Cybersecurity and Cyberwarfare

Now that all 50 governors — including a robust crop of new faces — have made "State of the State" speeches, Government Technology took the opportunity to break down how many touched on various technology topics:

• Technology: 34
• Broadband/Connectivity/Internet: 23
• Modern/Modernize: 21
• Data: 20
• Cybersecurity: 9 

Decades later, Signaling System No. 7 (SS7) and other components of the nation’s digital backbone remain flawed, leaving calls and texts vulnerable to interception and disruption. Instead of facing the challenges of our hyper-connected age, the Federal Communications Commission is stumbling, according to documents obtained by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) and through extensive interviews with current and former agency employees.

As US officials have pressured allies not to use networking gear from Chinese technology giant Huawei over spying concerns, President Donald Trump has urged American companies to “step up” and compete to provide the next generation of high-speed, low-lag wireless service known as 5G. There’s just one problem: There are barely any US companies manufacturing the technology’s most critical components.

The man who edited Wikipedia with several senators’ private phone numbers and addresses has pleaded guilty to computer fraud and other offenses. Jackson Cosko, a former employee of Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH), was arrested in 2018 on suspicion of doxxing five members of Congress. He’s now admitted to breaking into Sen Hassan’s office after being fired, stealing data that included personal contact information, then posting that information online during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing.

To demonstrate what makes internet health meaningful for stakeholders and communities at the municipal level, this collection of case studies offers a portrait of a vibrant city working in different ways toward a common public good – an inclusive, safe, secure, open, and decentralized internet. The report examines how people, civil society institutions, government, and advocates – all committed to digital rights – can make our relationship to the internet healthier across five crucial issue areas:

US national security officials are planning for a future in which the Chinese firm Huawei will have a major share of the advanced global telecommunications market, and have begun to think about how to thwart potential espionage and disruptive cyberattacks enabled by interconnected networks. “We are going to have to figure out a way in a 5G world that we’re able to manage the risks in a diverse network that includes technology that we can’t trust,” said Sue Gordon, the deputy to the director of the US intelligence community.

I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators. By updating the rules for the Internet, we can preserve what’s best about it — the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new things — while also protecting society from broader harms. From what I’ve learned, I believe we need new regulation in four areas: harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.

The British government released a scathing assessment of the security risks posed by the Chinese telecom company Huawei to Britain’s telecom networks, as London weighs whether to heed US calls to bar the firm from the next-generation 5G network over fears it will enable spying by the Chinese government and potential cyberattacks.

[Prepared statement before the House Economic and Consumer Policy Subcommittee]