The professor believes that he could bring suit if he thought the speaker of the house assumed the roll of commander in chief. The point here is not who was the better reading on this particular question of whether theres an implicit Transition Authority to smooth the transition to the new requirements. The critical fact that this is mere lay debate about the best way of construing legislation and the house has no legal interest in that. Now, whatever the right answer. This may be an important matter in terms of extending health care to 25, or 30 million americans and making sure the business has time to comply with the new requirements that this business desired and as i believe this house overwhelmingly supports. Thats what this transition is carrying out. Whatever the right answer to that question, i think its safe to say that never in our history has such a radical change in the role of the Judicial Branch been proposed to deal with such a routine question of administrative process. Allowing this kind of suit by the Congress Every time it disagrees with how a president carried out the law would be a radical liberalization of the role that the judiciary has played and it is a transformation that this committee and the house should decline. 40 years ago the water gate scandal led to the only resignation of an american president. Throughout this month American History tv revisits 1974 and the final weeks of the nixon administration. This weekend, Opening Statements from the House Judiciary Committee as members consider articles of impeachment against president nixon. Its the one act in which the entire country participates and the result is binding upon all of the states for four years. The outcome is accepted. The occupant of that office stands as a symbol of our National Unit and commitment. So if the judgment of the people is to be reversed if the majority will is to be undone, if that symbol is to be replaced through the action of the elected representatives, then it must be for substantial and not trivial offenses supported by fact and not by surmise. Sunday night at 8 00 eastern on American History t. V. On cspan 3. Up next a hearing on the fbis efforts to combat cyber crime. Its an hour and a half. Appear Senate Judiciary subcommittee chaired by i call this hearing of the judiciary committee, subcommittee on terrorism to order. Thank you evan for being here. I have the permission of my Ranking Member to do get under way. He will be joining us shortly. Allowing for Opening Statements and so forth i think its probably the best way owe do this to simply proceed and get under way. Todays hearing is entitled taking down bot nets. Public and private efforts to disrupt and dismantle cyber criminal networks. We will be hearing testimony about these bot nets and the threats that they pose to our economy, to our personal privacy and to our National Security. A bot net is a simple thing. Its a network of computers connected over the internet that can be instructed to carry out specific tasks. The problem with bot nets is that typically the owners of those computers dont know that they are carrying out those tasks. Bot nets have existed in various forms for well over a decade and they are now recognized as a weapon of choice for cyber criminals. It is easy to see why. A bot net can increase the Computing Resources at a hackers disposal exponentially all while helping conceal the hackers identity. A cyber criminal with access to a large bat net can command a virtual army of millions, most of whom have no idea that they have been conscripted. Bat nets enable criminals to steal individuals personal and financial information, to plunder Bank Accounts, to commit Identity Theft on a massive scale. For years bot nets have sent most of the spam that we receive. The largest bot nets can capable of spending billions of spam messages everyday. They are also used to launch distributed denial of service or ddos attacks which can shut down web sites by simply overwhelming them with traffic. This is a constant threat to our businesses in every sector of the economy. The only limit to the malicious purposes for which bot nets can be used is the imagination of the criminal who controls them. When a hacker runs out of uses for a bot net, he can simply sell it to another criminal organization to use for an entirely new purpose. It presents a Virtual Infrastructure of crime. Lets be clear. The threat from bot nets is not just a threat to our wallets. Bot nets can effective weapons not merely for those who want to steal from us but also for those who wish to do us far more serious harm. Experts have long feared that the next 9 11 may be a cyber attack. If thats the case, it is likely that a bot net will be involved. Simply put, bot nets threaten the enteg rintegrity of our com networks, our personal privacy and our National Security. In recent years, the government and the private sector have launched aggressive Enforcement Actions to disrupt and to disable individual bot nets. The techniques used to go after these bot nets have been as varied as the bot nets themselv themselves. Many of these Enforcement Actions use the court system to obtain injunctions and restraining orders, utilizing innovative legal theories, combining modern statutory claims under statutes such as the Computer Fraud and abuse act with such an shent common law claims