Judge rules against Center for Public Integrity in FEC cybersecurity lawsuit

A US District Court Judge has denied the Center for Public Integrity’s request for access to a taxpayer-funded study about cybersecurity vulnerabilities at the Federal Election Commission. The court’s decision comes more than 13 months after the Center for Public Integrity sued the FEC for access to the security study, which the FEC commissioned following a Center investigation revealing how Chinese hackers infiltrated the FEC’s computer systems.

The 44-page document — known within the FEC as the “NIST study” — in part provides recommendations on how to fix the FEC’s problems and bring its computer systems in line with specific National Institute of Standards and Technology computer security protocols. The study cost $199,500 to produce. In its lawsuit and the requests for the security study that preceded it, the Center noted that it had no quarrel with the FEC redacting sensitive passages that, if revealed, could compromise agency security.