are the frontline defenders of democracy and thought the resources and support they need to protect the systems. Dhs has made it clear that it requires Additional Resources to fulfill the task. Its requested for example to help the state in anticipation of the 2020 cycle. May 15 2019, they testified before the senate that the u. S. Currently lacks sufficient funding in critical areas to protect over 2020 election. Unfortunately, however, President Trump and his Administration Rather than listening to the warnings of the federal agencies about the seriousness of the threat picture and request for more resources to secure elections has done the opposite. The Trump Administration has cut the senior cyber positions downsized by half the dhs Election Security team and proposed a significant budget cuts to the dhs major Election Security programs. All of these actions leave us more vulnerable to the ongoing threat to our democracy. We will not let this happen. Elections cannot be a partisan issue. They must be an american issue. This committee is committed to working together to protect our democracy from all threats to our elections in all forms, whether to the physical election infrastructure or the ongoing disInformation Campaigns coming from adversaries like russia. I thank each of the witnesses for being here today. My colleagues and i are looking forward to hearing your testimony about your ongoing efforts to secure our elections and what important work remains to be done. Without objection, the Ranking Members statement will be placed in the record and all other Opening Statements be included in the record. I will now introduce todays witnesses. Matt masterson is the senior Cyber Security advisor at the department of Homeland Security where he manages Election Security under the Election Security director under the National Protection Program Director at 1 2014 to 2018 he serves as the u. S. Election Assistance Commission or. Prior to his appointment, he served as an interim chief of staff for the ohio secretary of state, deputy chief Information Officer and Deputy Director of election. He received his bs from Miami University in oxford ohio and a jd from the university of Dayton School of law. Mickey is the Deputy Assistant director of the Counterintelligence Division of the fbi where she oversees the Intelligence Branch which includes both foreign and foreign. Code task force system. She entered the bureau in 2005 as an Intelligence Analyst observed in many other positions including Deputy Assistant director of Operations Branch 3 in the counterterrorism division. He oversaw terrorism, financing operations, strategic operations headcount ever do some analysis area, she has a bachelors degree in psychology from the university of rhode island and a masters degree in criminology from George Washington university. Adam hake is a Deputy Assistant attorney general of the National Security division at the department of justice. In that role he manages the divisions efforts to combat National Security threats including threats to the election system. Before joining the department of justice, he clerked for a judge of the u. S. District court for the Southern District of new york and judge robert for the court of appeals for the second circuit. He received his bachelors degree from Harvard College and a jd from yale law school. The vice chair of the election Assistance Commission was the designated federal officer for the Technical Guidelines Development Committee which developed the voluntary Voting System guidelines. Before being appointed vice chair, the commissioner served as the acting chief counsel for the u. S. Senate committee on rules and administration. The commission received his ba from the university of Central Arkansas and a jd from the university of oregon. Please note each of your return statements will be entered into the record in its entirety. Accordingly, i ask that you summarize your testimony in five minutes to help you stay within that time there is a timing light on your table. When the light switches from green to yellow, you have one minute to conclude your testimony. When the light turns red, it signals your five minutes has expired. They want to thank you all for participating in todays hearing. If you would please rise i will begin by swearing you in. Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you are about to give usis true and correct the best of your knowledge, information and belief, so help you god . You may be seated. Let the record reflect the witnesses show the witnesses have answered in the affirmative affirmative. Mr. Masterson, you may begin and you will have to push the button to turn the microphone on before you start. Thank you. Thank you and good morning members of the committee. Thank you for this opportunity to testify regarding the Cyber Security and infrastructure Security Agencys efforts to help secure the election infrastructure across the country. My name is matt masterson, believed and former chair of the u. S. Election Assistance Commission as well as Election Officials in the state of ohio. We have a strong relationship with our federal partners seeded here at the table and with state and local Election Officials across the country. Our election late admission is clear. To support officials and their privatesector part is and identify and manage risk systems. They are run at the state level by dedicated professionals across americas more than 8,800 election jurisdictions and we work to ensure those officials dont have to defend themselves from sophisticated and persistent threats on their own. Over the last three years we have worked tirelessly to strengthen our partnership with the community. We already provide free voluntary resources and all 50 states over 2100 locally and territorial jurisdictions of the six election associations come up with Technology Providers and political organizations including president ial campaigns. Our approach has been and continues to be threefold. One, making sure that the community has the information they needed and systems rated number two, making sure they have the Technical Support and tools to identify and mitigate risk to the infrastructure and number three, building and partnerships to advance the efforts together. We are laser focused on building a scalable, repeatable mechanisms to dramatically grow the information sharing capabilities. We share the contextualized threat analysis and information through our close partnerships with the Intelligence Community, Law Enforcement and private sector. More importantly, state and local officials are sharing what they see on their networks with us. We deployed the intrusion Detection Capabilities or alberta sensors to provide realtime Detection Capabilities of malicious activity on election infrastructure in all 50 states. Second, we provide Technical Support and services to officials and vendors and refine our understanding of the officials needs we are shifting to the capabilities that are quicker, less intrusive and can scale to more jurisdictions. For instance in 2018 and 2019 we deployed a remote Penetration Testing capability thanks in part to the funding provided by congress. This remote Penetration Testing capability allows us to identify, risk older abilities to the Network Connected systems without having to deploy teams of the local offices and without interrupting both of their time and people. Weve also been working closely with election Technology Providers to ensure that the systems and other technologies undergo testing to discover and fix vulnerabilities in the software. The scalability is critical because while our initial efforts in 2016 were clearly targeted at the state Election Officials we recognize the need to increase the support to the counties and municipalities who operates the elections. For example, the last Mile Initiative provides nocost information sharing tailored to those jurisdictions to identify the cyber risk to the infrastructure and checklist of action items to mitigate the risk. The final area of focus has been building on the partnerships to our collective defense. And it may seem mundane and that the government, communication, coordination and training and planning are the Critical Foundation elements of our efforts to secure the nations elections. For the 2020 cycle, theyve built of the Lessons Learned for the 2018 election and is extending the work to prioritized the following lines of effort. Once an extended engagement at the local Election Officials. We continue to work with officials to improve both bears and our understanding of this assistance. For instance june of this year we did our second table top vote exercise where 47 states, thousands of local officials, private sector and federal federal governments Work Together through scenarios to share information and understand how we would all collectively respond to threats to the election infrastructure. With a better understanding of risk we can identify and provide the resources they needed to secure the election systems. Weve expanded the level of engagement and sharing of the Cyber Security practices with political organizations as well including the dnc and the rnc. This is joined in offering greetings to the president ial campaigns to register and has engaged directly with campaigns to offer our services. In coordination with our inner Agency Partners with committed to helping americans recognize and avoid the foreign disinformation operations impacting the elections through innovative efforts like our war on pineapple campaign where we educated americans on the tactics of ford and influence continues in a topic everyone can relate to, the divisive issue of pineapple on pizza. We will continue to put out educational material to build resilience in the of the American Public on the foreign influence operation. Finally, we are working closely with our Intelligence Community and the private sector to increase the quantity, quality and timeliness of intelligence analysis and production of the unclassified levels to help Election Officials and the public identify and expose the foreign influence operations. We are committed to working with congress to ensure our efforts to cultivate a safe or secure resilient homeland and once again thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee and i look forward to your questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ms. Flores . Thank you and good morning, members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the fbi efforts to secure americas election. As you just heard in the Deputy Assistant director for the fbi Counterintelligence Division. The fbi is the lead for identifying and combating the maligned foreign influence operations that target the Democratic Institutions and values. This also includes the investigation of election related cyber intrusion of crime. In order to achieve the strategic geopolitical objectives, the foreign adversaries using aligned influence operation to shift the u. S. Policy and the Political Sentiment in this course undermined confidence in the u. S. Democratic institutions and values that interfere with the electoral processes. This widely reported these days of the cubs bywith the cubs by the foreign adversaries to discredit the individuals and technicians through the use of false personas and fabricated stories on social media platforms. These operations have aimed to spread disinformation so civil discourse and also undermine the confidence in our Democratic Institutions and values. One influence operation involves a wide spectrum of activity. However it is subversive and declared a criminal and coercive aspect of these activities that form the basis of the fbi investigative interest. Its widely talked about in the maligned foreign influence. This is by no means a new problem. However, the interconnectedness and online anonymity have changed the character of the sworn influence and have the fbi and its partners must address it. In my role at the fbi of overseeing the task force would we call in the fall of 2017 the director established to conduct foreign influence operations targeting the United States. The citizens led by the Counterintelligence Division and comprised of agents, analysts and professional staff from the counterintelligence, counterterrorism cyber and criminal investigative division. Opening the 2018 midterm elections the fbi expanded the scope of the senate. Previously the efforts were focused on the threat posed by russia. However, we now have units working to combine the operations not just from russia but also from china, iran and other global adversaries. We have refined and focused strategy. The fbi takes this approach to address the serious threat. The first part focuses on the investigations and operations and work with the 56 field offices to open investigations with the foreign influence texas. You might think of it as a hub with fbi field offices and personnel as they spoke. Investigative approach seeks to impose the cost of our adversaries specifically the key influencers and enablers. Investigations of the cyber nexus over collaboratively in Fbi Cyber Division in the Cyber Task Force is. This way the fbi can quickly respond to those parts of the infrastructure. Moreover, the Fbi Cyber Division works closely with u. S. Intelligence committees work to determine the attribution. The second is on information and intelligence sharing. The fbi works closely with our fellow Intelligence Community agencies as well as state and local Law Enforcement partners and Election Officials to share intelligence to detect and destruct and deter our adversaries. In 2018 the effort led the creation of the protective devices the joint initiative between the fbi, department of justice, department of Homeland Security, secret service and the odni. We developed a series of videos to help the political campaigns better understand this threat and made them available for the fbis public website. In the past months weve expanded the protective voices providing webinars and inperson briefings to the president ial campaigns on slavery and maligned influence threats. Currently we are expanding the audience including the congressional campaigns and the general public. We collaborate extensively with the u. S. Government partners to provide information to the state and local government officials, private election vendors and social Media Companies so that they can put their system against cyber attacks. Collaboration of the common understanding of the landscape. The last part is the private sector partnerships, Technology Companies have a frontline responsibility to secure their own networks, products and platforms. We are doing our part by providing the intelligence to better enable them to address the platforms abuses by the foreign actors. The fbi established the relationships in the Technology Social Media Companies and maintains an ongoing dialog to enable the Rapid Exchange of the threat information. Across all of these, the fbi is constantly receiving the effectiveness of the coordination and outreach. To our knowledge no Foreign Government has attempted to tamper with accounts. However, even doubts about whether it has occurred can be damaging but we know our adversaries are trying to influence the processes and outcomes in advance of the 2020 election. While focuses today are on the security, i want to note that they seek to influence National Policies and Public Opinion in important ways beyond just elections. We look forward to continuing this important work and appreciate the support of the committee. Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you today and i am happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you very much. Mr. Hickey . Good morning distinguished members of the committee and thank you for the opportunity to testify today on behalf of the Justice Department concerning our efforts to ensure the safety and security of the nations election infrastructure and to combat the foreign influence. The maligned foreign influence i am referring to the covert actions by Foreign Government intended to affect u. S. Political sentiment in Public Discourse through divisions in our society would undermine confidence in our Democratic Institutions and these can range from computer hacking that target this election infrastructure or Political Parties to statesponsored media campaigns. This issue, protecting the nations democratic processes has been and remains a top priority of the department. Our principal role here is the investigation and prosecution of the federal crimes. But the maligned foreign influence efforts extend beyond efforts to interfere with elections and require more than Law Enforcement responses alone. Recognizing that, we we approach this National Security threat the same as any other. By using our own legal tools as well as supporting the tools and authorities of others and to the best of our ability we try to prevent crimes from occurring or disrupt them and progress in part by sharing information with people and institutions to allow them to better protect themselves. Reflecting the priority of these issues last year the attorney general Cyber Digital Task force analyzed the types of foreign influence operations and laid out a framework to guide our responses and since the election, we have taken a number of steps to combat the maligned foreign influence and support for secure elections. First, as an Intelligence Driven organization and member of the community, the fbi pursues tips and leads including from the classified information to identify and investigate and disrupt the illegal foreign influence activities and to that end as already explained, theyve now got the foreign influence was forced to leave the response to ensure information flow, resource allocation and coordination within the department and among the department of the federal partners in the private sector. Second, together with other agencies through the series of outreach and education efforts have been Holding Public helping public officials, candidates and social Media Companies to harden their own networks and platforms against the maligned foreign influence operations. Third, we have improved enforcement of the foreign agents registration act, one of the statutory tools defaults ensured transparency and the activities of the foreign entities and the gerbils. The effect makes it more difficult for those entities and individuals to hide the role and activities occurring within the United States. Forthcoming of our investigations have led to a number of criminal charges and other Enforcement Actions that have exposed the maligned influence efforts by the foreign states and their proxies. While we work with other nations to obtain custody of the foreign defendants whenever possible, just the charges themselves themselves help educate the American Public about the threats that we face. This can our investigations have supported the actions of other u. S. Government agencies such as financial sanctions imposed by the secretary of the treasury. Finally, even outside of the context of criminal charges, we have used the information from our investigations both to warren and reassure the potential victims and the general public alike about the maligned foreign influence activities. Now the victim notifications for defensive counternotification to the defense of Counter Intelligence briefings and Public Safety announcements are Traditional Department activities. But they must be conducted of particular sensitivity in the context of the elections and in some circumstances exposure can be counterproductive or otherwise improve and. Given the countervailing considerations, the department has adopted a Public Policy for evaluating whether and how to disclose the maligned foreign influence activities and among its First Principles of the partisan Political Considerations must play no role in our decisions. Our adversaries will undoubtedly change their tactics and we will need to be nimble in our. But the framework we have developed to respond will have staying power and as you can see, the department plays an Important Role in combating the foreign efforts to interfere. But there are limits to the role and that of the federal government as a whole combating the maligned foreign influence requires the whole of Society Approach and relies on the coordinated actions by Government Agencies at various levels. Support from the private sector and active engagement of an informed public. Thank you again and i look forward to your question. Thank you very much. Mr. Hovland . Good morning members of the committee, i thank you for the opportunity to testify before you this morning to detail the work of the u. S. Election Assistance Commission better known as the eac to fulfill its missions and help america vote act. I also appreciate this opportunity to highlight the great work of the states state and local Election Officials around the country. As you know the nations elections are run at the state and local level with each of the 50 states and u. S. Territories running elections in different ways. Officials in over a thousand local8, 000 localjurisdictions are ultimately responsible for conducting our elections and their work truly protects and ensures the most fundamental pillar of our democracies of the vote. Since 2016 theres been an enormous increase in focus on the security which is just one of the many responsibilities Election Officials must address. Im pleased to report from my Vantage Point at the community has responded in an aggressive fashion considering the challenges we face. Nearly every conference i attend while traveling around the country has a substantial focus on security and protecting the integrity of elections is a constant topic in meetings with election administrators, federal partners and external stakeholders. Even so, we need to ask ourselves the key question will that be enough if the officials do not have a substantial resources they need to defend our democracy against potential threats . The good news is the department of Homeland Security designation of election infrastructure Critical Infrastructure there has been a change in information sharing between the federal government and state and local officials. This includes the creation of the Government Coordinating Council which brings together state and local officials, federal partners as well as the coordinating council which has helped organize private sector vendors and nonprofit entities that support local Election Officials. Weve also seen the creation of the infrastructure information and sharing and Analysis Center which now has over 2100 members including every state officials office. The deployment of the monitors hardening of the systems increased training and promotion exercises around the cyber events evolve exponentially increased since 2016. The 2018 appropriation of 380 million of funding which was distributed in most of its obligation has largely contributed to these improvements. It doesnt cover everything the official stated that the states would have the ability to essentially choose from a menu of reforms and improvements in the priority is the code address the most pressing needs and vulnerabilities. As the chairwoman testified earlier this year, the project 85 of the 2018 money will be spent in advance of 2020. We have seen some states use the funding to replace aging or paperless equipment and other states have replaced the statewide Voter Registration databases or added additional security measures like multifactor authentication. Some have posted a training and a tabletop exercises ahead of 2022 to give Election Officials a handson experience that can help them prepare for various threats. One of my personal favorite uses of the fy 2018 funding is the implementation of the cyber navigated programs. Essentially the state recognizes that many local jurisdictions do not have the capacity or the need for the fulltime election Cyber Security experts of the state employs individuals with regional responsibilities and they provide Technical Assistance to several counties or municipalities. This is the kind of Innovative Program that will help bolster the Cyber Security defenses and improve how the states conduct elections. Its also a model that they would like to amplify nationwide should the funding support such an effort. Unfortunately not all of the news is good. As you know the threat of the foreign adversaries remains real and ultimately state and local officials do not have the resources to thwart a truly determined sophisticated state actor. This is why we must take action to build resilience here at home and implement policies that the two are the adversaries of opposition is a real sanctions regime. Additional funding is crucial to allow the states to continue to make necessary improvements that increase the strength and resiliency of our election systems. When we talk about Election Administrations, we are talking about the infrastructure of our democracy. To make meaningful and lasting change requires the investment over time and it cannot just be about 2020 or anyone election but about all of them going forward. During the Senate Rules Committee hearing in may i share the recent discovery that the operating budget of 7. 95 million is less than the amount kansas city spends on potholes. Its startling to think of one city with a population of around 500,000 people invest more to protect its residents car tires and alignment than the country invests in the only federal agency dedicated to completely improve Election Administration at helping more than 200 million registered voters cast their ballot. Thank you for your time and i am happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. Witnesses, we will ask unanimous consent that my Opening Statement is entered into the record and without objection, under the fiveminute rule i will begin by recognizing myself for five minutes and let me before i start to thank the vice chair of the committee for resizing while i was testifying in another committee. In 2016, but elections were hacked in three years later the community is universally confirmed for an actors have redoubled their efforts and are preparing to attack on the 2020 elections. Yet the president has blocked security efforts and cut the programs designed to safeguard, for example they issued instructions not to mention the Election Security. The president also disbanded the commission on Election Integrity and eliminated the cybersecurity coordinator on the Security Council and dramatically downsized the two teams fighting for the interference. The 20 budget for the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency even further. The president is handicapping the agencies in securing our elections. In the latest midterm elections it comes from the president himself, the foreign leaders interfered and this isnt the first time. 2016, president of trump then the candidate encouraged russia to illegally hack the adversaries emails. This past june President Trumps and information on his adversary and 2020 from a Foreign Government and justice by President Trump publicly suggested, quote, china should start an investigation into biden. To be clear i believe it is unacceptable to ask the foreign adversaries to interfere in any way in americas elections. If we ask other governments to interfere, if we undermine the publics confidence in the integrity of the voting process we are doing our adversaries work for them. We cant continue to undermine our own values on the world stage. The president s own officials agree. The ambassadors sondland said let me state clearly inviting them to undertake in the purpose of influencing an upcoming election would be wrong. Each of you sitting here today responsible for protecting the integrity of and Public Confidence in our elections i would like to hear from each of you in turn, yes or no . Do you think it is appropriate for the president of the United States to ask a Foreign Government to investigate his political opponent in a 2020 election . Yes or no . No. No sir. Im not going to comment on the president s activities, but we are committed to confronting the violations. To ask to investigate opponents. Its im focused on enforcing the criminal law. No. Thank you. The Mueller Report concluded that at approximately june 16, im sorry, quote, approximately june, 2016, the Russian Intelligence Organization compromised Computer Network of the Illinois State board of elections and gained access to the database containing information on the millions of registered illinois voters. The report confirms that the Russian Hackers successfully breached the databases and was found to alter or delete the voting records. Last month i asked our expert witnesses of the impact if they had been able to alter the databases. The director of the National Security council under president s bush and clinton testified about altering the