Overnight Cybersecurity: Senate confirms Trump’s FBI pick | Lawmakers move to boost ‘internet of things’ security | Senators unveil overseas data privacy bill

Welcome to OVERNIGHT CYBERSECURITY, your daily rundown of the biggest news in the world of hacking and data privacy. We’re here to connect the dots as leaders in government, policy and industry try to counter the rise in cyber threats. What lies ahead for Congress, the administration and the latest company under siege? Whether you’re a consumer, a techie or a D.C. lifer, we’re here to give you …

 

THE BIG STORIES:

–SENATE CONFIRMS TRUMP’S FBI PICK: The Senate easily confirmed President Trump’s pick to lead the FBI on Tuesday, following the abrupt firing of James Comey earlier this year. Senators voted 92-5 on Christopher Wray’s nomination to lead the bureau. Tuesday’s vote caps off a largely low-drama confirmation process for Wray, who was approved unanimously by the Judiciary Committee late last month. Democrats praised Trump’s nominee, saying they believed he could be independent of the president and any attempts to politicize the bureau. “It is really important that we have a strong FBI director. There can be no manipulation,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said ahead of the vote. “Special counsel Robert Mueller most be allowed to proceed with his investigation undisturbed,” she added, citing the special counsel appointed after Comey’s ouster to investigate Russian election interference and possible ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) added that he believes Wray would protect Mueller’s probe. “I regret that he will be the FBI director only because it is the result of an abuse and improper firing of James Comey and the special counsel’s investigation of that firing as a potential obstruction of justice is well warranted,” the Judiciary Committee member added.

To read the rest of our piece, click here.

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–SENATORS TACKLE ‘INTERNET OF THINGS’ SECURITY: A bipartisan group of senators unveiled legislation Tuesday to bring more security to internet-connected devices, often referred to as the “internet of things.” Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced the “Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2017.” “While I’m tremendously excited about the innovation and productivity that Internet-of-Things devices will unleash, I have long been concerned that too many Internet-connected devices are being sold without appropriate safeguards and protections in place,” said Warner in a statement announcing the bill. Internet-connected devices raise a number of problems in cybersecurity. Hackers can take over vast arrays of connected devices and synchronize them to overwhelm a targeted server with requests, knocking it offline – an attack known as a distributed denial of service. This kind of attack felled a critical internet switchboard in October of last year, briefly knocking sites from Twitter to The New York Times offline.

To read the rest of our piece, click here.

–TRUMP SAID TO HAVE DICTATED SON’S STATEMENT ON RUSSIA MEET: President Trump “personally dictated” the statement offered by his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., in response to revelations about his meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016, according to the Washington Post. The statement specified that the meeting primarily focused on “a program about the adoption of Russia children,” though it later came out that the elder Trump was offered damaging information on Hillary Clinton prior to the encounter with Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer with alleged connections to the Kremlin. The meeting has been a source of intense scrutiny in recent weeks, inflaming suspicions of links between Trump’s campaign and Moscow in its election interference campaign. Special counsel Robert Mueller is currently spearheading the federal probe into the matter, which has dogged Trumps’ first months in office. At a press briefing Tuesday, White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Trump “weighed in” on the statement and defended its accuracy. “The statement that Don Jr. issued is true,” Sanders told reporters. “There’s no inaccuracy in the statement. The President weighed in as any father would, based on the limited information that he had.”

 

A FEW LEGISLATIVE UPDATES:  

–SENATORS LOOK TO BRING HIGH-SPEED WIRELESS TO RURAL AMERICA: A pair of senators introduced bipartisan legislation on Tuesday that aims to improve wireless networks in underserved rural areas of America.

Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Maggie Hassan’s (D-N.H.) Advancing Innovation and Reinvigorating Widespread Access to Viable Electromagnetic Spectrum (AIRWAVES) bill proposes opening up spectrum space for commercial licensed and unlicensed use with the hope that doing so will drive down wireless costs and increase accessibility.

Gardner and Hassan say they believe this will bring increased broadband access to rural areas, whose connectivity coverage rates and speed lag severely compared to urban areas.

“This legislation offers innovative ways to avoid a spectrum crunch, pave the way for 5G service, and provide critical resources to rural America to continue rural buildout in unserved and underserved areas throughout Colorado and the country,” Gardner said in a statement with the bill’s release.

Different bands of spectrum — ranges of radio frequencies — are used right now to transmit audio, video and data by different groups. Broadcasters, for example, transmit TV signals over spectrum bands, while wireless providers use them as a means to distribute wireless broadband.  

Some technology trade associations praised the introduction of the new bill, which they argue is needed to help rural communities. In a statement, the Information Technology Industry Council’s (ITI) Vice President of Government Affairs Vince Jesaitis applauded the bill, saying that it would help the rollout of 5G high-speed wireless.

To read the rest of our piece, click here.

–NEW OVERSEAS DATA PRIVACY BILL: Senators introduced bipartisan legislation Tuesday that would create a legal framework allowing law enforcement to access Americans’ electronic communications in servers located in other countries.

The International Communications Privacy Act (ICPA) from Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) would also require law enforcement to notify other countries of such data collection on their citizens in accordance with their laws.