trespass to channels. In 2011, the government obtained for the first time a court order that allows it to seize control of a bot net using a substitute command and control server. As a result, the fbi launched a successful take down of the core flood bot net, fleeing 90 of the computers core flood had infected in the United States. Microsoft working with Law Enforcement has obtained several civil restraining orders to disrupt and in some cases take down individual bot nets, including the citadel bot net which was responsible for stealing hundreds of millions of dollars. Earlier this year, the Justice Department and the fbi, working with the private sector and Law Enforcement agencies around the world, obtained a restraining order allowing them to take over the game over zeus bot net. It was challenging because it relied on a infrastructure that was designed to thwart efforts to stop it. I look forward to learning more about these and other Enforcement Actions and the lessons that we should take away from them. We must recognize that Enforcement Actions are just one part of the answer so im interested in hearing also about how we can better inform computer users of the dangers of bot nets and what other hygiene steps we can take to address this threat. My hope is that this hearing starts a conversation among those dealing day to day with the bot net threat and those in congress who are deeply concerned about that threat. Congress, of course, cannot and should not dictate tactics for fighting bot nets. That must be driven by the expertise of those on the front lines of the fight. Congress does have an Important Role to make sure theres a solid Legal Foundation for Enforcement Actions against bot nets and clear standards governing when they can occur. We must also occur that bot net take downs and other actions are carried out in a way that protects consumers privacy all while recognizing that bot nets themselves represent one of the greatest privacy threats that computer users face today. They can actually hack into your computer and look at you through your web cam. We must take sure that our laws respond to a threat that is constantly evolving and encourage rather than stifle innovation to disrupt cyber criminal networks. I look forward to starting this conversation and to continue it in the months ahead. I thank my distinguished Ranking Member for being such a terrific colleague on these cyber issues. We hope that a good piece of cyber bot net legislation can emerge from our Work Together. I thank you all for participating in this hearing and for your supports to protect americans from this dangerous threat and before we hear from our witnesses, i will yield to my distinguished Ranking Member senator lindsey graham. Thank you mr. Chairman. I want to acknowledge your work on this issue in terms the threats we face in the criminal front and terrorist front. Congress is having a difficult time organizing ourselves to combat both threats. To make sure this is not an academic exercise, i guess this was last year or a bit longer, the department of revenue in South Carolina was hacked into by we dont know all the details but a criminal enterprise that stole millions of Social Security numbers and information regarding companys charters and revenue. Thus required by the state of South Carolina to purchase protection. I think it was a 35 million per year allocation to protect those who had their Social Security numbers stolen we believe by a criminal ept prize. It happened in South Carolina. It can happen to any company, business or organization. In america our laws are not where they should be so the purpose of this hearing is to gather information. Hopefully come out and be a friend of Law Enforcement. Senator whitehouse you deserve a lot of credit in my view about leading the effort in the United States senator if not the whole congress on this issue. Thank you. Im delighted now to welcome our administration witnesses. Before we do, his timing is perfect. Senator chris coons has joined us. The first witness is leslie caldwell. Shes the head of the Criminal Division at the department of justice. She was confirmed on may 14th. 2014. She hassica dedicated most of h career on handling criminal cases. She served as a federal ausa in us attorneys offices in both new york and california. After her testimony, we will hear from joseph demaris who is the assistant director for the fbis cyber division. Joined as a special agent in 1988 and has held several liedership positions within the bureau serving as head and assistant director of the International Operations division and the assistant director of the new york division. He was appointed in 2012 to his current position and i have had the chance to work very closely with him and i appreciate, very much, the energy and determination that he has brought to this particular arena of combat against the criminal networks of the world and i look forward to his testimony. We will begin with assistant attorney general walledwell. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Justices Department against bot nets. I want to thank the chair for holding this hearing. The threat from bot nets defined in simple terms as networks of hijacked computers infected with software or malcare which was controlled by an individual or organized group for criminal purposes has increased dramatically over the past self years. They are using stateoftheart techniques to take control of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Victim Computers or bots. They can flood an internet site with junk data. They knock it off line by doing that. They can steal banking credentials, credit card numbers, other financial information. Send fraudulent email or even spy on unsuspecting computer users through their web cams. They are intended to undermine americans privacy and security and steal from unsuspecting victims. If left unchecked, they will succeed in doing so. They have become more sophisticated over recent years, the department of justice working through highly trained prosecutors at the computer crime and intellectual property division. At the National Security division at the Justice Department u u. S. Attorneys offices across the country and fbi and other Law Enforcement agencies have adapted and advanced our tactics to meet this threat. As one example, in may of this year, csips, the u. S. Attorney for the Western District of pennsylvania, and the fbi in partnership with other federal and private sector organizations, disrupted the game over zeus bot net and indicted a key member of that group that operated that bot net. Until its disruption, it was regarded as the most sophisticated bot world wide. It infected between 500,000 and one million computer and caused more than 100 million in financial loss. Put simply, the bot master stole personal informations from Victim Computers and with the click of a mouse, used that stolen information to empty the batchi Bank Accounts and rob small businesses, hospitals, and other victims from transferring funds from the victims accounts to the criminal accounts. And also installed another malware known as random wear that was installed on infected computers and enabled them to encrypt key files on the infected computers and charged them a random for the release of their files. Crypt oe locker infected more than 260,000 Computers World wide. The departments operation against game over zeus began with a complex International Investigation conducted in Close Partnership with the private sector. It continued through the departments use with a combination of court authorized civil and Legal Process to stop infected computers from communicating with one another. It ultimately permitted the team to not only identify and charge one of the leading perpetrators but also cripple the bot net and stop the random wear from functioning. It was able to identify victims and working with the department of home land security, foreign governments and private sector partners was able to facilitate the removal of malware from computers. As we informed the courts last week it remains inoperable and out of the criminals hands. They are down 30 and crypt oe locker remains nonoperational. As the Successful Operation demonstrated we are employing tools that congress has given us to protect our citizens and businesses. Were leveraged our strengths by partnering with businesses all over the world and the private sector. If we want to remain effective our laws and resources must keep pace with the increasingly sophisticated ways of our adversaries. They are always adapting. I discussed several resource increases that will assist the department to counter these threats. These include an amendment to the Computer Fraud abuse act and several other proposals. We look very much forward to working with the committee to address these issues. We also need Additional Resources at the department to continue to disrupt bot nets, includi including hiring new attorneys in my state. Thank you for my opportunity to discuss our work in this area and i look forward to answering any question you might have. Thank you assistant attorney general caldwell. Now director demaris. Good afternoon whitehouse. Thank you for holding this hearing. Chairman whitehouse. I look forward to discussing the progress of the fbi that it has made on campaigns to disrupt and disable our significant bot nets that you know that we target. Cyber criminal threats pose very real threats to the Economic Security and privacy of its citizens. The use is on the rise. Industry experts estimate that bot net attacks have resulted in the overall loss of millions of dollars from Financial Institutions and other major businesses. They also effect, universities, hospitals, defense contractors, government, and even private citizens. The weapons of a cyber criminal are tools like bot nets which are created with Malicious Software that is readily available for purchase on the internet. Criminals distribute this Malicious Software also known as malware that can turn a computer into a bot. When this occurs, a computer can perform automated tasks over the internet without any direction from the user. Bot nets can be used for organized criminal activity, Covert Intelligence collection or even a tax on Critical Infrastructure. The impact of this global cyber threat has been significant. According to industry estimates, bot nets have caused over 9 billion to victims and over 10 billion in losses globally. Approximately 500 Million Computers are effected each year. The fbi with its Law Enforcement partners and private sector partners, to include the panel of distinguished presenters today from microsoft, far sight, have had success in taking down a number of large