The Washington Post - 19.09.2019

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

rector Michael Orlando to defend

the decision to obtain a Foreign

Intelligence Surveillance Court

warrant to monitor the electronic

communications of former

Trump campaign adviser Carter

Page. Orlando declined to discuss

the case, which is the subject of a

review by the Justice Depart-

ment’s inspector general.

“It appears to me that faulty

information was used to investi-

gate Trump campaign officials by

partisan agents,” said Rep. Steve

Chabot (R-Ohio).

Another prominent Republi-

can critic of the FBI, Rep. Jim

Jordan (Ohio), said Democrats do

not want to hear from the inspec-

tor general, Michael Horowitz,

because he has found serious

fault with former FBI director

James B. Comey’s handling of the

Russia investigation.

[email protected]

[email protected]

Union wants lawmakers not only

to kill the call-records authority,

but also to limit the types of

records that can be obtained un-

der Section 215, bar the govern-

ment from targeting individuals

on the basis of their First Amend-

ment activity and ban warrant-

less searches of Americans’ infor-

mation under other surveillance

authorities. Without such re-

forms, Congress should let the

laws lapse, the ACLU said in a

letter this week.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Re-

publicans criticized officials not

for their general handling of sur-

veillance programs, but for their

decisions in one specific case: the

FBI probe into Russia’s election

interference and whether any as-

sociates of President Trump’s

2016 campaign were involved

with those efforts.

Republicans on the committee

pressed FBI Deputy Assistant Di-

urged Congress to reauthorize

permanently all three powers, in-

cluding the “Section 215” authori-

ty that enables not only the call

records program, but also the

collection of other types of busi-

ness records potentially relevant

to national security investiga-

tions.

Lawmakers may want to per-

manently delete the call records

authority specifically, but there is

likely to be support for renewing

the underlying Section 215 au-

thority, given officials’ insistence

on its utility. With it, they said, the

government can obtain hotel, car

rental and driver’s l icense records

— all items permitted in an ordi-

nary criminal investigation

through a grand jury subpoena.

But civil libertarians are press-

ing Congress to take the opportu-

nity to strengthen privacy protec-

tions in surveillance law.

The American Civil Liberties

terrorism.

“You never know what you’re

going to confront in the future,”

said Susan Morgan of the NSA.

“A s an intelligence professional, I

want to have every tool available

in my toolbox.”

Nadler, however, said he want-

ed more than “a vague promise

that it might come in handy one

day in the future somehow.”

Lawmakers seemed more will-

ing to reauthorize two other sur-

veillance provisions due to expire

in December — one, which offi-

cials say has never been used by

the FBI, for conducting surveil-

lance of individuals who may be

planning terrorism but are not

linked to foreign terrorist groups

and another for “roving” wiretaps

designed to follow terrorism sus-

pects who quickly switch phones

and email accounts.

In A ugust, then-Director of Na-

tional Intelligence Daniel Coats

administration is asking Con-

gress to reauthorize that effort

after shutting it down.

The law authorizing this data

collection is due to expire in

December. It is a scaled-down

version of a program that came

under intense public criticism

amid disclosures in 2013 by for-

mer NSA contractor Edward

Snowden. Under the earlier ver-

sion of the program, the NSA

collected Americans’ records in

bulk from phone companies —

who called whom, when and for

how long, but not call content. A

2015 law made the phone compa-

nies keep those records and pro-

vide the agency with logs of num-

bers linked to suspected terror-

ists.

Senior officials from the NSA,

FBI and Justice Department testi-

fied in support of the program’s

renewal, saying it could be help-

ful someday in the fight against

BY DEVLIN BARRETT

AND ELLEN NAKASHIMA

Lawmakers on Wednesday ex-
pressed skepticism about the
Trump administration’s call to
retain the authority to run a
counterterrorism program that
was shuttered last year.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.),
the chairman of the House Judici-
ary Committee, said he was
doubtful the National Security
Agency’s aborted program to col-
lect millions of Americans’ phone
records should be reauthorized
after repeated compliance prob-
lems and minimal evidence of the
program’s utility.
“Simply put, the NSA disman-
tled the program because it was a
serious failure,” Nadler said. “It is
not a bad thing that the NSA
identified a problem, told us
about it and tried to fix it.” But he
called it “baffling” t hat the Trump

Democrats wary of administration bid to renew NSA surveillance program

BY ISAAC STANLEY-BECKER

A top Democratic official is
warning in newly blunt terms that
the p arty c annot partner effective-
ly with the Trump administration
to fend off foreign cyberattacks
because of the president’s pro-
fessed d oubts about Russian inter-
ference in the 2016 e lection.
“The president’s words and ac-
tions have made it difficult to de-
velop a truly effective trust-based
relationship with the Department
of Homeland S ecurity,” Tom Perez,
the chairman of the Democratic
National Committee, wrote in a
letter Tuesday to Sen. Ron Wyden
(D-Ore.), in response to a request
for information about how the
major national party committees
were guarding against informa-
tion warfare.
“While we have contact with
those in the administration, this
president’s continued refusal to
recognize the threat of foreign in-
terference in our elections creates
a barrier t o true cooperation,” Per-
ez said. Although he acknowl-
edged the agency’s “dedicated ca-
reer people,” the DNC chairman
concluded, “this fundamental
problem comes from the top.”
The comments underscore the

extent to which election security

has b ecome a partisan issue, three

years after Democratic emails

were stolen by Russian hackers

and released as part of a broader

effort that intelligence officials

and investigators working under

special counsel Robert S. Mueller

III concluded was aimed at tilting

the election in Donald Trump’s

favor. The warning from Perez is a

sign of Democratic unease about

whether government authorities

— whose capabilities to detect and

fend off cyberattacks far exceed

those of the party — are commit-

ted to bringing these resources to

bear, just over a year before the

2020 presidential e lection.

