Source: United States Senator for Delaware Christopher Coons
WASHINGTON — Today, U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, chaired a hearing focused on hostile foreign powers’ access to Americans’ data. Senator Coons welcomed leading researchers on cybersecurity policy and national security law to discuss the threat of foreign adversaries’ collection and use of American citizens’ data. The full hearing can be seen here.
Senator Coons chaired this Subcommittee hearing a day after participating in the full Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to explore a whistleblower complaint that alleged foreign intelligence agencies target social media platforms to mine information from inside the companies.
Video and transcript of Senator Coons’ opening remarks are available below:
Senator Coons: This hearing will come to order. I’d like to thank all of our witnesses for participating today and offer my apologies. The Foreign Relations Committee was engaged in a challenging and important markup of legislation relating to the State Department and to our policy regarding Taiwan, and I want to specifically thank Ranking Member Sasse and his staff for working with us on a constructive, consensual basis around putting together this hearing, the agenda, and the witnesses.
This is a critical topic and I’m looking forward to a productive conversation today. We’re going to explore how American citizens’ private personal data are being accessed, collected, and used by our foreign adversaries. We know that hostile foreign intelligence services continue to work to gather sensitive information about each and every one of us. They collect information about to whom we speak, the places we visit, the news we consume, the products we buy, and a great deal more, and they do this because the insights buried in that data can be used against us. It can be used to either pressure or blackmail people in positions of responsibility and power, and with access to critical national security information. It can be used to gain strategic insights into social or economic trends. It can be used to sharpen and refine misinformation or disinformation, campaigns that other nations have engaged in to sow discord and to weaken our democracy. There’s no shortage of ways foreign adversaries can gather and compile this sensitive personal information.
Yesterday, the full committee had a hearing with Twitter whistleblower, “Mudge,” Peiter Zatko, and he testified that foreign intelligence agencies have targeted social media platforms to mine information from inside those companies. Now, there’s also been a public reporting about a steady stream of hacking and ransomware attacks. It seems we have heard over and over about wide-scale data breaches. We also know applications and software that are controlled by foreign nations presents its own risk with American users being directly targeted— providing their data to companies who are incorporated in or located in adversarial nations, and there’s other sources of less prominent data leakage through a vast system of data brokers that buy and repackage and sell data from tens of millions of Americans and resell it to the highest bidder.
We have very little insight into these transactions. Almost no understanding of how they are happening, who’s on the receiving end, and no limitations in it. So, my view, in order to get our hands around this data flow to our adversaries, we have to understand its sources so we can move towards more appropriate controls, and we have to be clear-eyed about the scope and depth and reach of this problem and that no single solution will be readily available. We have to approach this holistically and not just simply as a nation playing whack-a-mole every time there is a new emergent app or device or avenue for data leakage. So, we also have to respect our core values, our democratic values, and make sure that we’re serving our nation’s competitive interests. So, Congress should consider how any proposed intervention will also impact fundamental freedoms: freedom of speech and association and the free flow of data that benefits our country and our companies.
So, there’s no shortage of potential solutions. I will discuss some of them today. I know the Ranking Member and his staff have been working on a proposal to assume our government doesn’t enter into contracts jeopardizing U.S. citizens’ data. I look forward to working with him on that proposal and to find other paths towards some common regulatory proposal. We’ve assembled an all-star panel of witnesses with a wide range of views today, and I’m grateful for Senator Sasse’s close cooperation in getting this hearing moving forward, and I’ll now defer to my Ranking Member.”
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