Last month, the US government worked swiftly to suspend, dissolve and dismantle US efforts to combat foreign interference in elections, raising concerns relying on federal lawmakers and federal cybersecurity agencies and their counterparts to warn about attacks on the electoral system.
First, there were a large number of notifications enforced personnel from cybersecurity and infrastructure security agencies tasked with halting foreign interference in US elections. After that, about the Attorney General Pam BondyOn her first day in office on February 5, she disbanded the FBI task force targeting foreign influence operations that originated from places such as Russia, China and Iran.
The focus on election security is on the past rather than the future. In an internal memo earlier this month, the acting director of the CISA, as the discoveries made in the March 6 final report, released an internal investigation to assess all positions and programs, including election misinformation and misinformation, dating back to President Trump’s first term.
Written by acting director Bridget Bean, the message first reported by Wired revealed the national programme reimbursement to train state and local government officials through a center known as the “Centre for Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis” and provide threat monitoring services.
“We need to rescue the agency’s election security activities to ensure that CISA is focused solely on implementing cyber and physical security missions,” Bean reiterated the claims of Kristi Noem of the Department of Homeland Security, reverberating in the message during a confirmation hearing that the agency was “far from the mission.”
The memo landed more than 130 probation workers (about 4% of the country’s cyber defense agency) in the mailboxes of approximately 3,400 CISA staff on Valentine’s Day a few hours ago.
Top Democrats on the Senate and House Committee, which oversees election law, expressed “significant concern” about the change in letters to top CISA leaders, noting that “establishing the law clearly directs it to work in elections.”
“We’re here because Russia tried to tamper with ours in 2016,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon told CBS News. “They tried to physically hack the election system,” he added, and Minnesota was just one of 21 targeted states, moving the January 2017 election designation as a critical infrastructure.
In a letter to President Trump, Arizona Secretary Adrian Fonz likened the cuts to shutting down the national maritime and atmospheric administration ahead of hurricane season. “This decision undermines the safety of Arizona’s elections as enemies around the world use online tools to push agendas and ideologies into our homes,” he writes.
The move comes months after the CISA and the FBI supported the states in response to the threat of election day bombs and mailing white powders. Authorities have uncovered a fake Russia-related video aimed at depicting electoral workers destroying votes during national voting, according to an FBI investigation Hack and leak operation It stole documents from Trump’s campaign, leading to the indictment of three Iranian cyber operatives.
The CISA and the FBI have a broader view of the threat situation that election officials feel will help them expand the size of the threat they face. “You know it’s difficult to understand the 50 states that do this yourself,” Pennsylvania Secretary Al Schmidt told CBS News. “While states conduct elections in accordance with federal and state laws, no state has a national or global perspective on the nature of the threat and the ability of the malignant actors to disrupt the election process.”
While state and local governments are holding national elections, the CISA and FBI Coordinating with election offices, we uncover foreign influence campaigns designed to sow divisions among Americans and uproot voter trust to prevent the rise of cyber and physical threats.
“Nation can often see only the effect of attacks – disinformation directed at them, their voters and threats, but their ability to respond is limited because they have no insight into where those attacks are coming from.” “The CISA, the FBI Foreign Impact Task Force, and others have “bird eye” insights. Both detect the source of domestic or foreign, national, or criminal actor-attacks and how they all fit into the big picture. ”
In a letter to the DHS secretary on Friday, nearly 40 election officials wrote to persuade the NOEM to try and maintain the cybersecurity and physical security services offered to the state. “Information technology systems related to election management have long been targeted by sophisticated cyber threat actors, including nation states and cybercrime groups,” wrote a leader of the National Secretaries Association. “CISA’s prioritized services will help election groups defend against these national security threats.”
“The CISA needs to refocus its mission,” DHS Deputy Chief Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement, and “we are evaluating how the election security mission was carried out, with a special focus on work related to mistakes, transformations and maliciousness.”
However, cuts across targeted teams from the CISA and FBI not only impact their ability to identify incorrect content online, according to multiple current and former U.S. officials, but could also affect safeguards that prevent election infrastructure from undermining. The team has eradicated secret manipulation Russia, China and Iran Only last year. Some of the CyberAgency employees are members of the CISA Election Security Resilience Team, the CyberSecurity Advisory Board and regional election security advisors, multiple current and former federal and state officials told CBS News.
The new administration has not yet nominated a new CISA director. Karen Evans, the authorities’ top political appointee, is currently a senior adviser.
Earlier this month, Trump He attempted to fire the chairman of the Federal Election Commissionmoves consistent with the ruling of campaign finance complaints from the 2024 election, including those against tech billionaires and presidential ally Elon Musk.
Trump and some conservatives on Capitol Hill have denounced the CISA in their police speech by coordinating with social media companies to identify online misinformation and misinformation ahead of the 2020 election. They accused the agency of being “censorship” that CISA officials repeatedly denied. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court filed a lawsuit over government work, but Blowback urged CISA to curb conversations with the Tech platform in 2021, according to three former U.S. officials.
“That’s not our role, it’s not what we do,” former CISA director Jen Easterly told reporters last year ahead of the 2024 election. “We would like to work with our partners on the overall threat to election infrastructure.”
The CISA’s ongoing internal probe appears to direct the Attorney General and agency leaders to investigate “inconsistent” Biden administration activities with the pledge to end Trump’s “online censorship.”
The DHS and CISA did not immediately answer CBS News questions about who directed the audit. The Justice Department did not answer questions about whether the Attorney General would be consulted with an investigation.
“I’m worried and wary of what appears to be a retreat from a rebound mission,” Simon said. “If foreign enemies are spun false narratives about electoral systems that can affect physical safety, only those who believe this disinformation will act in violent or threatening, harassing or intimidating ways.
