House Oversight Chairman Previews New Report on Federal ‘Stingrays’

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said that his panel will soon issue a report on the federal government’s use of simulated cell phone towers, also known as “stingrays.” “You’d be shocked — shocked — at what your federal government is doing to gather your personal information,” Chairman Chaffetz told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute. Chairman Chaffetz was at AEI to discuss his committee’s latest report on a series of wide-ranging cyberattacks against the Office of Personnel Management from 2012 to 2015, which saw the personal information of 22.1 million Americans with ties to the federal government stolen by hackers. The probe found that the hacks occurred because of OPM leaders’ repeated failures to heed inspector general warnings that its cybersecurity infrastructure was lacking. The committee report also found that OPM leaders failed to implement basic, required security controls and deploy high tech anti-hacking tools once it became evident that hackers had penetrated their databases.

Chairman Chaffetz said that his committee’s upcoming report on the federal collection of personal information through “stingrays” has even more outrageous findings. “They can’t keep it secure. That’s the point,” he said. “I don’t trust them, they’re not doing the basics, and they want to collect more data.”