databases would have been, quote, devastating including because tens of thousands of voters could have been turned away at the polls. The Intelligence Community has confirmed the threat of this happening again is very real. Its made it harder for the federal agencies to do their job to keep our democratic processes. Processes safe. Indeed the white house has intentionally cut the budget and staff going into an election on the Intelligence Community has confirmed that the biggest threat to the nation has seen Inspector General like our tabletop to exercise. When or if they identify that information and with the federal government what they have in place to respond there is infinite response capabilities for teams that can support Election Officials in anticipation of reporting of incidents. In addition we are looking for state and local elections to have in place a provisional ballot if there is an issue with the voter rolls they are prepared to administer broadly to make sure every voter has the ability to know the vote was counted as cast. So now that ability should that large county and then that we dont have a long postelection excuse over a couple of thousand votes quick. The level of funding with a 33 million of last year and the proposed funding now allows us to maintain that level of support in order to ensure that from election day. Are you confident now, you have the funding, and the ability, to county, large county lets say a stay to successfully have voters, you will be able to step in and, to do whatever thats necessary and, will not have a an election dispute about some of those are not a properly done . Uncomfortable the level of funding, allows us to maintain the level of support in order to ensure that from that they get what they need. Thank you very much. The gentleman from ohio. Thank you mister chairman. You know we wasted so much time on bogus russian collusion investigation and now these that will not go anywhere its nice that we actually have the department of justice and Homeland Security and the fbi and us election Assistance Commission before us to talk about a real issue which is protecting americas elections from foreign influences. There are various pieces of legislation to better protect our elections in the future of original cosponsor of hr 3442 that denies entry into the United States any individual that interferes with our election. And maybe we could Work Together in a bipartisan fashion with this committee to make sure that our elections are the Gold Standard of what the rest of the world looks to. We have generally been that Gold Standard so i will ask by starting with the legislation that i just mentioned. What is the standard for determining what type of content posted by foreign agents that rises to the level of being a foreign influence . Is there a certain type of verbage or rhetoric the fbi looks for . And do you think engaging in such behavior online should bar the individual individual from the United States . Thank you sir for your question. The fbi does not content or Police Information on the internet. That is certainly not our job. That what we look at is known of various actors and we have identified a foreign actor who is participating and is part of the operation seek to propagate the information or post derogatory content that is investigative interest but we do not start with content and work our way back. Thank you, Mister Hickey would, you agree with that, is there anything you like to add on . No thats exactly, right we focus on known actors and tips from providers in a way that helps them make determinations of their terms of, service. Is anything different of justice is doing to work with social media in advance of the elections, principally through the fit of but, we also support to the efforts and sometimes work with providers. Are there any countries other than russia you have seen or you believe is showing some interest in disrupting our elections in 2020 or in the future in general. We have spoken about foreign influence activities from china and we are certainly concerned about others obviously we have seen actions by other nations like turkey and ukraine. To any witness, what was your agencys role to secure the 2018 congressional midterm elections and what specific efforts were made . Yes thank you sir our role as it is now helping to secure the 2018 midterm elections was to provide information sharing support services to officials to help them manage risk to their systems. We started by building the relationships with state Election Officials that are appropriately skeptical of the federal role in elections and the information we provided services help them to identify risk to their system so we are doubling down on efforts to reach across the state how do we get the information sharing she needs to manage risk to systems. I am close to being out of time but would you agree the fbis reputation was significantly damaged by political bias against President Trump specifically, exhibited by a number of top level officials from your organization. Sir i will not comment on any damage or lack of damage to our reputation. I will answer it. It really was like peter struck and others pretty much damaged it it is unfair to the rest of your organization because you are truly a Great Organization one of the best in the nation. I yield back. For the record i think peter struck worked in the highest level. Gentle lady from california. Thank you to all the witnesses not only for your testimony and your, service to our country it is recognized and appreciated. Just a note to the gentle man from ohio the bill that he has cosponsored, there is some variations about denying pieces to those who are interfering in our elections. That will be made part of the shield act through the managers amendment and i just wanted him to know that that we are taking a good idea and moving it forward. The Mueller Report describes evidence that the then Trump Campaign chairman Paul Manafort talk to the russian operative of a strategy for winning democratic votes in midwestern states and quote internal polling data of the campaign which i always thought what was going on . Why the internal polling data to the russian agent russian agent . I would ask you to comment but generically, why would a campaign internal polling data for the battleground states to be helpful to someone seeking to impact our elections and specifically what a hostile actor do with such information with any campaign if they got internal polling data . Thank you maam for that question. I will be looking at it from a Strategic Point of view. China or russia they take a whole government approach with foreign influence not just federal elected officials but state and local elected officials as well because anyone can influence policy moving forward. So because they take a whole government approach any bit of information can help inform their decision how to move forward with their operation so on the surface it may not seem like a great benefit but china and russia uses every tool in the toolbox to get all information they seem valuable. If we were candidates one of the things we know is that if you are interested in polling data you could not do a poll without being caught. The only way you get this information is from a campaign that was legitimately done. A report this month was released by the Senate Intelligence committee on russian interference with our elections and it said the russian government use geographic targeting features to reach audiences in specific locations and in 25 percent of the ads purchased were targeted down to state or city or University Level in michigan and wisconsin they were targeted with advertisements overwhelmingly focused on the subject of Police Brutality to move populations in one direction or another. If a campaign made its information such as polling data are readily available to a Foreign Government and then used it to target the voters through social media is that something the department of justice would investigate . Or is there a law that geographic targeting features to reach audiences in specific locations and in 25 percent of the ads purchased were targeted down to state or city or University Level in michigan and wisconsin they were targeted with advertisements overwhelmingly focused on the subject of Police Brutality to move populations in one direction or another. If a campaign made its information such as polling data are readily available to a Foreign Government and then used it to target the voters through social media is that something the department of justice would investigate . Or is there a law that would allow or stimulate an investigation spent there are two parts i dont know if Campaign Finance of the statutes would apply with respect to National Security statutes i am familiar with a focus if an american is acting as an agent of a Foreign Government under the direction or control of the Foreign Government. In that example it is the reverse of that if they are directly in control or procuring from the government. I will note we will have an opportunity in the near future to make this much clearer by approving the shield act which would prohibit the sharing of internal data by an American Campaign from a foreign power so you have a very clear basis to proceed on that. I hope we can get a strong bipartisan support for that measure. With that my time is expired i yield back. The gentleman from arizona. Thank you. I would love to spend this time talking about Election Security. It is critical. Im prepared to ask those questions but we come to this hearings and it is impeachment all the time. This committee we were told by the chairman but here we sit if you want to ask the questions or mischaracterize a conversation then go get into the closed hearing downstairs but you cannot get in because i tried. So when i hear the chairman open up the Opening Statement about the ukrainian phone call and suggest the president asked the ukrainian president to interfere in the 2020 election you can characterize it anyway you want to but i would suggest that is not the proper characterization. Talk about ukrainian interference in the 2016 election that is what President Trump was asking president zelensky look into. Now with biden here is my question, we have doj, fbi, do you think a person who has admitted criminal conduct should have immunity from investigation . Because they are potential political opponent in the upcoming election . What do you think . I think nations should follow facts and law where they lead with criminal investigations. Regardless of their potential candidate or not quick. Without fear, or favor. The other thing that was suggested is if i ask questions and the chairman doesnt like the responses or the statement that i make, when i am done he will offer his comment. Thats when he said peter struck was representing the highest ideals or highest standards of the agency. That is highly unusual normal if you want to make that comment he asked to have somebody else yield that time to him so he can rebut that comment but that happens perpetually here because it is convenient. On the chairman i can do whatever i want. But i would suggest to you i do think mister struck is exactly the opposite. His misconduct actually reflected poorly and has caused Much Division and heartache in this country. And thats just the way it is. We focus a lot on russian interference of the 2016 election. The maligned influence of the russians. Are there other nationstates that have engaged in 2016 and might engage in the 2020 elections . The one big country we are focused on outside of russia is china. Make no mistake china is aggressively pursuing aggressive influence, they do a different tactic, they prefer interaction in these economic levers is to see the Global Economic superpower so as we go towards 2020, though russia certainly is a threat in 2016 and will continue in 2020, we are aggressively looking at china as well. Did you see other states in 2016 besides china and russia involved . I would refer back to the report released in 2017. In the 2018 general elections was found that any identified activities that have a Material Impact of the security infrastructure used in the 2018 midterm elections that there was no hard evidence vote that they changed through the system. You previously worked on the Voter Registration list so can you tell me about the importance of maintaining those that are uptodate quick. Absolutely. The national Voter Registration act sets out a process that ensures both individuals are able to get registered but if somebody is not in their jurisdiction it gives them the proper way having those allows jurisdictions to save money and ensures the right people are where they need to be be. My time is expired. The gentle lady from texas. Thank you chairman and Ranking Member for the hearing and all witnesses for your service to the nation. Let me ask a question for each of you. How confident are you we will have an impeccable safe and secure election in 2020 . With the work that you have now done at the federal level . Or without intrusion from foreign entity. Thank you for your question. Anybody that has run election can tell you there is no such thing as impeccable but absolutely we are confident the 2018 election was more secure than 2016 and 2020 will certainly be more secure thanks to the hard work of officials of the private sector thats working with them. Yes or no. Im confident against the threat to Election Security. Agreed. Agreed the sentiments that traveling around the country it is amazing to see all the hard work of the Election Officials are, doing to address the issue. But none of you have said we cannot have the impeccable election they think they are owed the impeccable election to be honest. I will follow up my line of question being of how secure are we . And proceed to raise the question that in light of the fact there seems to be a loophole in how security is going to be, what is the approach of the doj to prosecute and be proactive or what intrusions may occur in the 2020 election. Quick. We will be very proactive. One of the most important lessons coming out of 2016, is how we handle information that may be targeted getting victim notifications to the right people and following up and we are in a better position now than we were in 2016 with policy and the sensitivity. Doj prosecutors and researchers one resources need to be ready for that and other federal elections. I think