Homeland Security didn’t re-

spond specifically to a question

about how the president’s views

shape the agency’s mandate.

But Matt Masterson, senior cyber-

security adviser for DHS’s Cyber-

security and Infrastructure Secu-

rity Agency, pointed in a state-

ment to the unit’s “sustained out-

reach and communication with

campaigns and political commit-

tees throughout this election cycle

to ensure they have an overview of

the threat landscape, the federal

government’s role in election se-

curity and best practices for cam-

paigns.”

Masterson said the agency,

which g rew out of a law enacted i n

November, has engaged with

more than a dozen presidential

campaigns.

Ye t the topic has remained a

delicate one within the White

House. When she was homeland

security secretary, Kirstjen Niel-

sen was advised to focus on other

topics, such as immigration en-

forcement, in conversations with

the president, as The Washington

Post has previously reported. And

Trump, who has described Muel-

ler’s investigation as the “Russian

hoax,” told ABC in June that he

would consider accepting infor-

mation on his political opponents

from a foreign government, add-

ing, “If I thought there was some-

thing wrong, I’d go maybe to the

FBI. If I thought there was some-

thing wrong.”

The White House did not re-

spond to a request for comment

for t his report.

Trump’s skepticism about Rus-

sia’s well-documented election in-

terference has at times been

echoed by his advisers and family

members. Jared Kushner, his son-

in-law, in April dismissed Russian

efforts as “buying some Facebook

ads.”

Wyden’s l etter, sent last month,

asked the national committees to

detail steps they had taken to pro-

tect themselves to help Congress

assess vulnerabilities and plan

legislation. Democrats, including

Wyden, have put forward many

election security bills, some with

bipartisan support, but they have

been stymied by Republican lead-

ers.

The deadline for Wyden’s re-

quest passed on Friday. By Tues-

day, the three Democratic com-

mittees — the DNC as well as the

groups responsible for House and

Senate campaigns — had re-

sponded. Their three Republi-

can counterparts had not, and

none responded to requests for

comment about the l etter.

All three Democratic commit-

tees said they had added staff and

were abiding by more rigorous

guidelines.

In a ddition to its first-ever chief

security officer, the DNC reported

hires in areas ranging from com-

bating disinformation to enhanc-

ing infrastructure security. Ad-

dressing an issue that has bedev-

iled parties as well as individual

candidates, perhaps most notably

Hillary Clinton, Perez specifically

said it was “no longer appropriate

for an organization to run their

own mail server, their own file

sharing server, or their own web

server.”

The Democrats’ House cam-

paign committee, which reported

attempted intrusion ahead of the

2018 midterms, said it had dou-

bled its IT s taff i n the previous two

years but emphasized cost barri-

ers f or campaigns.

A report released in May by the

company SecurityScorecard sug-

gested that digital security at the

DNC l agged behind security at t he

Republican National Committee.

The decision of whether to re-

spond to Wyden’s request high-

lights a growing debate over how

much to reveal about s elf-defense.

But former technology officers

at t he DNC a s well as the RNC s aid

the information sought by Wyden

is vital to assessing threats and

developing a common posture.

“The committees h ave a respon-

sibility to be forthcoming, just like

a company does,” said Andrew

Barkett, a former RNC chief tech-

nology officer. “If a company has

had a breach, which b oth the R NC

and DNC have had, that company

has a responsibility to tell their

customers what they’ve done to

remedy it, with the customers in

this case being the voters and do-

nors.”

Raffi Krikorian, a former DNC

chief technology officer, said he is

sympathetic to concerns about

disclosure. But he also said the

money being s pent by nation-state

actors on cyberwarfare is enough

to overcome any advantage gained

from secrecy.

Federal agencies such as DHS

are better p ositioned than individ-

ual lawmakers to gather informa-

tion and assess the t hreat e nviron-

ment, Krikorian said. But he

echoed Perez’s concern, saying, “I

do not trust t hat these agencies are

well funded, nor do I trust that

they will act correctly given that

their boss’s incentives seem to be

to not admit that the Russians are

trying to do anything.”

The Cybersecurity and Infra-

structure Security Agency says it

lacks the authority to impose

mandates on political organiza-

tions — for disclosures or any oth-

er type of action. Its services are

voluntary.

isaac.stanley­[email protected]

Josh Dawsey, Ellen Nakashima and

Shane Harris contributed to this

report.

DNC chairman says Trump prevents ‘true cooperation’ in securing elections

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