Obama’s effort to punish Russia is counterproductive

The Obama administration in December announced a number of measures it would take against Russia, including sanctions and the expulsion of Russian intelligence agents from the country, over Russia’s alleged role in the hacking of emails from the Democratic National Committee and from Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. However, the measures are unlikely to be effective before Obama leaves office.

{mosads}Russia has declined to respond in kind, instead inviting the children of U.S. diplomats to a Christmas party at the Kremlin. While House Speaker Paul Ryan called the measures “long overdue” based on the perceived antagonism of Russia toward the U.S. in the last decade, President-elect Trump praised Putin as “very smart” for delaying the response. U.S.-Russia relations are unlikely to change significantly because of these measures, but the role the federal government takes in cybersecurity likely will.

Along with the measures, the administration released a joint action report from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security that purported to prove Russia was behind the hacks. Yet the report did no such thing—half of it focused on preventive measures. The report said hackers operated in a way Russian hackers are known to operate, but did not offer evidence of that. The report “asks readers to rely yet one more time on the FBI and DHS, two agencies that have done little to inspire full confidence among Americans.”

The administration’s actions are worrying not just because of the possibility that they will raise U.S.-Russia tensions, but because the federal government is looking to take a broader role in cybersecurity, one that it is not prepared for and one that is inappropriate for it to take.

Among the measures taken by the Obama administration is the revision of a 2015 executive order (EO 13964) that outlined the federal government’s authority to deal with various cyberattacks. The newest revision gives the executive branch authority to deal with hackers who “tamper with, alter, or cause a misappropriation of information with the purpose or effect of interfering with or undermining election processes or institutions.” In other words, the feds are taking as a national cybersecurity threat any attempt to distribute election-related information outside of official channels.

The Obama administration promises a second report before Jan. 20 on the history of election-related hackings. The federal government, however, has also been the target of non-election-related hackings. In June 2015, hackers stole information on nearly 22 million individuals from the Office of Personnel Management. While that hack posed a more serious threat to national security, it was not met as seriously as hacks that offered voters new information ahead of a presidential election. The feds fingered China as the culprit, but nothing else happened. 

The federal government does not appear equipped to meet its own cybersecurity needs, let alone those of the critical infrastructure sector already under EO 13964 and political parties and other organizations placed there by the latest revision.

The targeting of Democratic officials offered new information to voters making a choice. In a recent interview, Wikileaks’ Julian Assange rejected the assertion that he was trying to influence the election for Trump. “What is the allegation here exactly?” Assange asked. “We published what the Democratic National Committee, John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, and Hillary Clinton herself were saying about their own campaign, which the American people read and were very interested to read, and assessed the elements and characters, and then they made a decision. That decision was based on Hillary Clinton’s own words, her campaign manager’s own words. That’s democracy.”

Conflating the content of disclosures with the source, as Podesta and other Democrats have done, muddles the conversation, weakens democracy, and makes it more difficult to move towards really strengthening American cybersecurity.

Ed Krayewski (@EdKrayewski) is an associate editor at Reason.com.

The views expressed by Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.