we are wellpositioned also the budget for 2020 includes Additional Resources that will improve our standing in that regard. Congratulations to the congresswoman for the work of her committee on the question of shielding us from this kind of intrusion and including her congratulations to include my legislation this year the language that says of a candidate for any individual knowingly receives an offer for assistance then they know is a foreign power that kennedy shall refuse the offer and notify the fbi within 72 hours. The intent should be acted upon so what infrastructure do you have to ensure a Quick Response to any reporting of this activity. Thank you for the question the fbi becomes interested in foreign influence once it hits the category we spoke about in the beginning with the undeclared nature. The fbi will respond in any investigation not only the Foreign Influence Task force but those hundreds of agents or analyst for that day in and day out we will use all the tools in our toolbox. And your staff for the 2020 election the potential of this reporting. We could always use more resources but for sure we put everything we can against this threat facing with absolute determination. The Homeland Security committee i appreciate the deep dive you have taken. Give me an understanding of how you have shared actionable intelligence to identify threats and ramped up that part of your work quick. Absolutely. First is the buildout of the election information this is what we use to reach state and local officials we have all 50 states and territories as well as 2100 local Election Officials so this ensures actionable and timely information is reached in the field so they can take the steps they need. Second, a continued push with the Intelligence Community to provide classified briefings whether conferences or in person as well as working with private sector Threat Intelligence authorities with private Sector Companies about what they see internationally so we explore all avenues trying to find efficient ways to get this to Election Officials. The gentle lady from arizona. My first question, does anyone with foreign influence have pfizer applications or warrants quick. No maam. Looking back at the fbis activities investigating 2016 election it has been reported that the fbi never obtained the original servers from the dnc that allegedly were hacked by russia instead relying on image copies. First of all is that correct . I cannot speak, to that. And someone else on the panel . Yes maam we got the information that we, required for our investigation and its pretty common for us to work with a security vendor in connection with computer, intrusion. Can either one of you answer did the dnc cybersecurity consultant strike still have possession of the clinton servers quick. I dont know what they have possession of now. Does anyone on the panel though . Next question. I know you were asked what other countries have shown an interest in disrupting the 2020 election but what other countries have shown interest or try to interfere in the 2016 elections quick. Based on what i have read in what has been put out and investigations by congress it only refers to russia that i am aware. Earlier there was a question by chairman nadler and i want to clarify what you think or if you think its appropriate for the president of the United States to ask a Foreign Government to investigate previous election interference for i would like all of you to answer that question. Can you please repeat the question. To think its appropriate for the president to ask a Foreign Government to investigate previous election interference . If there was election interference going on . You know if there is anything he thinks was unlawful and other countries are asked the other countries to determine if there was something unlawful happening happening. I think its appropriate to understand any attempts of interference in our election so we can continue to work to build resilience in the process. The fbi is interested in any criminal violation as long as there is the foreign angle to the operation. I will give the same answer as before i dont know about appropriate but i am focused on the criminal law. It is important to understand what occurred with our election so officials have the information they need to prepare for future elections. I yelled back my time. Thank you mister chair in 2016 i understand there were reports that russia tried to interfere with a lot estate election goals, maybe all of them is anybody here aware of those reports . Yes dhs in coordination with the fbi released an information product out to officials that stated based on the information we had as far as activity in 2016 the pattern of behavior is likely that the russian actors conducted at least research on entities across all 50 states. That doesnt mean they attempted to access the systems it could be as simple as a Google Search but based on the information that the Intelligence Community has that it is assumed they were at least researching all 50 state elections. Why would they do that. Presumably to understand how elections are run across the United States. Spring training . Anybody else have knowledge of that or your thoughts . No. What about florida was there reports that two different jurisdictions Voting Systems were contacted by the russians . I think we have briefed officials on activity targeting systems with successful intrusions but i think its important to be clear that there was no Material Impact on registration based on the evidence we have seen to be clear about that. And as i mentioned in my Opening Statement, it appears that the vast majority of that will be spent we are seeing over 90 of that going towards improving security and again whether that is replacing out the equipment from implementing audit based on a number of things because the variations in how elections are administered state to state to identify priority states have taken the information that is dated based on the work in the states where the risks lie and used to apply and i will give you a specific example of a the state of wisconsin deployed two factor authentication and after all of its local officials for the statewide Voter Registration database that we seem remarkable and you realize the 1800 jurisdictions in wisconsin if that is very focused targeted steps theyve taken. In the Clinton Campaign they stole emails and said shame on us we are not ready this time around. Have you consulted with the president or anyone involved in the campaign . Sir we have made contact and off with just the Trump Campaign that goes around the president ial election campaigns to make sure they are aware of the services and information sharing responsibility. So mr. Mulvaney did not contact . You know sir. Okay. I want to thank the fbi, the Justice Department, all of them the stalwarts in the american system of government and the rule of law and i would have to disagree with previous statements made and individuals in the organizations responsible for hurting the organizations, its the one i caused by those actions i wish this were a sincere hearing ended up where we might be marking up some of the Bipartisan Legislation members of the committee have worked on. Including House Resolution by the congresswoman murphy, mr. Deutsch, myself to have greater connectivity prior to any intrusion or we might be marking up the legislation joined by mr. Colins and 3238 that would create greater consequence for those that engage in election interference but that isnt what this is about. Its about smearing the president of the United States, and invalidating the people who have been involved in delegitimizing a historical election and we know that because moments ago the chairman said that peter struck was acting in the highest traditions of Government Service and i believe you hold the job engaging in an extramarital affair and the fbi with a coworker acting in the highest tradition of Government Service. . Im not going to comment on the. Sir. Are there regulations against it but you are aware of . Im not going to comment on that. Are you saying you dont know if it is extramarital affair with a coworker asked i hold a slightly different job and he held over the Intelligence Branch. He was over the operational branch. I am just not going to comment on whether or not his behavior was out of context. Is in the highest tradition of the service for the fbi to engage in affairs of a series of coworkers . You should know that if you work there. Sir i am not going to comment on that maybe i will ask another one. The Inspector General said we do not have confidence to prioritized the investigation over following up on the midyear investigation and the Inspector General didnt have confidence in the way someone prioritized something is acting in the highest tradition of Government Service i am not going to comment on the. Further, they found found that the only indicative of the biased, but even more suspiciously, implied the willingness to take action to contact the candidates electoral process and this is anticritical to the core values of the fbi and department of justice if someone, anyone is engaging in behavior that is antithetical to the values of the fbi and department of justice are they acting in the highest traditions of the government . Sir we have an entire Section Division is going and not going to answer these questions from the position that im in. Its just, striking, interesting, the unwillingness to be critical of the conduct so detrimental to the country and as people all over america are looking at the corruption that negatively impacted they say you know what its about idea to have affairs with your colleagues and underlining the trust people having to be prioritized in investigations over politics but nonetheless, here we sit. More than a month ago, you announced an impeachment inquiry in the committee and i believe you our committee would be engaged in in that process but as we sit here today, three other committees are in the basement of the capitol conducting secret interviews engaging in selective and coming out having a theatrical performances of transcripts that didnt really occur and there are lies of the contacts with whistleblowers. Regardless how people feel about the president or this impeachment, one would at least think the chairman of the Judiciary Committee announces the launch of an impeachment investigation members of the committee might be willing to pour enabled to participate in that when weve gone to participate would have been locked out so it is my sincere hope the last time we gathered that he would take up the cause not just of someones purpose and ambition but that he would take up the cause of the committee and ask for asked for the ability to participate because one can only suspect the reason the house Judiciary Committee has been dealt out of the hand of the impeachment is because Speaker Pelosi didnt like the outcomes in the committee they didnt know what to do with it. When House Democrats brought in Robert Mueller there were promises that this was going to sway the public and create a flood of support for impeachment, and that was obviously something that didnt hold to their. So, please stand up for the committee and lets start with this. I will yield back. Gentlelady from washington, thank you mr. Chairman. I think the witnesses for being here today. I would hardly call this busy work to protect our elections, so i wish our colleagues on the otherother side would be as concerned with Election Security. Back in july the Senate Select committee released its bipartisan report on russian interference in our 2016 elections. The senate intel found that come up with, quote, russian government affiliated conducted a level of activity against the infrastructure in the runup to the 2016 u. S. Election and called for sweeping action to protect the 2020 elections that canada after counting the vote and the officials report the results were tempered with him if in fact the candidate one what is being done at the federal level to first prevent attacks on the results in the second, if such an attack occurs to ensure Public Confidence in the reporting of our elections mr. Masterson lets start with you and then move on. The reporting systems that you are referencing for an area weve worked with our officials to secure and to understand first the most important thing to understand that all of the folks on the committee here understand the results are in fact unofficial results but there is a campus process that goes on after election day so ensuring they have that information and understanding the nature of the results and that there is an entire reconciliation process following the correctness and the second is the top priority for us working with officials to have the results and ensure efficient and effective auditing of the results but is absolutely critical to ensure that their vote was counted so that is to areas of hightwoareas of high priority for us working with state and local of the steps theyre taking to protect the systems and really offer the reassurance and transparency on the backend. In this circumstance where we know the state is being targeted, its important that we get to the state officials at the right level and with a sense of urgency so they can do whatever they can to mitigate the systems. I would echo what mr. Masterson said and added that the commission, the part of the work that we have done is host it trainings for the officials that is relevant to the topic and work with them on an improving audit processes and certainly think that the issue you raised is one of real concern. There are a number of responsibilities that the officials have and i believe that the election Assistance Commission should be more empowered to work on those but the reality has been mentioned in my Opening Statement is that we are 7. 