Fired FBI Director James Comey on Thursday said that Russia “will be back” to interfere in future U.S. elections.
“Was the Russian activity in the 2016 election a one-off proposition or is this a part of a long-term strategy? Will they be back?” Sen. Angus King (I-ME) asked Comey.
“Oh, it’s a long-term practice of theirs. It’s stepped up a notch in a significant way in ’16,” Comey replied. “They’ll be back.”
“I think that’s very important for the American people to understand, that this is very much a forward-looking investigation in terms of, how do we understand what they did and how do we prevent it,” King said. “Would you agree that’s a big part of our role here?”
“Yes, sir. And it’s not a Republican thing or a Democratic thing. It really is an American thing,” Comey said. “They’re going to come for whatever party they choose to try and work on behalf of, and they’re not devoted to either, in my experience. They’re just about their own advantage and they will be back.”
Given the seriousness of Russians hacking political parties, possibly hacking voter rolls and corrupting our election system, the very first question to the President, Spicer or anyone who’s in a position to answer, should be what specific steps is the administration taking to monitor and prevent election interference from Russia, other state actors or other groups in our outside of the US.
If you put a quarter in a slot machine and it kicked out 100 bucks would you give that slot another chance? Hell yes…it pays off. The Russians had enormous success in the scam. But it helps to have others on your team though. While Putin was working the infield Comey was working the outfield on the same Anti Clinton team. They won. As in THEY won.
How can Comey hold that smug self content above it all face in light of what he did? Time after time he’s said he acted to protect the image of the FBI. He was willing to take down the front runner in a presidential election in order to keep “good optics” on his damn organization. I think he’s full of shit. His explanations are about as believable those Trumps spews to save his sorry ass. No matter what the “optics” were or anything else for that matter Comey was going to do his thing. He was going to ding Clinton one way or the other. Enough of him.
Now that they’ve seen what they can do they’ll surely ramp it up for any future elections. Especially if the Republicans do absolutely nothing to safe guard our election procedures in hopes that they DO meddle again.
To me, an IT security amateur, it would seem that someone like the NSA or comparable group could advise any group that uses voter data or somehow lead the way.
Does anyone of our TPM groupies here have any insights?
Cyber security often gets treated as an IT problem, when in fact a robust handling will be as much (or more) a matter of business processes as it is IT. The FBI’s “detect and defuse” approach is a good one.
ETA: I’m in process of starting a cloud-security business, and this is what I plan to emphasize. Everyone’s focused on preventing hacks. That’s good, but it’s not a full solution – nor (and this is iconoclastic) should that effort be allowed to suck up so much time and energy that the even more important efforts of detecting hacks and minimizing the impacts of being hacked are neglected. These three are all needed, but the emphasis on prevention is far too high.