12/9/16 MANY questions answered about "Presidents order to review on the Russian hacking"

[Sunlei]

Q Thank you. Can you speak to what prompted the President to order this review on the Russian hacking into the presidential elections?

MR. SCHULTZ: Sure, Darlene. And we should just clarify that the President, earlier this week, instructed the intelligence community to conduct a full review of the pattern of malicious cyber activity related to our presidential election cycle. So he’s requested this report be completed and submitted to him before the end of his term.

As you all know, in 2008, there were intrusions into both the Obama and McCain campaigns. There haven't been any noted episodes in 2012, but the President asked to go back, with what we know now, to make sure that we're using every tool possible as a means of due diligence. And then, of course, in 2016, our intelligence community determined that there was malicious cyber activity intended to interfere with our elections. In the high confidence assessment that was released this past October, the intelligence community made very clear that this was activity directed by the highest levels of the Russian government.

So as we've made clear, we are committed to ensuring the integrity of our elections. And this report will dig into this pattern of malicious cyber activity timed to our elections, take stock of our defensive capabilities, and capture lessons learned to make sure that we brief members of Congress and stakeholders, as appropriate.

Q Will the review go all the way back to ’08?

MR. SCHULTZ: So we're going to actually -- what the President asked for is a review to look at malicious activity timed to our presidential election cycle. And so it will be broader than just looking at this past election.

Q Will it also look at whether state election systems were tampered with, or will it just be about email intrusions?

MR. SCHULTZ: Well, what we determined in mid-November, a few weeks ago now, is that state election systems did not -- the federal government did not detect any increased malicious cyber activity on Election Day or related to the administering of the elections. So we've already made that determination, and that's something we've announced publicly from here. But in terms of what this review will look at, this is going to be a review that’s conducted by the intelligence community.

As you know, in that October statement that we released, that was released by the *Department[Office of the Director] of National Intelligence and Department of Homeland Security. Obviously there’s other agencies that work on those issues, including the FBI, the Department of Justice and Department of State.

Q Will it be made public?

MR. SCHULTZ: So we're going to make public as much as we can. Obviously, you can imagine a report like this is going to contain highly sensitive and even classified information, perhaps, so when that report is submitted we're going to take a look. We want to make sure we brief Congress and relevant stakeholders, like possibly state administrators who actually operationalize the elections.

So given that the directive to launch this review was just this week, we want to make sure that that process unfolds in all due accord.

Q So you mentioned that this new review of Russian hacking activity will go back to 2008. Is that the main way that it differs from the FBI investigation that's already done?

MR. SCHULTZ: I see. It's a good question. And the FBI investigation was looking at specific acts that we saw over the summer and fall of this year. So, as you know, they looked at the hacks at campaign committees like the DNC and other malicious cyber activity that we were detecting. At the time, they determined that this is activity that could have only been directed from the highest levels of the Russian government. So, yes, this is going to put that activity in a greater context. That's going to look at the pattern of this happening from foreign actors, dating all the way back to 2008.

Q Okay. And the response that's coming now from the foreign ministry in Russia is that they're saying many times they've asked Americans to provide full information but never had any response. Is that true? I mean, have you guys not wanted to have those conversations with Lavrov or others? Is it something you wanted to kind of keep to yourselves for now? What can you say about the handling of this with respect to Russia?

MR. SCHULTZ: I think to the contrary, Michelle. This isn’t something we've tried to keep to ourselves. The President, himself, has made clear that this is activity that's unacceptable, that is outside the bounds of --

Q But in terms of, like, the greater detail that they said they were looking for.

MR. SCHULTZ: I'm not aware of any sort of specific request that they've asked for. But the President has made clear his views on this, and that malicious cyber activity -- specifically malicious cyber activity timed to our elections has no place in the international community.

Unfortunately, this activity is not new to Moscow. We've seen them do this for years, try and meddle in elections and engage in similar activities in Europe and across Asia. So they, unfortunately, have a long record of this. But the President has made clear to President Putin that this is unacceptable. But that's not the only channel of communication. I do know that Secretary Kerry has talked to his counterpart, and we have other national security officials who have made this clear to their counterparts in Moscow.

Q Okay. And will this include a look at any potential attempts or activity at local levels? Or this is only going to look at kind of a bigger or federal level?