95 million agent fee and we have one lawyer, one financial person for since its inception the commission has been kicked around like a political football and we have never been in power are empowered or funded in a way to actually help Election Officials in the way that we can and i think that right now in this time we see the need for the federal clearinghouse that it was created to be and i would ask you all to help make that possible. Thank you. As a senior Cyber Security advisor, how have you engaged with local, state and National Media outlets to ensure the unofficial vote reporting is protected from malicious interference and with Media Networks specifically have you met with, and have any refused to meet with you and what new measures are you taking in 2020 that were not applied in 2016 and 2018 . Thank you for the question. The first is that the associated press, the team that handles the result is on Election Night is a the Election Night is a member river were coordinating council which is the council that we work with on providing support and services and information sharing, so they have been an active participant in that coordinating council to the extent of the threat and risk they can take to secure the results for the reporting and i know hes taking that very seriously. Second, as we held a tabletop exercise with members of the National Media prior to the election to talk about some scenarios that can play out in house at being exchanged not just from state and local officials but Media Companies, Political Parties and others to ensure that the media have access to the information they need before they report on the results or other items. Heading into 2020, we anticipate engaging Media Outlets individually than have a tabletop exercise again heading into the 2020 election to work with them through the scenarios and ensure they have the information they need. I want to thank the witnesses for being here. I am concerned and cosponsored the bill which would amend the immigration act to those that have engaged in improper interference in elections inadmissible to the u. S. And also cosponsored 3238 which would prohibit interference. I want to go ahead and ask in your testimony, you say we do know our adversaries are trying to influence Public Opinion and electoral processes in advance of the election. Youve mentioned in your testimony influencing the opinion in various social media. What electoral processes, what efforts to interfere are you aware of . Thank you for the question. One thing i want to highlight is the countries that russia and china prove they are a threat its not just based on the electoral sites and operations, is essentially always present. And it comes to the electoral process, you can look at some of the Voter Suppression. The whole concept of pushing out false information. Of highlighting, places to go but are actually not true, the concept of disinformation that we have seen the russian focus on. That in and of itself can interfere in the process. But nothing to the extent of actively trying to hack into or interfere. With the systems. We havent seen anything specific regarding hacking into the systems of the 2020 election. Thank you. I would yield the remainder of my time. Thank you for yielding. Im curious if theres a unanimous consent request. First is the request to be entered into the record an email on the 30th of may titled documents on the Ukrainian Party of the regions. Without objection. I also see to enter into the record of the article to summer 12, 2018 the ukrainian corporals disclosed disclosure meddling in the u. S. Elections. Without objection. Also, from 2018 from the kiev post, the publication of the payments violated law from interfere with elections and court rules. Without objection. What is happening is this a law firm that hires and it sends an email to her husband about issues with manafort and ukraine and then works its way into the u. S. Election dynamic and the court in kiev ruled that the activities to disclose the activities in the United States constituted election interference and was illegal under the ukrainian law. Does anyone on the panel that has a reason to disagree with the conclusion of the Ukrainian Court that the constituted . So, no one has reacted on any basis to disagree with this and the record reflect that. So, my question is what are we doing as a government to prevent future election meddling like that which ukraine engaged in where information was disclosed in the United States unlawfully in the foreign jurisdiction and then entered into the bloodstream of the politics . Thank you for the question. I will go back to what i said previously. The fbi is not in the position to police content on the internet. That being said that they can identify it for an actor regardless of the country who is trying to push out this information with the end goal of showing discord, discounting the process and it is done in some sort of undeclared criminal matter that is where it becomes an interest to the fbi. The trick is identifying that known foreign actor, we cannot work back from content. If we find that for an actor behaving in these obligations and part of the validation tells disinformation yes that would work with the providers to provide as much actual intelligence as we possibly can. In this case it looks like we must know the actor because the court ruled the disclosure of the information was illegal, so is there anything the fbi is doing now to follow up on the decision that there was illegal meddling in the United States that emanated from ukraine . I cant address anything related to the possibility on the existence or nonexistence of an fbi investigation. It would seem my, colleague said this, a few days between now and the upcoming election i hope sincerely that this meddling is being identified and pursued by the government and i would yield back. The gentleman from florida. Thank you mr. Chairman for holding todays hearing. And thanks to the witnesses for being here. We know that they interfered and that the National Security experts have warned that they will do it again in 2020, 2020 primaries are fast approaching, so we are running short on time to ensure every state is taking the necessary steps to harden the differences and to guard against this generally. One of the fewer than 20 states that still had electronic machines to verify the ballots in 2016 and they are moving in a different direction between 2016 and 2018, they drop from 24 to four to move completely to the paper verified systems under way. After learning some of the systems were hacked in 2016 they expected a strong response to bolster the security and we expect that whenever it is done andof olympic coordination with state and counties targeted by the Foreign Governments and other benefactors. According to the report the russian theory agency was able to gain access to the network of at least one florida county government. Subsequently, members of our congressional delegation requested a briefing from the lawenforcement agencies and were informed that the networks of at least two counties that have been compromised. Most recently, the report by the republicanled Senate Intelligence committee suggest as many as four counties may have been successfully attacked. Apparently no systems were access, only the registration rolls, but whatever the number infected, weve got to learn the lessons and guard against the vulnerabilities before next years elections in florida clearly worked on its need to improve the auditing procedures, but we cannot do that alone. Certain breaches in 2016 were not immediately detected. What signs should Election Officials look for, what should they be trained to look for on election day to ensure there are no undetected attacks and how are you working with state officials to train them to detect such signs . Thank you for the question, sir. It starts long before election day. You may be looking for those signs and i will talk about our activity there, but there are indicators that Election Officials are aware of and can be attuned to. But to our information sharing and Analysis Center targeting election infrastructure and the state of florida was the first state to deploy this across all county governments. To reach protect and recover from this. Realtime learning to not just the Election Officials, but the center regarding malicious activities, and out in the state of florida, florida was the first state to employ that across countries, so they are uniquely positioned for that kind of intrusion detection and alerting. In addition, having that ability it plays and you mentioned, there are audible records and i think in florida there was less than 100 ballots cast in 2018 on audible systems, and a drive towards complete probability by 2020 is important. Thank you very much. In our hearing in Election Security last month, the witnesses said it was important to treat it as interconnected systems, we heard that any digital device that touches this must be safeguarded Device Security management should be centralized and streamlined, so i would like to hear it from the witnesses what the organization is doing to help centralize and streamline the security process we will start with you. Yes. So, essentially, at the election Systems Commission we are participating in the Government Coordinating Council. We consistently worked to put out best practices, but again sorted through our capacity moving beyond our statutory requirements is very limited as we have the world series coming to washington i would note that if we were a Major League Baseball player we would be the 173rd highest. We would be a middle reliever. We have no lack of ambition to take on these challenges and help, but we need the resources to do it. Appreciate the world series reference. Im going to answer a bit by analogy. We have a number of Department Components on the security. Weve got fbi agents in the field and headquarters, prosecutors in the field, public corruption prosecutors, National Security prosecutors, computer crime prosecutors. All of them potentially touch on this issue and so it is on us to train them so they are aware of each other in a coordinated and that is what we are doing this weekend at the end of the week rather the end of the month the fbi is putting together an all hands meeting with agents around the country to train them including on how to react and relate to state officials when it comes to victim notifications. Thank you for your question. I distrust the task force whose purpose was to be with you just asked to coordinate the efforts across the enterprise as it relates to Election Security. We have election crimes coordinators across all of the field offices whose primary goal is to interact with officials. Leading up to today of the election we have got our Cyber Task Forces across all 56 of our field offices and we are working to increase our ci task forces as well. And the Foreign Influence Task force really is the hub that brings all of the efforts together again leading up to, during and after. Thank you for the question, sir. Across the cybersecurity and researchers, at the agency, over a third of our in 2018 engaged in Security Work across the United States. We have field representatives protecting the security advisers advisers. My team is the hub of that information, as we get reporting, request for services, we are able to quickly end officially serve the needs of the community and make sure they have the information and services to help them manager their services. Thank you, i hope we can talk about what Additional Resources there. Our gentleman from texas. Thank you for the chairman, i appreciate the witnesses being here today, did you replace peter as deputy senior director as the Counter Intelligence division . There are three Deputy Directors and the division, my particular role is over the Intelligence Branch, he was not over the Intelligence Branch, view is over one of the two operational branches. But he was the one that was briefed by the Intel Committee ig about Hillary Clintons private server potentially being hacked, you know why you are not included in that briefing . Yes sir i did not turn in this position into the fall of 20, 18 during the 2016 i was in counterterrorism division. So you came into your current position after peter strzok left . Yes sir. While since the Foreign Influence Task force is the headquarters component, im concerned that peter strzok ran to the biggest cases as headquarter special cases rather than the traditional way of traditional cases through field offices, is a Foreign Influence Task force running on election cases from headquarters now . No sir. Then can you tell us the reason that we are doing so when peter strzok was there . Sir i cannot speak to why things were done or not done, i can only speak to currently what we are doing and in Foreign Influence Task force, essentially program managing the cases across 56 field offices. I would think that since there is such a big deal about influence peddling in 2016, even though you came in, after that, that you would be a little bit concerned about the influence peddling when peter strzok was there, are you not . Have you not looked into that at all . My focus is on the 2020 elections and moving forward, the creation of the Foreign Influence Task force happen in the fall of 2017, we are laser focused on the elections moving forward. So you dont think theres anything to be learned from looking at what occurred in the 2016 election and to help you prepare for whats going on and could go on in the 2020 election . Really dont think others anything to learn from history . Sir there is always a lessons to be learn from history, what we have learned and i can speak strategically, not just what was happening in the fbi was a lack of coordination in the entire Intelligence Community, we are better engaged, we collaborate far, more we work with our social Media Companies, all of the Lessons Learned from the 2016 in 2018, we are gonna continue winning best practices forward as we move into 2020. Well since you are concerned about 2020 have you, were you aware of Petro Poroshenko or any other ukrainian officials to influence our election in 2016 . Sir im not im familiar with that. Are you aware, do you know who will go milk over is . Sir im not going to confer or deny the existence of an fbi engagement or i did ask you that, i asked you to know who that is . Sir im not gonna answer that question, and is setting i can go where no close setting and go into detail about current investigations. You cant even say if you know a person . No sir. You realize youre supposed to be telling us about 2020 and you cant even tell us about whether you know anything about people involved in 2016 . It really hurts the credibility when you cant do that, let me ask you, will be, fitf run in florence against the political campaigns . We do not run sources, we program manage them that relate to foreign influence. I have real concern about the credibility of what is happening for 2020 if you cant tell us that you even