The bill also allows law enforcement to get communications regarding foreign nationals in certain instances.

“The potential global reach of government warrant authority has significant implications for multinational businesses and their customers. Failing to address this issue in a reasonable, comprehensive way will only continue to cause problems between American businesses and the U.S. government,” Hatch said in a statement.

Technology companies in particular have been frustrated with U.S. policies regarding the collection of digital communications from their users.

They worry that complying with U.S. requests for overseas data could force them to violate other countries’ own privacy protections.

Tech companies offered quick praise for the bill after its release.

“For far too long, technology companies, law enforcement and, ultimately, the courts have been forced to choose between competing interpretations of an outdated statute,” Microsoft President and Chief Legal Office Brad Smith wrote in a post lauding the bill. “These conflicts of law put businesses in a no-win situation, putting American technology companies at a disadvantage.”

A number of business associations, including BSA The Software Alliance and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, expressed support for the legislation in a letter dated Thursday.

“We believe that U.S. laws governing privacy and law enforcement access to data must be updated to address the realities of our connected world,” the groups wrote. “This legislation is a valuable contribution to efforts to modernize our privacy laws to reflect current realities. Reinforcing international cooperative approaches that respect privacy while supporting effective law enforcement are vital in sustaining our ability to compete globally and create jobs in the United States.”

The legislation comes on the heels of the introduction of legislation aimed at modernizing the Email Communications Privacy Act of 1986, a federal law governing email retention.

To read the rest of our piece, click here.

 

A LIGHTER CLICK: Yikes! An email prankster tricked White House officials, including a top cyber adviser to the president. (CNN)

 

A REPORT IN FOCUS: A new government audit sheds light on perspectives within the Pentagon over the dual-hat leadership of U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, as well as the department’s implementation of important cybersecurity guidance.

The issue of potentially separating CYBERCOM from NSA, currently both led by Mike Rogers, has attracted increased attention over the past year, as Congress worked to elevate the military command into its own warfighting unit through defense policy legislation last year. The Trump administration is reportedly working on plans to split CYBERCOM from NSA. Experts say that the separation is inevitable, but note that it should be done cautiously, given CYBERCOM’s reliance on NSA since its creation in 2009.

According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released on Tuesday, defense officials say that advantages to the dual-hat leadership of the two cyber-focused bodies include better coordination, faster decision-making, and resource efficiency. However, officials identify some disadvantages, including “too broad of a span of control that potentially limits effective leadership” and an increased risk that NSA operations and tools could be “exposed.”

The audit, which focuses broadly on the Pentagon’s management of its cybersecurity enterprise, also finds the Defense Department’s progress in implementing key cybersecurity guidance to be “varied.”

For instance, the report says, “DOD’s process for monitoring implementation of The DOD Cyber Strategy has resulted in the closure of the tasks before they were fully implemented.”

“Until DOD improves the monitoring of its key cyber strategies, it is unknown when DOD will achieve cybersecurity compliance,” the report concludes.

To read the full GAO audit, click here.

 

WHAT’S IN THE SPOTLIGHT: RUSSIA SANCTIONS LEGISLATION: Congress’ passage of legislation that would impose further penalties on Russia, in part for its interference in the U.S. presidential election, has inflamed tensions between the United States and Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to curtail American staff at diplomatic posts by more than 750 people could herald a frosty turn in Moscow’s relations with the United States.

It is the harshest such diplomatic action since the waning days of the Cold War and is almost certain to ratchet up tensions between two governments that were already struggling to find common ground.

President Trump has long talked of wanting to work with Russia, and Putin’s government appeared receptive. But since Trump’s inauguration, the controversy over Moscow’s meddling in the presidential election has only grown, creating a significant barrier to closer ties.

Putin indicated that he is done waiting for relations with the U.S. to improve. He called the diplomatic measures “biting” when announcing them on Sunday, a shift in tone since two chummy encounters with Trump on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit.

Congress last week approved sanctions legislation related to Russia’s election meddling, and Trump has indicated he will sign it.

The president’s acceptance of the sanctions is likely being seen in Russia as evidence that he is limited in his ability to improve relations, experts say. One of the features of the bill is that it restricts Trump’s authority to lift sanctions on Russia without congressional approval.

“The Russians are disappointed. They had hoped for some kind of a reset under President Trump and they haven’t seen that,” said Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

“They held off for a while to give him some time, but my guess is the decision to do this is a result of a conclusion in Moscow that there is going to be no early change in the U.S. approach to Russia.”

To read the rest of our piece, click here.

 

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Links from our blog, The Hill, and around the Web.

Online sex trafficking bill prompts opposition from Silicon Valley. (The Hill)

Court says health insurance company can be sued for data breach. (The Hill)

North Korean hackers targeted Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. (Cyberscoop)

The FCC is keeping its cyber defenses secret. (TechCrunch)

A researcher turns Amazon Echo into a spy. (Wired)

Ukraine is finally making strides on cybersecurity. (Reuters)

Federal lawsuit alleges Pentagon did not secure military members’ personal information. (Military Times)

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