The Senate Intelligence Committee has not completed its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, but has gathered enough evidence to affirm that active measures by Russia will continue and state and local officials must take all steps to protect their voting systems for upcoming elections.
Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Ranking Member Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) confirmed the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) announcement that 21 states experienced electoral system interference and urged an aggressive, whole-of-government approach to combat foreign influence.
“There is a large consensus that [the Russians] hacked into political files, released those files, in an effort to influence the election. We think they actively tried to at least test the vulnerabilities of 21 states’ electoral systems,” said Warner, who held a joint press conference with Burr on Wednesday to provide an update on their committee’s investigation. “It has been very disappointing to me, and I believe the Chairman as well, that it took 11 months for the Department of Homeland Security to reveal those 21 states.”
While the Senators clarified their investigation has not concluded, they are confident enough in the findings first reported in the intelligence community assessment (ICA) released in January on Russian interference to assume active measures will continue in future elections.
“Given that we have interviewed everybody that had a hand in the ICA, I think there is general consensus among members and staff that we trust the conclusions of the ICA,” said Burr
Warner said DHS has ensured the committee they would step up efforts to protect electoral systems in the upcoming November elections in Virginia and New Jersey.
This week, DHS announced it would create a task force to help state and local officials strengthen the security of their electoral systems (Defense Daily, Oct. 3)
To combat continued active measures to interfere with election systems, Burr described a provision in the Senate’s fiscal year 2018 intelligence authorization bill he introduced last month which requires all states have a designated official with a high enough security clearance to receive classified information on election issues.
“We felt compelled with what we had learned to make sure that just the fact that somebody wasn’t cleared at a high enough level would put a state out there not being notified,” said Burr.
Panelists at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce cyber security summit Wednesday agreed that many of those on the state and local level in charge of electoral systems are insufficiently prepared to protect against active interference measures.
“Many of the counties are on a wing and a prayer with their ability to fight back against interference. We are unprotected in the most profoundly fundamental element of our democracy,” said retired Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, who now serves as president of the Brookings Institution think tank.
On the same panel, former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Mike Rogers echoed the Senators’ view that DHS has a role in helping states with the cyber resiliency of their electoral systems. However, he argued against Congress spending time trying to set electoral standards across the board.
Rogers believes a federal government entity should be set up for top state election officials to consult with regarding measures to protect against interference, but said this must be voluntary not mandatory.
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation is expected to continue through the rest of 2017. Burr confirmed they have 25 interviews scheduled through the rest of October, and will hold a public hearing on Nov. 1 with Facebook, Google and Twitter to discuss avoiding future electoral influence measures on their platforms.
Warner said they hope to address whether the three companies can ensure that the public is aware when the source of the ad is a foreign entity, can ensure that trending news stories aren’t being pushed by bots, and that all political advertising content is readily available for scrutiny.
The committee won’t release the Facebook ads it has examined for potential Russian backing, but hopes the company will be forthcoming in disclosing this information.
“There are concerns that we continue to pursue. Collusion, the committee continues to look into all evidence to see if there was any hint of collusion. Now, I’m not going to even discuss initial findings because we haven’t any. We’ve got a tremendous amount of documents still to go through,” said Burr. “We have more work to do as it relates to collusion, but we’re developing a clearer picture of what happened. What I will confirm is that the Russian intelligence service is determined, clever and I recommend that every campaign and every election official take this very seriously.”