know people in from ukraine, so im very disturbed and concerned. Gentleman yields, back. Thank you mister chairman, first of all i want to say to the panelists, thank you for being here today at the First Service to our country, you know trust in our election system is the foundation of our democracy, when it comes to cyberattacks time is of the essence, when Financial Institutions are attacked or military, their responses are within seconds, its usually coordinated, not institutions, not individuals but industry of not worldwide, so given the importance of american democracy i presume that now a lack of coordination among Government Agencies to be one of the Lessons Learned that we have a system in place now to coordinate that kind of information of a cyberattack. So a question to all of you. Sir thank you for the, question you are absolutely correct, as it relates to Cyber Incidents, we do have a street digit plan on how we notify, so we will add on, here the fbi a dhs response to, this you can look as the fbi lead in the threat responsive, agreements been committed the fbi will open the investigation, dhs is the lead for protecting and mitigated this cyber intrusion in and of itself. So let me introduce to you so you open up an investigation but the cyber attack happens within seconds, so who is a lead and if you dont have a league how do you get that information out to all of your investigative you are defense task force, instantaneously . Do you have that system in place . Yes sir thank you for the question, following 2016 in 2017, one of our Top Priorities was to work with state and local Election Officials to create protocol for this reason, as you may be aware in 2016 dhs didnt even know who to call if indeed, we now have points of contact with all the, states we have information sharing with all 50 states. Do you have points of contacts with each and every state . Yes and more importantly they know how to share information with us, because the most likely people to report of Cyber Incidents so you do have a specific individual at each stage here talk to . Yes. Are we talking silos or is the information a two way street, so to speak, to you have people at the state level that you trust to work with to make sure youre all sharing the information on a realtime basis . Absolutely sir, thank you for that question, we have points and contacts and a trusted relationship across all 50 states so they feel uncomfortable sharing that information and they are able to not only respond to the individual incident but take that information and distributed broadly across the entire Election Community so they can take action or look for possible compromises across the election infrastructure, that is the biggest area of improvement since 2016, the amount of information we are receiving from a state and local Election Officials, whether it is reporting for detection sensors. So secretary calls one of you and its the want to run telephone, you return the call immediately . How does that phone call gets channels into the systems you get a Quick Response . Where is it even a phone call, you have a digital system or someone puts in, types into alert and sizzling is going, on a certain viruses or being detected so the rest of the country can get on their toes. Yeah, the secretary has my number and cause more regularly and is incredibly active and engaged partner with, as you described it exactly correctly, the report to one is report all across the federal government within the operation center, we have members of the fbi, we have members of the Intelligence Community and we have members of our election information Analysis Center sitting at our for so as the reporting comes in we are able to take that information, and analyze, it supports the victim of but then begin the process of sharing information bradley across the sector. Let me shift very quickly, it was mentioned earlier the elections are not just about election day but that election period in california, its about three weeks, how do you ensure that whatever you begin to detect three weeks out is something that you follow up on and is coordinated . Yeah again working through our information sharing analysis severe as we get reporting if there is additional facts we are able to support it that across them and look for the trends and look for the information that we connect to incidents. Final question and im out of time but with the number of elections i detected irregularities, i tried to call my locals eat a so in 2020 im walking through the door and i see Something Weird happening, who do i call . Or do a google your telephone number . So depending on the activity we talked about coordination, private public sector, individuals out there. So from our perspective, one is you should report any and almost activity to the administrator who can understand the activity you are seeing, in addition we worked with Voter Protection groups in 2018 and again in 2022 have points of context on election day so that if there is reporting that indicates trends we are able to respond, to reach out and understand what is going on. Chair i yield. Gentlemen yields back and understands the rates of the committee, thank you again for beginning the hearing don. Thank you chairman, miss nikki floris, on october 3rd with the fbi and dhs issue to advise that the russian government will be using Voter Suppression tactics to interfere in the 2020 election, obviously we are extremely concerned about that, can you give us any idea about when the fbi learned about these russian tactics and any gap in time between when the threat was identified and when the states were notified. Thank you for the question maam, i cannot speak in specifics about the reporting, im happy to take that back, but as we rule into 2020 as we did for 2018, its our goal not just fbi but across the Intelligence Community to report threat information as quickly as possible to the audience who needs to hear it, taking into account certainly the sensitivity of the sources and methods of how the intelligence was collected. Okay you talked about the Foreign Influence Task force that was enforced in 2017, it was described how is in forest after the 2018 election and a growing list of foreign adversaries they were looking and, can you tell us what resources, can you describe the number of people that make up that task force and whether that is grown from 2017 to the president and if you need additional people or resources to do that job . Thank you maam for the question, im not gonna get into the specifics about the actual numbers of people on the task force, but we we need resources in 20 don one thing i will now it is that, individuals are not the only individuals in the fbi that are working with the foreign influence threat, given the nebulous nature of this, from criminal into the cyber to counterterrorism so there are agents and analysts and professional staff across all 56 of our officers who are foreign influence an investigation side to foreign influences. Regarding your questions you resources, we are always happy to have more resources and can use more resources but the fbi is using everything we can run out to mitigate this very serious threat. Is the reason you can give us the numbers between seven 2017 to the president because you dont have them or is there some security reason. There is no security reason, its hard to comparisons 2017 when we were checking on the on russian and now we are checking all political actors, its not necessarily a good one to one comparison of where weve come. Youve mentioned that one aspect of the doj is as fix to disrupt maligned foreign influence operatives has stepped up the Foreign Affairs registration act which requires people who act as foreign principles to register with a government, so i guess we know some of those enforcement acts that include the guilty plea by Michael Flynn and trumps first National Security adviser for convictions of the Trump Campaign manager Paul Manafort and richard gates, the possible involvement of mr. Giuliani and his associates that were arrested last week, for possible violations, are those all the kinds of things that youre talking about . At the moment those are Campaign Finance violations but i think the charges, the alleged connection to a foreign location, so the kind of activity that we want to be alert to. So at the moment the charges are, i dont think fair a is, there but sticky being back from that case if there is a foreign principle covertly trying to influence our politics, whether through Campaign Finance or political like devotees that is something we would be involved in. The one im really concerned about, which is listed on the dojs affair i enforcement action is the one involving the 13 russian nationals that worked on behalf of the russian government to interfere in the 2016 election by manipulating social media to advocate for the Trump Campaign against the Clinton Campaign because that include organizing political rallies in states like pennsylvania that i represent, they literally took pictures of pennsylvania coal miners and slap them on these things and try to stir up sentiment in a particular direction, does june does doj have resources it needs to prosecute malign actors as we approach the 2020 election . Well indeed we do, we use those resources to bring that case, unfortunately i think the 2020 budget includes additional funding for the section i supervise, wedge is countering maligned foreign influence with Cyber Threats and other activities. How about moving proactively before the 2020 election, because they came into years after the influence in 2016. As i said, preventing a gram or disrupting it is more rewarding and more important than convicting someone after the fact, we have put a lot of facts thought into how we will disrupt that in how to provide notifications to congress and public based on various factors including wanting to make sure that the public is as educated as we can make them. Don thank you all the witnesses i see my time is expired. Thank you mister chairman and as my colleague noted, the Senate Intelligence committee required a motion interference in 2016, election states that don many disInformation Campaigns do not manipulate just one platform, information moves across various platforms or cyberattacks threatened multiple companies, and security in data integrity there must be greater cooperation with the tech sector and between the tech sector and the government to address these issues. In fact we saw today, facebook removed a network of russian backed accounts that posted locals come into the political issues raising President Trump and attacking and joe biden, this is a familiar threat that we have seen in 2016 and appears to be repeating as we approach 2020, the report we mentioned shows collaboration content sharia like social media platforms to defend against foreign disinformation, it has occurred with violent extremist content, my question is to mr. For is, this is simply a yes or an, hour your organizations created a task force to foreign aid cooperation between governments and the tech sector as it did with violent extremist content . So i will defer to my colleague on the fbi as, well we are working with my team, we are working with countering foreign influence that works regularly with the social media and tech sector on these issues. We will be ready for 2020 . Absolutely yes. Thank you maam for the question, so within the Foreign Influence Task force there is a significant effort to increase engagement with the tech sector and the social Media Companies and they mean almost on a monthly basis with those companies, what we try to do is created by directional relationship where we shea share actual intelligence and threat indicators, they enter and share information related to individuals that violate their terms of services, it is really one of our primary strategies as we roll into 2020. Do you have a specific task force that helps coordinate all of that were you are just saying it is to cooperate with each other . Its actually within the foreign and fluids task force that is one of our goal is to coordinate that with social Media Companies as it relates to social media influence. Right so the age has said that there is a disinformation model, including false information of operations deep Faith Technology and creation attacks, can you please describe the impact to the elections and what they are doing to combat that, regarding misinformation about Voter Registration. Thank you maam, my team within the Election Security Initiative Starting in 2018 began working with state and local Election Officials to talk to them about ways to engage voters about disinformation around the election process, Election Officials see this regularly, weather is through social media or other to do with the administration, we wanted to work with them on a variety of products to help them engage the electorate on what to look for but more importantly how do you empower themselves as voters, to check their Voter Registration status and make sure its up to date, and make sure they understand when and where to vote, whats on their valid, how the election process works, most importantly to understand who theyre interested voices in their communities are, theres a local Election Officials and state Election Officials and what they need so that they can head to the polls with confidence, building on that effort, our team is focused on expanding that engagement, working with trusted voices across communities, whether that is mayors governors or others and ordered to engage the in American People on how to identify resilience. I heard your testimony on that but i know youre right in testimony also said that he wanted to raise awareness and with 8800 jurisdictions, and one of you testified, that i forget which one of, you how are you really getting the work out with 8800 jurisdictions that have to be on the lookout for this . You are talking across the country and when i saw again one of yalls testimony, i think you were focused on a handful of states that you did some of these tabletop exercises, so what are you really doing to make sure all 8800 election jurisdictions know how to detect and report and work with you on these issues . Yeah absolutely, thank you for the question, so its twofold, one is by building those relationships for the state Election Officials they reached the county, so i mentioned may testimony the last Mile Initiative, it is geared