Speaker 1: Now it's time for our daily Bloomberg Law Brief, exploring
Speaker 1: legal issues in the news. Today, Bloomberg Law host Judon
Speaker 1: Grosso discusses congressional testimony from former Homeland Security Secretary j
Speaker 1: Johnson over Russian interference in the election. She speaks to
Speaker 1: Bradley Moss, a partner at Mark S BLC, and William Banks,
Speaker 1: director of the Institute for National Security and counter Terrorism
Speaker 1: at Syracuse Law School. Brett Johnson described in detail how
Speaker 1: they saw the growing Russian probing around voter registration databases.
Speaker 1: So they had the knowledge, yet they didn't seem to
Speaker 1: have the ability to do anything about it, and do
Speaker 1: they yet, well, and this is part of the way
Speaker 1: we've set up our electoral system is that it's set
Speaker 1: up set in a decentralized manner and controlled by the states.
Speaker 1: We don't have a quote unquote national election. We actually
Speaker 1: have fifty individual state election and each state has its
Speaker 1: own rules for handling them based on the county and
Speaker 1: the local level. So what the former secretary describing was
Speaker 1: they were attempting, and there was some pushback from the
Speaker 1: individual states. They were attempting to coordinate with the states
Speaker 1: to raise these concerns and to find a mechanism by
Speaker 1: which DHS could provide assistance and to ensure the stability
Speaker 1: and the safety of the electoral process without infringing upon
Speaker 1: the state's sovereign rights to run their election process in
Speaker 1: cordance with state laws bill. At the Senate Intelligence Committee,
Speaker 1: where they had hearings on the same issue, the under
Speaker 1: Secretary for Cybersecurity at DHS said there's evidence that one
Speaker 1: state election systems were targeted. Johnson said that what he
Speaker 1: knows from open source is that thirty nine states were hacked.
Speaker 1: Do you know the number? And why is the Department
Speaker 1: of Homeland Security still not willing to disclose which state
Speaker 1: election systems were hacked? Well, the number I've read in
Speaker 1: the media's thirty nine as well. I probably spread the
Speaker 1: same reports that Johnson, and I think it's uh As
Speaker 1: brad said, these are these are fifty separate systems, and
Speaker 1: so it's it's up to the states to decide whether
Speaker 1: to reveal the extent to which the systems have been
Speaker 1: threatened or intruded upon. And that's William Banks, director of
Speaker 1: the Institute for National Security and counter Terrorism at Syracuse
Speaker 1: Law School, and Bradley Moss, a partner of Marks a Plc,
Speaker 1: speaking with Bloomberg Law Hostun Grosso. And you can listen
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