Sen. Warner Wants More Info on Election Cybersecurity

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) has asked Department of Homeland Security secretary John Kelly for more information on the foreign attempts to hack into election systems, saying the public should not be in the dark about the "scope and breadth" of online attacks.

That comes the day before the Intelligence Committee—Warner is vice chairman—is holding a hearing on "U.S. Election Security: Russian Interventions and the Outlook for 2018 and Beyond."

Warner argues that boosting cyber defenses and educating the public about the dangers of such hacks are paramount.

"I therefore urge you to work closely with state and local election officials to disclose publicly which states were targeted, to ensure that they are fully aware of the threat, and to make certain that their cyber defenses are able to neutralize this danger," he wrote to Kelly.

Warner said the good news was that the attempted hacking of voting systems did not appear to have been successful. The bad news is that there will almost certainly be more attempts.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.