joe lieberman

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman sent a letter to President Obama today urging him to use his executive power and publish "advisory" guidelines on a cybersecurity order.

"Countless national security leaders from your Administration and the previous Administration have made clear that the threat from cyber attack is similar to the threat we faced from terrorism on September 10, 2001 -- the danger is real and imminent, yet we have not acted to defend against it," Lieberman wrote. "We know our adversaries are already stealing valuable intellectual property and exploiting our critical infrastructure … Read more

Federal regulators charged with overseeing the reliability of the electrical grid expressed concerns about proposed cybersecurity standards and warned that existing law may not protect "against fast-moving cybersecurity threats."

Yesterday's statement from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission came in a response to pointed questions from two senators, Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and Susan Collins (R-ME), the panel's senior Republican. The senators made their inquiries in July, a few weeks after CNET published an article on the topic.

Lieberman and Collins had asked for an "expeditious comprehensive investigation" … Read more

Two U.S. senators are calling for a federal investigation of the power grid's potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities after a CNET article last month raised security concerns.

The request for a probe comes from Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and Susan Collins (R-ME), the panel's senior Republican, who warned that lapses "could undermine part of the security system protecting our grid."

They sent a letter yesterday to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asking for an "expeditious comprehensive investigation into these allegations," which deal with digital signatures the industry … Read more

Security technology used by U.S. electric utilities is flawed and could increase the odds of computer intrusions or sabotage, the chairman of an industry standards group warns.

Jesse Hurley, co-chair of the North American Energy Standards Board's Critical Infrastructure Committee, says the mechanism for creating digital signatures for authentication is insufficiently secure because not enough is being done to verify identities and some companies are attempting to weaken standards to fit their business models.

"These certificates protect access to control systems," Hurley told CNET. "They protect access to a $400 billion market. They protect access … Read more

Joseph Lieberman, the independent senator from Connecticut, sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page this week expressing his opinion that Google-owned blogging platform Blogger should provide a button that would let readers of Blogger-powered blogs flag "terrorist content," according to a report.

In the letter, Lieberman says that alleged pipe-bomber Jose Pimentel, who was arrested by the New York Police Department last weekend, used a Blogger-based blog to spread hate-filled screeds and links to bomb-making instructions.

(As of this writing, the blog referenced by Lieberman, trueislam1.com, appears to have been taken down.)

"As demonstrated by this recent case, Google's webhosting site, Blogger, is being used by violent Islamist extremists to broadcast terrorist content," reads the reported Lieberman letter, which was posted online by blog TPM.… Read more

Foes of the Transportation Security Agency's new air-screening procedures, including law enforcement-style pat-downs and what have been called "virtual strip searches," had hoped that today's Senate hearing would lead to a privacy outcry on Capitol Hill.

Not quite. The hearing quickly cleaved along partisan lines, with Democratic senators applauding the Obama administration and Republicans offering only modest criticism.

"Mr. Pistole, you're doing a great job," Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat and chairman of the Senate committee overseeing air travel, told TSA chief John Pistole, a former FBI agent who's had the … Read more

The topic for today's Senate Homeland Security hearing was supposed to be air cargo security.

But in the wake of growing public concern about the Transportation Security Administration's new procedures to screen air travelers, that's where the discussion kept returning.

CNET is providing excerpts from the transcript of the hearing, in which committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman calls the scanners "necessary for the security" of the American people and TSA Administrator John Pistole says his agency's screeners are "there to protect you and your loved ones." (See related article.)

As the Thanksgiving travel … Read more

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, today applauded the Obama administration's new airport screening procedures and suggested that critics don't understand what they're talking about.

During a hearing, Lieberman told John Pistole, head of the Transportation Security Administration that "you're doing the right thing" in implementing new security regulations that give air travelers a choice of invasive pat-downs or full-body scans that show what a person looks like naked. (See related CNET story.)

"I think perhaps the reaction to the pat-down procedures got ahead of TSA's or the … Read more

Six U.S. senators delivered a sharp rebuke to the U.S. Marshals Service on Thursday, saying that they were "disturbed" to learn that thousands of images produced by full-body scanners at security checkpoints were surreptitiously recorded.

The bipartisan group of senators demanded a detailed explanation from the Marshals Service, which installed the millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of at a Florida courthouse. (See CNET's earlier article about the Marshals Service admitting the recording took place.)

A letter the politicians sent to Marshals Service director John Clark asks him to "identify any other locations … Read more