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 ProtectionProgram 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 D