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Government Security Democrats Intel Republicans United States Politics

Congress Seeks To Outlaw Cyber Intel Sharing With Russia (onthewire.io) 179

Trailrunner7 shares a report from On the Wire: A group of House Democrats has introduced a bill that would formalize a policy of the United States not sharing cyber intelligence with Russia. The proposed law is a direct response to comments President Donald Trump made earlier this week after he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. After the meeting, Trump said on Twitter that he and Putin had discussed forming an "impenetrable Cyber Security unit" to prevent future attacks, including election hacking. The idea was roundly criticized by security and foreign policy experts and within a few hours Trump walked it back, saying it was just an idea and couldn't actually happen. But some legislators are not taking the idea of information sharing with Russia as a hypothetical. On Wednesday, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) introduced the No Cyber Cooperation With Russia Act to ensure that the U.S. doesn't hand over any cybersecurity intelligence on attacks or vulnerabilities to Moscow. Recent attacks such as the NotPetya malware outbreak have been linked to Russia, as have the various attacks surrounding the 2016 presidential election. "When the Russians get their hands on cyber intelligence, they exploit it -- as they did last month with the NotPetya malware attack targeting Ukraine and the West. It is a sad state of affairs when Congress needs to prohibit this type of information sharing with an adversary, but since we apparently do, I am proud to introduce the No Cyber Cooperation with Russia Act with my friends Brendan Boyle and Ruben Gallego. I urge my colleagues across the aisle to join us in sending a clear message that Congress will not stand for this proposal to undermine U.S. national security," Lieu said in a statement.
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Congress Seeks To Outlaw Cyber Intel Sharing With Russia

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  • Oh please! Really? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Are people actually falling for this shit? And you thought Trump was the bottom of the barrel? You poor souls!

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Russians spying on the US? Preposterous.
        Next you'll be telling me there are Russians pretending to be Americans on Slashdot!

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        tfw you can't tell if someone is making fun of Russia paranoia or if he really thinks people he meets online who disagree with him are secretly paid Russian shills.

        When you've reached the "My opinion is so indisputably correct that anyone who disagrees with me must be a foreign agent trying to sabotage the country." stage, it's long past time to step out of your bubble for a while. (And while you're at it, you might also consider seeing a psychiatrist...)

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Notice the sly way there are Russians pretending to be Americans on Slashdot becomes anyone who disagrees with me must be a foreign agent. You're obviously keen to discredit the idea.

          Notice also the unwarranted +2 Insightful.

        • by sound+vision ( 884283 ) on Friday July 14, 2017 @07:57AM (#54807639) Journal
          The teams of Russian shills that get dispersed across the internet are no less real than the 50 Cent Party of China. Might I suggest researching it, as well as Russia's. since you appear not to know these types of projects are in deployment. The only good thing is, it doesn't matter if its shills or not. A bad idea from a shill is no more difficult to discredit than a bad idea from someone who listened to a shill. The real challenge getting people to think critically. I know the cognitive dissonance between "my favorite reality TV star is president" and "the president treasonously colludes with foreign powers" hurts, and the propaganda machine gives you easy out to assuage that pain. But that sort of running from bad or difficult things stunts your intellectual growth. If you insist on doing it, please also refrain from voting or ever being in a position of authority.
          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by fatwilbur ( 1098563 )
            "the president treasonously colludes with foreign powers" - Ironic that you mention cognitive dissonance then post this. Do you know what treason means? Isn't it the job of the president to have discussions with foreign nations? Can you point to any evidence of wrongdoing in any discussion? Might want to take a step back and reconsider that cognitive dissonance comment.
            • by Rakarra ( 112805 )

              "the president treasonously colludes with foreign powers" - Ironic that you mention cognitive dissonance then post this. Do you know what treason means? Isn't it the job of the president to have discussions with foreign nations? Can you point to any evidence of wrongdoing in any discussion? Might want to take a step back and reconsider that cognitive dissonance comment.

              You don't collude with a hostile foreign power against an American adversary. You just don't. At the very least, you call the FBI when you hear this sort of thing.
              I don't know that Trump is actually involved in any of this, but some of his close advisers are accused of it.

      • by msauve ( 701917 )
        "Next you'll be telling me there are Russians pretending to be Americans on Slashdot!"

        No, but there are Russians pretending to be Americans on TV.
  • No Cyber Cooperation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:41PM (#54806165) Journal
    So the world is now safe for spam, malware and
    Equation Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    Stuxnet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    Want some more Magic Lantern with vendor cooperation?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    Thats why a global understanding of what is trying to enter, stay on and communicate from systems and networks is so vital.
    Malware is often very different to normal OS functions and the more nations and skilled people looking for such changes the better.
  • by Zombie Ryushu ( 803103 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:56PM (#54806201)

    Does this mean they can prosecute Open Source programmers and security experts for publishing Security vulnerabilities to Bugzilla, or LinuxSecurity.com?

