The Cybersecurity 202: Congressional scrutiny heats up of government response to the SolarWinds hack Tonya Riley
with Aaron Schaffer The House Homeland Security Committee will today hold its first cybersecurity hearing of 2021. The hearing comes as scrutiny heats up of the government s response to a massive Russian hack of government systems exposed in December. “The task before us is to zero in on how can we mature our defenses to match the capabilities of our adversaries,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) will say in his opening statement. “The Russian SolarWinds campaign threatens our nation and cannot be tolerated.”
Quick Hits
IRS elevated
Nancy Sieger to the post of permanent CIO. She had been serving as acting CIO of the tax agency since June, 2019.
Customs and Border Protection reopened the comment period on a proposed rule that would move the use of facial recognition systems on non-citizen and non-resident travelers in and out of the United States out of the pilot phase and make it a permanent fixture of international travel. The comment period for the Biometric Exit/Entry program had concluded in December, 2020. The use of facial recognition in government systems have been controversial, with civil liberties groups worried about the effectiveness of the technology and the adequacy of privacy protections.
Sen.
Marco Rubio, Florida Republican, said the institutes engage in covert influence operations designed to sway American public opinion and teach half-truths about China. Under pressure from the Trump administration, scores of the institutes were closed.
“For years, I have raised the alarm about the threat posed by Chinese government-run Confucius Institutes, and the FBI has warned that the Communist Party uses these entities to infiltrate American schools,” Mr. Rubio told Inside the Ring. “
President Trump and his administration took a positive step in mandating schools and universities disclose their partnerships with these agents of Chinese government influence. That President Biden would undo this important action is deeply disturbing.”
The two leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence say the government s response to the hack so far has been "disjointed and disorganized."
The leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence are furious with the intelligence community and pleading with it to assign a leader to handle the SolarWinds hack affecting a government-estimated 18,000 public and private sector customers.