Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said he’s concerned U.S. legislators and...
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said he’s concerned U.S. legislators and investigative agencies aren’t doing enough to prosecute hackers who are stealing money and intellectual property from American companies and consumers. Whitehouse’s comments came Wednesday during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on…
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Crime hearing which he chaired. Despite recent high-profile arrests of hackers from organizations like Anonymous, AntiSec and LulzSec, the Justice Department and FBI must do more to stop foreign governments from hacking the U.S., he said. “It is all well and good to complain about such threats through diplomatic channels, but at some point you have to stop complaining and start indicting.” Despite the administration’s call for additional cyberfunding in the 2014 federal budget, Whitehouse said he thought federal agencies are understaffed and underresourced to address the threat. “My impression is that they are working so hard to figure out who is coming through the windows … that there hasn’t been the capability to turn that information into a prosecution … and put someone on the business end of an indictment,” he said. Both Whitehouse and Subcommittee Ranking Member Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the Chinese government is to blame for much of the cybertheft and cyberespionage against U.S. businesses. “Our Chinese friends seem hell-bent on stealing anything they can get their hands on in America,” Graham said. He said the most “practical solution” to protect U.S. cyberassets is to get the private sector to harden its defenses through voluntary cybersecurity incentives. The government needs to “up our game” and reshape its approach to prosecuting cybercrimes, much like the way Eliot Ness enforced prohibition rules in the 1930s, Graham said. “To me, we seem to have a new emerging crime wave here."