towards Election Officials specific to their jurisdictions about how to manage skin threat and also how to talk to voters about the process and manage voter expectation, the second you mention the tabletop, its not just the individual tabletops was states, we conduct National Level tabletop exercises were thousands are working incarnation with their state Election Officials, so the first chief state Election Officials per dispute over three days, this year and next year we had history at a high level of participation jacket exactly what you, said how disinformation gets shared, how do we push it down to the locals and then how do we get it back up to a so that we have full awareness and can push broad lead to understand what is the threat of risk and how do we protect the systems. Thank you mister chairman i yield back. Thank you the gentleman from colorado. Thank you for holding this incredibly important and timely hearing, i also want to thank each of the witnesses for their testimony and also for your service to our country. I must confess i am disappointed by sam, but until my colleagues who chose to use their time impugning the integrity of former government officials instead of talking today with these distinguished witnesses about this subject matter at hand which is protecting our republic and ensuring the integrity of our elections, i realize each of you and your respected departments work with a wide range of colleagues on precisely that and i thank you for it. I reviewed the written testimony and miss flores and your testimony you noted on page three, i believe you alluded to this irreversible testimony, that in the elections they deactivated more than 1000 and authentic social media accounts linked to malign influence actors, they made these decisions by dialog with the fbi and other Government Agencies, so i take from that the eu have a robust relationship with the social Media Companies that both the fbi and the task force and other apparatuses of doj take that to be true. Is that a Fair Assessment . Yes sir. I appreciate the work that the at task force in the fbi and the other entities in the Law Enforcement communities are, taking the steps they are taking to protect our election, part of what is most disturbing firmly and you mentioned earlier, it is happening in realtime, foreign actors by virtue of the disinformation and then this Information Campaign that they are engaged in and the agents now using our daily lives, they are changing the way americans think and americans interact with each other, the way in which we view Public Policy issues, im sure youre familiar there was a report recently, he was covered by cnn from graphic im the Campaign Issue on october 31st 2019, russian accounts posing as americans targeted both sides ahead of the 2020 election, are you familiar with this report . And title only. Mr. Regear you familiar with the report . Same answer. So just for the benefit i want to ask that this report is committed to the record. Objection. So october 21st facebook announced a takedown of 50 instagram accounts posting about u. S. And social and political issues in the 3 20 election, facebook concluded that as it originated from russia and shown some elections to the Research Agency, the russian troll farm that targeted audience is in the election in 2016, these accounts are attacking kamala harris, elizabeth warren, almost house of them in swing states, especially florida, and what they are doing is not that some dissimilar from what they did before, focusing on divisive content, most of the content with forcing hostility often in the sense of accounts boosted on both sides, was a topic addressed by them and some posting with hashtag such as Police Brutality and black lives matter and others with quotes, blue lifes matter in black people, i know you are all familiar with these accounts a suspect from the postings from before, correct . So the question i have, clearly our Law Enforcement agents are working very hard to try to combat this disinformation, but it strikes me that the roofs cause, or at least one of the root causes is the reality of anonymous accounts in these social media engines and there has been a lot of discussion as to where universal verification is supposed to have consigliere reacted working with the social Media Companies like facebook, a prime example, but instead we can get it through cars and i would eliminates so much of this disinformation and misinformation and that is being perpetrated at the American Public, so can i get your sense as to whether or not that is something you are agencies respectfully have discussed internally and whether or not it is something you would recommend we take up that is a matter of discussion . So sir i will agree with you that the anonymity of the internet generally poses a broad Social Security challenge, i dont know why it is the number one reason we have challenges, with respect to foreign influence and others but it is a leading line, how do you address said i think is very tricky, how you have verification and authenticity in a way that you know who is emailing or sending you a message is actually the person claim to, be at the moment we are not in a position to comment on, this what we are trying to do is where we see indications that someone is into the claim to be along the lines of what they said will tie to individuals that we are investigating into providers do it so they can get pierce behind the nomination, we are also currently prosecuting and cities that are tied to the Research Agency and district which is my ability to comment on it but we are hoping to a consequences for activity related to 2016. Thank you mister chairman, thank you for having this hearing today, i think you each and every one of you for being here, i think voting all of us would agree is basically the foundation of our democracy and protecting our ability to vote and voting infrastructure from foreign interference is paramount, in georgia where i represent we learn that before the 2016 election in, a russian looking for vulnerabilities, while it appears that the ag didnt gain action into the election system in 2016, we continue to face attacks to this very day, just last month there is a reporter that two computers were stolen from both, there in my district, these computers contain very Sensitive Information that relates to every single voter georgia, and so as we take on these threats i want to make sure that we are working to build collaboration and transparency across the federal government, this states and for the American People, i want to ask each of you about how we can increase this transparency while also improving Election Security. Mister hockey i will start with, you im curious about your thoughts on whether states should be treated differently than other victims that the doj prosecutor in terms of sharing victims identities, for example was reported that election systems into florida counties were breached, but the government has not identified which florida counties were breached, on one hand we want to encourage states to represent and to talk about these vulnerabilities, to report them and share this publicly could discourage such reporting, but on the other hand we want the public to have confidence in our election system, we want them to have confidence and transparency in our election process, so you testified, im sorry im not here this morning, but i have a testimony, you testified and i quote, exposure of foreign influence operations ultimately may be one of the best ways to counter the info, so can you speak to how you think the federal government should not engage on disclosing such victim information on the Election Security context . Thank you i appreciate your nuance treatment of that issue because it implicates a lot of competing values. We do as the vice chair of the Committee Said when she gave her Opening Statement, we want to encourage and garner the trust of the state so that they are willing to call the fbi and not worry that we are going to release their identities or the problem publicly, to i think for principles, one we think it is a matter of state officials to decide when they disclosed to their publics what the threats to their particular infrastructure have been, so we will leave it to florida officials to communicate with the officials in that state or any other state, saying you worked with the fbi, we have done expediency and were gonna leave it to that sovereign state, but the second key principle i think is that, it is also released a level officials who are politically accountable for certifying the results of an election and, the fbi is currently viewing guidance on how to handle the notification in the context of elections, it is not out yet and we will notify system owners and operators, but also providing a heads up with the politically accountable chief state Election Officials so they are aware of what the fbi is doing at or local level. Thank you. Mr. Master stated mr. Flores, i would like to bury briefly hear from each of you on your agencies transparent policies and whether more transparency is actually needed. So i will speak to that very briefly, as i mentioned prior in the hearing we established communication protocols with the state and local Election Officials on how information will be promoted to empower them to speak to targeting their systems are possible incidents, most importantly being transparent in sharing technical indicators bradley in a non classified environment to the entire community about what threats are targeting Election Officials so they can only take this but talk to voters about the threats being real and the steps they are taking so that voters know that they are taking it seriously and responding, i think this is where running elections is really critical, voters have the ability to engage directly with those who run elections and have their questions at answered, they can be coworkers, and in many states they can watch this, so how can we empower those Election Officials with that information whether about thread work to me to talk about the voters. Thank you maam for your question, just one thing i can add in addition to my colleagues on the panel, as i mentioned in the opening station, when it comes to being transparent, one of the biggest strategies is to share intelligence as quickly as possible and whoever needs to receive that information, certainly that is not a decision the fbi can make, it involves all members including individuals outside the four members on this panel, but it is really one of our strategies to be doing this and sharing actual intelligence to the people who need to receive it. The gentle lady from pennsylvania. Thank you mister chairman, i want to sincerely thank all of you for being here and representing to us the important you are doing for our elections, we take this very seriously, i can see you do that, too so for the public we have the department of Homeland Security, we have the fbi, we have the department of justice, we have the u. S. Election System Commission and, you are so important on the front line and we are here to partner with you, i will start this question kind of quickly to miss flores, on october 8th just this month 2019, Senate Intelligence Committee Published its second volume of the investigation on russias interference in the 2016 elections and the u. S. Governments response to that attack, the report concluded that in october 2017 the Counter Intelligence division and fbi test an outside contractor to identify russian influence activity on twitter as this explains it suggests quote, fbi either lacked resources or review the work thats not a warning more institutionalize consideration, miss flores, the Senate Committees report is concerning, do you believe you have enough resources to investigate and protect our elections . Thank you for that question, as ive, said we can always use more resources, with that being said we are throwing everything we have against the foreign influence threat, we shifted resources for that very purpose, we continue to engage with all 56 of our field offices to make sure they are tracking the threat as closely as we are. So how often are you using outside contractors or are you moving away from that and the issue of Election Security . Maam i cant speak specifically to the use of outside contractors within our workforce, we do have contractors throughout many parts of the fbi, i cant speak specifically as to how many are working on the foreign influence threat, i can certainly take that back. We would like that information if he could share with, us can you tell us whether or not we whatever use an outside contractor from russia, iran, china, north korea, you now . You know i would defer that question to our Human Resources division or security division. I would like to ask you the same, thing to have adequately resources to your departments and you use outside contractors . We will start with mr. Masters in. We have the resources we need to build on the success that we had in 2018 and continue to support our state and local Election Officials, certainly with more resources comes greater capacity and responsiveness, the ability to increase for or remote Penetration Testing, but we certainly have what we need to build on the success and i did for you also to Human Resources on security. I would say that the election does not have the resources that we need, i would echo that the fyi 18 a 380 Million Dollars that went to the states, that was a great first step did not provide this states with the funding levels to solve all of the challenges that they face, but as i mentioned earlier we have seen people prioritizing from a menu of options but there are a number of things that state and local Election Officials could do, additional funding is crucial to help him do that. We love that information, thank you for sharing that with us. Briefly the 2020 budget would increase funding for the Counter Intelligence sector which would help in our efforts to confront malign foreign influence and nation state sponsored hacking, i dont think we employ this specifically for this area of, work we do have contractors working on the Justice Department and they are vetted and referred to others to explain how they are vetted, i will say choosing contractors reflects our judgment and folks with particular expertise that we can bring on and use them in our Foreign Investment security reviews, we have contractors on board we use them because