MR. SCHULTZ: Well, I think these agencies will have to take a look at what we saw in 2008, 2012, and 2016. So I think that this is going to be a deep dive, that this will be a review that is broad and deep at the same time. And so they're going to look at where the activity leads them to look at. In other words, again, like I mentioned, in 2012 there was no noted episode of this nature, but knowing what we know now, using the tools that we have now, we can go back and see if there was anything that was missed back then.

Q How is there going -- I mean, if this is going to be so broad and deep, as you said, going beyond what the FBI took a pretty long time to do, and going back to 2008, how is there time to do this?

MR. SCHULTZ: Well, it's a huge priority. This is a major priority for the President of the United States. He directed his intelligence community and national security officials to take this on. He expects that report to be issued to him before he leaves office. You're right, there's going to be a lot of work to be done. But like you've also said, there's already been a lot of work done about the episode this year in 2016. So what we want to do is put that into context over the past eight years to see if we can sort of develop patterns, take stock of where we are and make sure that we do have the right defensive capabilities in place.

Q So when you see the allegations from some members of Congress and others that there could be evidence that Russia was actually trying to influence the election in a particular way, will this also look at potential motivations and whether that meaning was there or not?

MR. SCHULTZ: Well, we know that, again, in October when the intelligence community released their high confidence assessment --

Q Just real quick -- was it high confidence? Because I thought the statement was just confidence. And this is the first time I've heard high confidence.

MR. SCHULTZ: Hans, I should double-check that, but I'm pretty sure it was high confidence.

Q I can read it to you.

MR. SCHULTZ: Let us take this, because when I was briefed out here I was told it was high confidence. But maybe we should just sync up.

Q So in the breadth of it, will it also look at whether they tried to influence the election in a particular way? Is it safe to say that it would look at motivations?

MR. SCHULTZ: Well, I want to be clear here that this is not an effort to challenge the outcome of the election, that we have acknowledged who won the election. It wasn't the candidate that the President campaigned for. And so the President has actually gone out of his way to make sure that we are providing for a seamless transition of power. So we're not calling into question the election results. We are taking seriously our responsibility to protect the integrity of those elections.

Q But is it safe to say that it will look at motivations and goals as well as the technical side of what was done?

MR. SCHULTZ: Well, I think in that assessment that was released in October, it made clear that this was an attempt to interfere in our elections. So whether or not they dig deeper into motives, I'm not sure that will be a part of this review, but there are some things we already know for sure.

Tamara. Welcome back.

Q Thank you. It's good to be back. On the assessment that's being done, the review that's being done, is there an effort to get this done quickly, before the President leaves because the President-elect has said publically that he doesn't think Russia was involved or that there was a 400-pound man somewhere in a basement involved? Is there an effort to, like, get this out and on the record before the new administration comes in?

MR. SCHULTZ: I think the President wanted this done under his watch because he takes it very seriously. And this is something that the President has been monitoring closely for all eight years now. We placed a huge premium on cybersecurity, and that's actually reflected in how we've done business over the past eight years. If you look at our budget that we released *last[this] year, we include significant resources for cybersecurity. Unfortunately, Congress hasn’t done a thing about it.

A more concrete data point would be look at how we've handled this past year. In the summer and fall, we noticed an increase in probing and scanning of state election systems. As a result, the President ordered his Department of Homeland Security to respond. And what we did is we stood up resources at the Department of Homeland Security, which engaged state offices around the country, nearly every state. And we deployed experts; we worked with them to bolster their defense systems; we shared best practices. And we convened conference calls and communications to share the latest information as we learned it.

So this is something the President has been focused on for a while. But, yes, in the wake of the election, in the wake of this pattern that we've seen fairly regularly in recent elections here at the presidential level in the United States, the President wanted to make sure that we were executing on an after-action look at what we've noticed over the past few years.

Q The President has spoken with some regularity it seems to the President-elect. Has he told President-elect Trump about his review? And was there any reaction?

MR. SCHULTZ: Tamara, we have acknowledged that the President and President-elect have spoken. I think we're up to a handful of times. But what we don't do is we don't read out those conversations, in order to protect the President’s ability to have confidential conversations with the President-elect.

Q And when stakeholders will be told about the results of this, would those stakeholders include people like Hillary Clinton and the Trump campaign?