    • by guises ( 2423402 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:09PM (#54806229)
      Probably not. This is a law with three goals: preventing Trump from doing something specific, calling attention to the fact that Trump wanted to do this, and perhaps creating a law for Trump to break (and thus be more easily removed from office). In other words, this is all about Trump and will likely be written so as to effect the rest of us not at all.
      • I'm a Junior maintainer for Mageia. I know we have people who happen to be from Russia registered in the Bugzilla system. Americans too. I'm worried this might affect Linux Distributions with an International scope resulting in US Contributors being charged with a Crime because sudo CVE-2017-1000367 gets published in Debian, Mageia Picks it up as MGASA-2017-0207, the US DOJ then says: US Maintainers of Mageia are in violation of this law because by posting the bug to be patched in sudo means the Russians k

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Are you doing this work as a US government employee? No? Then don't worry about it. Yes? Is your work classified? No? Then don't worry about it. Yes? You are an idiot.

        • by guises ( 2423402 ) on Friday July 14, 2017 @12:31AM (#54806443)
          Yeah, I got the gist of what you were saying in your comment above. I'm expecting this to be a law about what government agencies are allowed to do, and nothing to do with the population at large. If you're really worried about this then you can look up the text of the bill, it shouldn't be too hard to find.

          That's even assuming that this ever gets passed though, and I can't imagine that happening.
          • by Anonymous Coward

            It doesn't matter what a law is initially for, it will get used differently over time.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        What you say is probably true for the motives of these legislators. But it's a slippery slope. Eventually, some open source programmer with exotic tendencies might rub some prosecutor the wrong way. Without violating any other crime, or perhaps committing some minor infraction, the prosecutor might use this law to inflate the charges and get an unfair plea bargain.

      • by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Friday July 14, 2017 @05:00AM (#54807091)

        Probably not for a different reason. This is clever political posturing designed to generate headlines (hey, mission accomplished!) in the wake of Trump's faux pas. There's not a snowflake's chance in hell this bill is going anywhere except to news aggregators. It won't affect us at all because it will never get passed into law. That's just political reality talking. Republicans control Congress right now, and Trump is the one who would have to sign this into law.

      • In other words, this is all about Trump and will likely be written so as to effect the rest of us not at all.

        Hm. Pretty much all laws start out targeting one thing and one thing only but then get expanded to be used in ways not originally declared.

        Be careful of your dismissals when it comes to Laws.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Re "prosecute Open Source programmers and security experts for publishing" A Russian company publishes a good quality security report.
      Could a company in the US use that data directly to secure their networks more quickly?
      Have to wait for another nation to republish that information and then act on that much later?
      Or would a US company have to detect the same security issue on their own and then rediscover what was in public?
      No direct use of any Russian security information or quoting the direct results
  • by bongey ( 974911 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:17PM (#54806261)
    The bill is trying to cut funding to a russia/us cyber security group in the future, that doesn't even exist. It would be unconstitutional from the legislative branch to prevent executive from sharing information for national defense. Better summary directly from politicians http://dearcolleague.us/2017/0... [dearcolleague.us] and the text https://www.congress.gov/bill/... [congress.gov]
    • by ( 4475953 )

      The bill is still a very bad idea, though. There are many areas of Internet security in which Russia and the US could and should peacefully cooperate.

  • by StevenMaurer ( 115071 ) on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:25PM (#54806281) Homepage

    It isn't "Congress" which is trying this, it's a small group of the minority party. In fact, a small group even of the minority party. Basically nothing but gesture politics.

    Why is this being covered as if it's real, again?

    The only plausible answer is that it's BS click-bait.

    • by bongey ( 974911 )
      The bill is trying to cut funding to a russia/us cyber security group in the future, that doesn't even exist. It would be unconstitutional from the legislative branch to prevent executive from sharing information for national defense. Better summary directly from politicians http://dearcolleague.us/2017/0... [dearcolleague.us] and the text is here . https://www.congress.gov/bill/... [congress.gov]
      You would have seen my comment before but slashdot has modslapped me twice in 6 months.
      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        The bull is empty bullshit political theatre. Right there in the bill, the President of the US it to certify that the Russian government will not hack the US government but the US government is still fully entitled to hack the Russian government. Seriously how stupid to put that up, basically insanely crazy political theatre. Still the Ukraine bullshit, the US government hacked the Ukraine government and made it worse and now blame the Russian government. So the US can publicly admit to hacking the Ukraine

  • Smug (Score:4, Interesting)

    by geekymachoman ( 1261484 ) on Friday July 14, 2017 @12:04AM (#54806363)

    > When the Russians get their hands on cyber intelligence, they exploit it

    As opposed to Americans, who handle information in a way that benefit the greater good ? (/Sarcasm) (Do i really need to provide links ?)

    Get off your moral high horse already. You don't want to cooperate with anyone, you want to do things that are in your own interests, and get whoever you can to support your own interests (read: spineless Europeans vassal states). Cooperating with Russia would undermine common American interests and hence it's not good for America, because the Russians, have their own interests.