a particular experience that we have lawyers dont have. To use any foreign contractors from russia, china, iran . What i do know is that contractors, they have to be screened for security clearance, i know that they would be vetted. What is concerning to us, for it to me, is that the president s fiscal year would cut funding, especially troubling since 2020 is the president ial election here, each of you, Robert Mueller and many others have said that it is persistent, pervasive, sweeping, systematic and maybe all and on this no real quickly. I want to follow up the you talked about the disinformation, to be specific as to the disinformation that you were able to give us concrete examples of what it would look like. Thank you mister chairman. Getting into the 2016 . I cant speak in specifics but i can certainly take that question back. Thank you very much. Generally from texas. Thank you, many thanks to our witnesses, really appreciate your presence in your work, i am still very concerned and i think the American Public should be very concerned about our elections approaching 2020, we know that three years ago russia was wildly successful in attacking our democracy by attacking our elections and despite the information that we have and despite the unified voice from our Intelligence Community we have a president who is cutting resources to our Election Security and it is stunning to me that the president of the United States would be willing to erode our Election Security and instead of fighting to keep it safe, our Voting Machines are still outdated, many of the vulnerabilities still remain today so we should all be very concerned and i hope that you all will continue to your work to confront the obstacles ahead of you and to inform the American Public. With that said, we know that special counsel muellers indict and noted that one of the ways that they interfered with our 2016 elections was by encouraging minority voters not to participate in elections, in fact the Research Center found that in 2016, African American turnout dropped by 20 , despite the fact that we had record a turnout in the country, the report details a complex strategies russia used to target the comedian to discourage African Americans from voting, starting with mr. Masters in, for each one of, you please what steps did you take to combat interference efforts to discourage minority groups from voting and are those steps sufficient . Thank you for your question maam, our focus is incarnation with the fbis Foreign Influence Task force is really building resilience in the American People, talking to them about how theyre being targeted with this, for the source is in regard to the election process or otherwise we have created a variety of products and are working with various communities and groups, so reaching out to groups to provide those resources to them, recognizing that they are the trusted voices in the community that can talk to the members about how they would be targeted with this and how to respond. Thank you for your, question with this whole concept of Media Literacy with the American Public, we cannot stress enough to the American Cities it understand where to vote, euro matters and its up to you to have that Media Literacy to understand essentially truth and where you are obtaining information, and the most proactive part of this, i will engage with social Media Companies and our willingness to engage with red indicators as it relates to, this we know that a foreign actors trying to propagate this using their platforms, continuing that dialog engagement social Media Companies as we roll into 2020. This is really fair to nefarious actors in part of what they do is have the investigation, so we are often there to obtain a Legal Process of various forms to investigate what foreign actors are doing and that information can be part of the information that is shared with the providers to confront the this information you are suggesting. When the disinformation crosses over to talk about the election process or administration, issues like when you vote or how to register how to participate, that would certainly be what would fall into our interest area and in doing that we are really working with locals to encourage their voters are their citizens to participate, to be able to identify trusted sources of information, be able to check their Voter Registration to make sure it is accurate and those are, that is where our focus has been. I have to followup questions for, you and everyone you mentioned working with social Media Outlets a spreading the threat of disinformation, and we sometimes have american candidates repeating this information provided by russia for example, do you alert social media about that information that is coming from american candidates, thats number, one number two what specific steps if you take advantage in a five there were foreign efforts, similar to those used in 2016 to discourage minority voters, whether they were used again in 2018. Thank you for your question, the fbi cannot be the truth police, we cannot police content as to whether it is being true or false, again we start with the foreign, actor its the foreign aspect that is to interest, that is the information we then provide to the social media providers, its really up to those providers to determine whether that content violators in terms of, service regarding steps that we saw and 2018, if we saw the same in 2016, is really not at the same level and i spoke with the entry agency. Thank you and your back mister chairman. So the gentleman from georgia. Thank you all for being here today, in february of 2019 doj and thats the issued a joint statement that there was no evidence to date that there was identified activity of a Foreign Government or age and had a Material Impact on the 2018 election. Now mr. Hockey and mr. Master stand here you can see he has reached conclusions because the Intelligence Community didnt detect a threat, correct . I think that is more or less write it sets for a two step process, and i see including the fbi gather reports and then we evaluate them and the reality of that impact. I understand but the Intelligence Community did not detect a threat and that is why you issued you are and that no evidence to date was that any identified activity that it had a Material Impact on the election he, state and local officials also did not detect a threat, is in that correct . Well i think the i. C. E. Did gather port of actions it had the intention purpose of interfering, so when you see a threat, it means to us purpose, state Election Officials, they detected a successful threat . That is my understanding. All right, thank you. You concluded that they also did not detect a threat, so albert sensors regularly across the country detect possible malicious activity against election infrastructure but none was detected for 2018. Im not aware of foreign adversary interfering or getting access to election infrastructure in 2018 is it possible that an attack or could have access and change the databases without being detected in 2018 . Is it impossible . Yes or no . So we have no information to suggest. Now your testimony was at 8000 local jurisdictions conduct the elections, many of those local jurisdictions used director recording, electronic Voting Machines also known as touchscreen electronic Voting Machines in the 2016 president ial elections and also in the 2018 president ial elections, and investigating election interference after the 2016 president ial election, how many of the tens of thousands of direct reporting electronic Voting Machines used in that election were subjected to a a federal audit agency . Im not aware of Forensic Audits that were performed were there any other types of testing or reporting used and in 2018 elections . I would say that this far it goes. Are you aware of any federal agencies that have conducted any analysis of direct reporting, on electronic Voting Machines used in the 2018 or 2016 elections . Sir we havent been asked and i dont think its a role to audit the systems, the states are, my question is has the federal government used its resources to look at or conducted a Forensic Audit of any Voting Machines, any a direct reporting, Voting Machines either in 2016 or 2018 and it appears that the answer is no, would anybody disagree with that . So the best of my knowledge we have not guests the accuracy. Ok im concerned about the 2020 election, especially considering the security of our Voting Machines and have come to light in the last three years and id like to hear from representative agencies and their Response Plan should our elections hes successfully hacked and 2020, what would be the federal response to a successful hacking in 2020 . The gentlemans time has expired. Thank you all keep it short but just stands prepared to answer another Response Service including deployment of teams to the locality or stay depending on the impact on infrastructure in order to conduct analysis or to mitigate the impacts of a possible cyber tradition on election infrastructure, in addition we have numerous analysis capabilities remotely that we can provide to help determine if there is in fact an intrusion and the best way to mitigate it. Sir the fbi would work in concert with penetration detected, we would use all of our investigated my to inch retribution and bring about criminal charges of the. Obviously we try to prevent this, and we try to help them batted down the hatches before an intrusion or successful. I would say on a positive note that both with the fyi 18, and other resources, the number of paperless machines has decreased substantially, and over 90 of americans will be voting with some type of paper on a trail. Thank you. Gentlemen the time has expired. Thank you mister chairman, thank you for coming here this morning to you such an important hearing, its been confirmed and we have talked about this several times today that all of the main intelligence agencies confirmed that russia interfered in the elections in a sweeping and systematic fashion and it wasnt just a signal attempt, we have heard several witnesses that they are actually engaging in interference currently as we speak, so i want to ask, this i think the chairman may have asked this but do you think it is appropriate for the sitting president or any elected official to ask a Foreign Governments to interfere in our elections. No. They dont like the word appropriate but we would urge anyone with indications of such an interference to come to the fbi and work with us. During the age 2016 hacking florida was hacked unsealed out by the russian government, they targeted Voter Registration systems and theyre able to successfully hack into the systems of two different counties, we also had a security briefing from the fbi and others on that issue, so one of the things that i asked during that briefing if they could say with certainty that they manipulated the data, i was told that they actually could, not you could not say with certainty that these hackers did not many plead the data, can you confirm that with me today please. I wasnt at the closed briefing so i wasnt told about the classified information. We have said that we have no indication to believe that there was any Material Impact on the ability to vote or the Counter Intelligence, and i believe that. So i think they answered, that bonus for us. I would just echo what my colleague said, maam i was at the close hearing but i have no reason to doubt what was there during the time. Thank you, i know that there is a group working with federal state and local officials to secure the elections, its called the election infrastructure coordinating council, it is working to improve security protocols and works with local and state officials, so mr. Masters and, is florida part of that council . Yes, florida actually has to local representatives that are on the government quoting counsel and work with us. Can you very briefly describe the progress of the group. Absolutely the growth engagement of the council since establishment has been great, we have 24 state and local levels i represent a vast array of the committee, to represent local Election Officials from across the country and the purpose of that group is to inform an approach to help secure elections, so what is their view a risk . What support information sharing would how bit and how do we make sure they feel comfortable sharing back with us. So we are going to move on to a different topic here, mister masters, in on may 21st, director testified that they have not received a briefing on russian interference in the 2020 election, yes or no, are you aware of dhs briefing on russian interference in 2020 elections . Im not aware, but that doesnt mean it didnt happen, im operational so that is above my level, i will say we engage regularly in coordination with them across the whole of government on this Election Security. Do you know if were agency has tried to meet with the president on Election Security . I dont know, but that doesnt mean it hasnt happened. Do you think you would be important for the president to understand the threat facing the 2020 election is before he allocates resources . I think the work we have done has provided the information to coordinate that so i assume that is part of the court with us. How many times has your agency met with the president to discuss Elections Security . Thank you for the question maam, i cant answer that specifically, again that doesnt mean it has been tap and, i just dont know personally. Same answer maam. Do you think you would be important for youre agencies to discuss Election Security with the president . I think it is important for the president to understand the National Security threats facing the country. I think its important for everyone to understand the National Security threats facing the country especially when it relates to National Security. This concludes todays hearing, thank all of our witnesses for participating, without objections all participants will have five days to submit questions or additional materials, again we think everyone without objection the hearing is observe upturned. Adjourned John Richardson served as chief, talks about how Maritime Security is changing due to the ice melts, the center for strategic and International Studies posted this forum with climate in Foreign Policy experts, we begin with the panel on the impact on a changing climate, rain biodiversity and human populations living