Sen. Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump’s nominee for the position of U.S. attorney general, is being grilled by the Senate today about voting rights, immigration, civil rights, prosecutorial ethics and his own voting record. But when asked about issues related to technology — including hacking, surveillance, encryption, and law enforcement access to data — Sessions’ answers were relatively vague.
Like Trump, who has promised to develop a cybersecurity strategy during his first 90 days in office, Sessions is bullish on improving America’s cybersecurity but lacks concrete plans to do so.
“We must honestly assess our vulnerabilities and have a clear plan for defense, as well as offense, when it comes to cybersecurity,” Sessions said. However, Sessions claimed not to have a deep understanding of cybersecurity issues, including recent controversy over Russian hacking into American political organizations, and said that his role as attorney general would not allow him to help develop a response to security breaches. “That is something that’s appropriate for Congress and the chief executive to consider,” he explained.
In response to questions from his fellow senator Lindsey Graham, Sessions implied that he had not read recent intelligence community reports on the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, claiming that his only information on the hacking came from media reports.
When Graham asked Sessions if he believed the Russian government was responsible for the hacking, Sessions replied, “I have done no research into that. I know just what the media says about it.” Graham pointed out that the FBI had attributed the cyberattacks to Russia, which Sessions qualified, “At least that’s what’s been reported, and I’ve not been briefed by them on the subject.”
Sessions later seemed to question again the intelligence community’s attribution of the hacks to Russia, saying, “It’s really, I suppose, goes in many ways to the State Department, our Defense Department, and how we, as a nation, have to react to that, which would include developing some protocols where when people breach our systems, that a price is paid even if we can’t prove the exact person who did it.”
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