Tag Archive for: senate

Video: Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner Opening Remarks at Hearing on the Hack of U.S. Networks by a Foreign Adversary

/in


Advertisement

From Sen. Mark Warner’s office…you can watch the video here.

Below are Chairman Warner’s opening remarks as prepared for delivery:

First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome our two new Members, Senators Casey and Gillibrand, to the Committee. I look forward to working with you, and all of our Members, in the bipartisan tradition of this Committee. 

The Intelligence Committee’s record of working together in the interest of America’s national security has been due, in no small part, to the tireless efforts of our former Chairman, Senator Burr, and our new Vice Chairman, Senator Rubio.  So I want to take this opportunity during my first hearing as Chairman to thank you both for your partnership. I am confident we will be able to keep working together in a bipartisan way in the 117th Congress.

I would like to welcome our witnesses today: 

  • Kevin Mandia, CEO of FireEye;
  • Sudhakar Ramakrishna, President and CEO of SolarWinds;
  • Brad Smith, President of Microsoft; and
  • George Kurtz, President and CEO of CrowdStrike.  

We also invited a representative from Amazon Web Services to join us today, but unfortunately, they declined.  

Today’s hearing is on the widespread compromise of public and private computer networks in the United States by a foreign adversary, colloquially called the “SolarWinds Hack.”  But while most infections appear to have been caused by a trojanized update of SolarWinds’ Orion software, further investigation has revealed additional victims who do not use SolarWinds tools. It has become clear that there is much more to learn about this incident, its causes, its scope and scale, and where we go from here. 

This is the second hearing we’ve held on this topic.  Our first was a closed hearing on January 6th with the government agencies responding to this incident.  It is going to take the combined power of both the public and private sector to understand and respond to what happened.

Preliminary indications suggest that the scope and scale of this incident are beyond any that we’ve confronted as a nation, and its implications are significant.  Even though what we’ve seen so far indicates this was…

Source…

Georgia: Trump calls Senate runoff elections ‘illegal and invalid’

/in


  • President Donald Trump tweeted that the Georgia Senate runoff elections are “both illegal and invalid.”
  • He cited a bipartisan legal agreement as being proof of unconstitutionality — a claim that courts have rejected.
  • Hours later, Trump urged his Twitter followers to “get ready to vote on Tuesday.”
  • Trump will attend a rally in Georgia on Monday for Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

On Friday evening, President Donald Trump tweeted that the upcoming Georgia Senate runoffs are “both illegal and invalid.”

Just hours later, Trump vowed to “rally” for both Republican candidates — Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue — and told Georgians to “get ready to vote on Tuesday.”

In the initial three-part Twitter thread alleging fraud, Trump claimed that Tuesday’s vote would be illegitimate because of one of the state’s legal settlements.

Read more: Secret Service experts are speculating in group chats about how Trump might be hauled out of the White House if he won’t budge on Inauguration Day

“The Georgia Consent Decree is Unconstitutional & the State 2020 Presidential Election is therefore both illegal and invalid, and that would include the two current Senatorial Elections,” the president wrote.

 

The consent decree, a bipartisan agreement signed in March, established standards for verifying signatures on absentee ballots. Legal attempts to prove that this decree is unconstitutional have all failed.

Other legal challenges to overturn the election results, such as L. Lin Wood and Sidney Powell’s attempt to decertify Georgia’s results, have also been thrown out.

Despite Trump inaccurately dismissing Tuesday’s two Senate runoffs as illegitimate, he still urged his followers to vote.

 

The elections will directly affect the beginning of Joe Biden’s presidency. If Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock win, the Democratic Party will control the legislative and executive branches, allowing Biden to accomplish his legislative goals more easily.

Trump…

Source…

Get Your Otherwise Objectionable Gear Before The Senate Takes It Away!

/in

Get your Otherwise Objectionable gear in the Techdirt store on Threadless »

On Monday we released our line of Otherwise Objectionable gear in our store on Threadless and, the very next day, GOP Senators unveiled their latest attempt at truly stupid Section 230 reform: a bill that would remove those two critical words from the law. Of course, those who understand how important Section 230’s moderation protections are to the internet will fight to prevent this bill from passing, and then there’s the fact that it’s pretty obviously unconstitutional — but while the fight continues, there’s never been a better time to declare your Otherwise Objectionable status with pride.

As usual, there’s a wide variety of gear available in this and other designs — including t-shirts, hoodies, notebooks, buttons, phone cases, mugs, stickers, and of course the now-standard face masks. Check out all our designs and items in the Techdirt store on Threadless!

Techdirt.

Message to the Senate of the United States on the Protocol Supplementary to the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft – Whitehouse.gov

/in

Message to the Senate of the United States on the Protocol Supplementary to the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft  Whitehouse.gov
“HTTPS hijacking” – read more