    Has nothing to do with the already stupidly boring narrative "Russians are Evil" that is constantly being rammed into minds of commoners through the popular media channels. By the way, if you going to talk evil, talk about your own politicians and foreign policies that turn at least one country to dust and cause 50 years of political instability in the region every ~ 10 years. I see more evil committed by USG than in Stalin's wildest dreams. You just pack it better, hollywood style, a polished turd for ready for people to eat up and feel better about themselves at next election.

    Freakin' hypocrites, the lot of you.

    • This is why it's going to be so great watching Trump pull America back from the world. No more wars for profit, no more oppression, no more experimenting with other countries for the hell of it (example: Egypt). The whole Russia is evil thing, too. It was the *Soviet Union* that was an evil empire, Russia is just a country desperately struggling to stay afloat, ringed by NATO bases and hemmed in by hostile enemies.
    • My idea from seven years ago:
      ""The need for FOSS intelligence tools for sensemaking etc."
      http://web.archive.org/web/201... [archive.org]
      "This suggestion is about how civilians could benefit by have access to the sorts of "sensemaking" tools the intelligence community (as well as corporations) aspire to have, in order to design more joyful, secure, and healthy civilian communities (including through creating a more sustainable and resilient open manufacturing infrastructure for such communities). It outlines (including at

  • by Anonymous Coward
    Proposing a cyber security cooperation group may have not been a clever idea today, but having a law making it unlawful is terminally stupid as you pose obstacle to it WHEN it could become a clever idea. And we all know that such laws may take time to repell.
  • The attack vector for russia and china is porn, has been for the last 12 or so years.

  • Whenever Trump bursts out with another one of his brilliant ideas, immediately pass legislation to outlaw whatever it was he proposed. Yes, I can see some wisdom there.

  • fundraising (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Orgasmatron ( 8103 ) on Friday July 14, 2017 @01:16AM (#54806527)

    Can we be honest with ourselves for a moment?

    This is a fundraising bill. It is designed to look good on a letter sent to Democrats in a couple of districts in hopes that they will send money to the reelection campaigns of the bill's sponsors.

    It is functionally identical to the "questions" asked by Democrats during confirmation or committee hearings, or the statements made by Democrats during bill debates. The questions aren't seeking information, the statements aren't swaying votes, and this "bill" isn't intended to ever become a law.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I'm curious why you've decided to single out democrats for this behavior, especially after half a decade of republicans trying to pass bills that repeal obamacare, only to be handed the keys to the entire country and still not manage to do it.

      • Though your example of Obamacare repeal is exactly on point, and there are other similar examples that one could point to, the Republicans, generally speaking, have a different pathology. What I am talking about is the dominant behavior of the two groups. Most of the Republicans do it occasionally, and some of them do it often - but pretty much all of the Democrats do it pretty much all of the time now.

        With that in mind, discussing the Republicans and their problems would be off topic for this story, thou

  • Get a room.

  • Silly question for you USAians, but...why, exactly, do so many Americans consider Russia to be an enemy? I mean, sure, there was a decades-long "cold war", but that was the USSR, and those days are (or ought to be) past. Why not treat Russia as a friend, make common cause where possible?

    • Why not treat Russia as a friend, make common cause where possible?

      Because they're not. The Russian government has very different ideas of what should happen in the world than the US.

      If "enemy" is too strong a word, use "adversary" instead. Look at Russia's history of human rights, look at the nations they consider "friends," take note of the extreme nationalism of Russia, look at their farce of an electoral process.

      We oppose them because they need to be opposed.

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by Rockoon ( 1252108 )
        Yes, Russia different idea is that it thinks that America should overthrow 3 different governments under a single Peace-prize winning president.

        First there was Libya: We overthrew the government.
        Then we went after Syria: We tried really hard to overthrow the government but Russia stopped us. We didnt train enough rebels in the Libyan training camps we set up.
        Then because Russia prevented Syria, Ukraine: We overthrew the democratically elected government of the Ukraine and installed racist fascists. It c
    • by ( 4475953 )

      One reason could be that Russia is effectively a dictatorship ruled by Putin and a few oligarchs, but still has a mighty military and thousands of nukes, and at the same time fosters some extreme right-wing nationalism to detract from domestic problems, so whenever Putin decides to retire to his Dacha outside of Moscow, some batshit-crazy ultranationalist could rise to power and control all those slowly rotting nukes.

      Another reason could be the recent annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the countless a

  • No worry (Score:2, Informative)

    by slapout ( 93640 )

    "And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back. Because the Cold War has been over for 20 years. " Barack Obama

  • It's Dead Jim... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cb88 ( 1410145 ) on Friday July 14, 2017 @08:54AM (#54808007)
    "a group of House Democrats"
  • The Russia Democrats obsession is reaching levels of group paranoia obsession. Future psychiatrists will have a new field of study.

  • hackers are smarter - if assume that you're usually right...

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