Congress May Lack Technical Expertise to Properly Investigate Russian Hacking/Cyber Warfare

[KittyWampus]

Congressional Intelligence Committees investigating Russian hacking may not have the technical skills required to properly investigate Russian hacking and Cyber Warfare. Budget cuts mean not enough staffers, most of those on Capitol Hill are versed in policy or legal issues. Staffers are needed with expertise not only in how cyber activity operates but the legalities involved and history of actors/organizations involved. There has been a Cyber Issue bootcamp for staffers at Stanford University but that is not sufficient.

In related news, Louise Mensch has written a NYTimes piece about what the Intelligence Committee should ask about Russian hacking. She suggested a list of names for witnesses and questions to ask them. It's important to avoid mentioning FISA so that GLOMAR will not kick in ("FBI can't talk about an ongoing investigation&quot .

Ultimately, Congress needs to add money to their budget to allow the hiring of staff with both the necessary expertise when it comes to cyber warfare and the ability to pass a high level security clearance. Democrats need to start speaking up about this as a national security issue.

Committees and their members customarily rely on staff to do the heavy lifting to prepare background research, evaluate evidence and information, and advise on policy and legal issues. Depending on the committee, staffers are typically well-versed in the law, international affairs, Washington policy debates, and more. But a technical matter like the election hacks benefits from knowledge of coding, information security, and attribution.

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While some programs were created in recent years to remedy the desperate need for computer scientists and hackers on the Hill — like TechCongress, a tech policy fellowship in D.C. — the intelligence committees don’t normally accept fellows or detailees due to the sensitivity of the policy issues they discuss.

“Anecdotally, of the 15,000 staff in Congress, I’m aware of six that have technology-related educational backgrounds,” Travis Moore, the founder and director of TechCongress told The Intercept in response to a question about the staffing on the intelligence committees. “This is a problem. All policy is increasingly ‘tech’ policy.”

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But at the end of the day, there’s not much money to throw around, and adding a technical staffer might mean replacing another qualified legal or policy expert. “Congressional budgets have been slashed 35% and even officers that would like to hire for this expertise don’t have the resources to do so,” Moore said.

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“Evidence of hacking, computer forensics, and attribution are highly technical fields,” Steven Bellovin, a computer science researcher and professor at Columbia University with experience advising the government on technology, wrote in an email.

“If you don’t have independent experts in those fields, you cannot independently evaluate the evidence — all you can do is look at their reports and see if all of the analysts agree,” Bellovin added.

snip

There’s a “typical tendency of governments to appoint lawyers to senior roles in leading all their cyber efforts,” according to Tony Cole, the chief technology officer of global government at cybersecurity firm FireEye. “The legal expertise is needed to ensure all applicable laws are followed, especially since this is a relatively gray area in the area around international law … [but] more operational cyber expertise at the most senior levels in government is needed badly,” he wrote in an email to The Intercept.


https://theintercept.com/2017/02/28/congress-may-lack-technical-expertise-to-properly-investigate-russian-hacking/?platform=hootsuite

What to Ask About Russian Hacking
Louise Mensch

So, I have some ideas for how the House committee members should proceed. If I were Adam Schiff, the leading Democrat on the committee, I would demand to see the following witnesses: Carter Page, Paul Manafort, Richard Burt, Erik Prince, Dan Scavino, Brad Parscale, Roger Stone, Corey Lewandowski, Boris Epshteyn, Rudolph Giuliani, Michael Flynn, Michael Flynn Jr., Felix Sater, Dmitry Rybolovlev, Michael Cohen, Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Robert and Rebekah Mercer, Stephen Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, Michael Anton, Julia Hahn and Stephen Miller, along with executives from Cambridge Analytica, Alfa Bank, Silicon Valley Bank and Spectrum Health.

To the White House director of social media, Dan Scavino: “You tweeted an anti-Semitic meme about Hillary Clinton from Donald Trump’s account during the election. That meme appeared to have come from an automated account on a Russian-controlled network of malware-infected computers, or botnet. What knowledge did you have of the existence of a network of fake Twitter profiles that supported your campaign and were partisans of Russia?”

To the Trump campaign adviser and businessman Carter Page: “You have said that the Trump campaign approved your July visit to give a speech in Moscow. Provide the committee with a full list of everyone you spoke to during that trip and describe precisely what was discussed. Were sanctions ever a topic?

“When you returned to Moscow after the election, you presented slides comparing Rex Tillerson and Hillary Clinton as secretaries of state before Mr. Tillerson was announced as Mr. Trump’s choice. Who told you Mr. Tillerson would be the pick?

“Stephen Miller, then a campaign spokesman, stated that Jeff Sessions was putting together the foreign policy team. How were you recruited to that team? What contact did you have with its head, Mr. Sessions?

snip

The framing of the committee’s questions matters immensely. Legally, witnesses cannot confirm or deny even the existence of a current national security investigation. The very mention of a “FISA warrant” would allow Mr. Sessions to avoid the substance by excusing himself from commenting. Committee members must therefore word their questions without reference to any case. I would simply ask Mr. Sessions this:

“Was the president’s tweet about a wiretap at Trump Tower, to your knowledge, illegal? If so, to whom have you reported this offense?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/opinion/what-to-ask-about-russian-hacking.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

[Jonny Appleseed]

1. We need a cybersecurity/warfare federal agency; but not during this administration

I have too many nightmares about them using the NSA nefariously already.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. That might be what Feinstein was alluding to the other day

when someone asked her about getting Twitler out of office, she said ( paraphrasing this)
" We are working on that, we have some technical people working on it"

[Girard442]

3. Too damn many smart people are liberals.

They need to find computer technology experts that aren't too bright.

[MedusaX]

4. Computer Forensics

Most likely, the IC has already done most of the data analysis activities which require extraordinarily high degrees of specialization.....

The next level of specialized technicians can take those results and identify the various connections that exist between and among strands of communications ...

At this point, no one is searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack... rather, they are looking for common points of intersection and the patterns of communication activity amongst those points...

From there, you can begin to evaluate the content of the various communication sequences...

I suspect they will discover a rather large web involving spiders of all sizes.....

[Orrex]

5. They lack the technical expertise to pass legislation on women's heath, too

But that's never stopped them.

k/r

[TheFrenchRazor]

6. absolutely true. nt