MR. SCHULTZ: Again, I think we just announced that this review is going to be underway. So as soon as we have a rollout plan for when it’s submitted, we’ll let you know.

MR. SCHULTZ: Hans.

Q I just want to follow up on what the review is going to encompass. Should we be thinking of it as something that's going to be looking at Russia, or follow the facts wherever they may lead if that includes other either state actors or non-state actors?

MR. SCHULTZ: The latter. So, in other words --

Q So this isn’t going to be a global review. It’s looking more at vulnerabilities of U.S. election processes and then it will follow the facts wherever they go?

MR. SCHULTZ: Well, in other words, the intrusion that I mentioned in 2008 was publicly attributed to the Chinese, not to the Russians. So, yes, we will be looking at all foreign actors and any attempt to interfere with the elections.

Q And that's state and non-state?

MR. SCHULTZ: Again, we should check in with the agencies who are charged with actually conducting the review. But I don't think they're going to take a -- this isn’t going to be a narrow dive, this is going to be a deep dive into this troubling pattern.

Q And the other side of that question is will you be looking at Russian influence or other non-state actor influences outside of U.S. elections? Because in your answer you mentioned Europe and Eurasia. Will you be -- will you follow this to say if they interfered in an election in Central America, South America? How far will it take you?

MR. SCHULTZ: I know that the United States’ government and other governments have acknowledged that Russia participates in these sort of activities around the world. I’m not sure that this particular review will look into those episodes around the world. So I can't really confirm that it will be included in this review.

Kenneth.

Q Hey, Eric. To go back to the review for one more question. If the goal is to obviously figure out if there was an attempt to interfere with the elections and past elections and share that with stakeholders, with Congress. Obviously we're talking about this broad review that's going to be pretty in-depth. Is there a concern that the next administration -- is the goal for the next administration to take some action as well, since the President only has 40 days left? And if so, is there a concern that the next administration -- President-elect Donald Trump, President-elect Trump won't act on that?

MR. SCHULTZ: Well, in terms of what the next administration will do, it's hard for me to speculate on that. So I'd refer you to the President-elect’s team. I do think -- this exact issue surfaced a little bit earlier this week when -- well, maybe it was Friday -- when the President’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity released its report, which was a deep dive unrelated to the election, but looking at cybersecurity infrastructure around the United States. And there were some pieces in there that were actionable that we could probably work on and improve over the next 40-45 days while the President is still in office. But there’s a whole host of recommendations in that report that will not be able to be implemented in the next 45 days.

So this is going to be a challenge. I don't think it's a controversial statement to say this will be a challenge for the next administration and the next Congress. We hope that Congress puts a little bit more muscle into funding a lot of the requests for better resources and better support. But, yes, this will be a problem that outlives this administration. And I do think that the report that was released Friday and presumably the report that gets turned in based on this review can provide a road map for future administrations to tackle this.

Mark.

Q Yeah, Eric, one more on the hacking. To what degree -- or is this at all a response to the Senate Democrats who wrote you I guess earlier this week and -- the ones who say, look, we need more evidence to back up this general assertion that we've had, and that you would then -- so how much of this review is to decide what can actually be made public to bolster the argument that the intelligence community has made?

MR. SCHULTZ: None. So that will be a separate process. So as we've acknowledged here, we've received a request from members of Congress for briefings on this. And I think as Josh made clear yesterday, we have been briefing them on this. There are certain committees with unique jurisdiction on these issues, so we make sure we brief them. Some of that has been classified briefings; some have been unclassified. But we're also in touch with all members of Congress, because we know there's wide interest on this.

So we're happy to conduct those briefings. We're also happy to go through the process to figure out if there can be more material that is unclassified in response to those requests. But this review is unrelated to requests by Congress. This is something the President directed his national security team to conduct.



https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/12/09/press-briefing-principal-deputy-press-secretary-eric-schultz-12916

[Sunlei]

1. still the most up to date on what actually happens now about hacking. This review is unrelated to

current, on all the 'news' media Republican discussion & requests.

[lagomorph777]

2. Thanks for posting.

Sounds like our current administration is still pretty dismissive that the massive hacks we do know about might also be tied to successful hacks with actual electoral effect. Not encouraging.

[Sunlei]

3. what's dismissive? none has found any hacks of actual votes and tabulation machines were excluded

This general collection of ALL information about the intrusions into our government records is unrelated to our public vote system.