from the breaking-everything-it-touches dept
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) now exists in name only. Not only did Trump’s band of Musk-led pillagers dismantle the infrastructure side of the agency by disbanding the CISA group investigating a massive China-based hack of US phone systems, but the administration terminated ongoing election security and disinformation-thwarting efforts by the agency roughly a month later, putting CISA in charge of… practically nothing.
Its only mandate now is to investigate itself for any malfeasance, presumably so Trump can point at anything discovered as evidence of a “stolen” 2020 national election. Now that CISA is pretty much moth-balled, the Kristi Noem-led DHS has decided it’s not going to share the results of its review of CISA election security work with the general public, as Derek Johnson and Colin Wood report for CyberScoop.
When the Trump administration began sidelining and laying off personnel at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, it started by targeting employees who worked on election security and disinformation. At the same time, the Department Homeland Security announced it would conduct a comprehensive review of CISA’s election security mission.
This week, the agency confirmed that it has completed the review, but said that its findings won’t be released to the public.
“The assessment that CISA has undertaken is internal and will help inform how the agency moves forward to best support critical infrastructure,” a CISA spokesperson said. “This is an internal document that is not planned to be released publicly.
Here’s some more of that “maximum transparency” Musk promised last month. Of course, the culling of CISA and the burial of this report are their own form of transparency. They indicate Donald Trump doesn’t care about election security or integrity. All he cares about is whether or not he wins. This means CISA won’t be detecting and mitigating threats or providing support to state election officials who don’t have the means or the expertise to do battle with persistent threats or organized disinformation campaigns.
It’s a long con but not a particularly subtle scheme. By removing CISA from the playing field, the next election that’s lost can be blamed on insecure voting tech, providing a basis for more “stolen election” assertions. But it might be more than that. It might be an early effort in service of a loftier goal: greater leeway to engage in the sort of election-rigging Trump and his supporters have falsely claimed for years resulted in the election of Joe Biden.
A few years ago, I would not have even thought of suggesting this possibility. But the first few months of Trump’s second term have made it clear he’s willing to destroy what’s left of the Republic if it means retaining control of the federal government. And not just at the federal level. What’s being done here — in addition to the burial of information the administration doesn’t want to share with the public — severs the lines of communication between CISA and the state and local governments it works with.
Meanwhile, the nonprofit Center for Internet Security, which manages the federally funded Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, stated this week that “due to the termination of funding by the Department of Homeland Security, the Center for Internet Security no longer supports the EI-ISAC.”
The move was expected, as a Feb. 14 DHS memo obtained by StateScoop indicated the department intended to “partially” terminate its cooperative agreement with CIS, with the White House saying the EI-ISAC no longer aligns with DHS’ mission.
The order technically leaves the New York nonprofit free to provide services to state and local governments, but without its prior designation, a majority of states are now legally barred from accepting its services.
This means even state and local elections run an increased risk of being compromised by malicious attacks. It also opens them up to internal disruption by election officials or others who are willing to exploit these systems for their own ends. Election integrity matters. That’s why, historically, we’ve tried to put as many eyes on it as possible. The Trump Administration is going in the opposite direction, setting states adrift and deliberately blinding this part of the federal government. We’re only two months into this administration and the velocity and breadth of Trump’s power grab has been astounding. If we’re lucky, we’ll only have another four years of this. Let’s just hope there will still be something left to build from when it’s over.
Filed Under: cisa, dhs, disinformation, election integrity, election security
