Page:Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence United States Senate on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election Volume 1.pdf/8

   
COMMITTEE SENSITIVE—RUSSIA INVESTIGATION ONLY

(U) DHS and FBI issued a second FLASH and a Joint Analysis Report in October that flagged   suspect IP addresses, many unrelated to Russia.^[1] DHS briefers told the Committee that they were intentionally over-reporting out of an abundance of caution, given their concern about the seriousness of the threat. DHS representatives told the Committee, "We were very much at that point in a sort of duty-to-warn type of attitude … where maybe a specific incident like this, which was unattributed at the time, wouldn't have necessarily risen to that level. But … we were seeing concurrent targeting of other election-related and political figures and political institutions … [which] led to what would probably be more sharing than we would normally think to do."^[2]

 ^{[3]  [4]}

  DHS assessed that the searches, done alphabetically, probably included all 50 states, and consisted of research on "general election-related web pages, voter ID information, election system software, and election service companies."^[5]

 ^{[6]  [7]  [8]}

 

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1. (U/ ) FBI FLASH, Alert Number T-LD1005-TT, TLP-AMBER,  ; DHS/FBI JAR-16-20223, Threats to Federal, State, and Local Government Systems, October 14, 2016.
2. (U) SSCI interview with DHS and CTIIC, February 27, 2018, p. 9-10.
3.   FBI LHM,  
4.  
5.   DHS Homeland Intelligence Brief, Update:  
6.   NSA   DIRNSA, May 5, 2017. This information was not available to the U.S. government until April 2017.
7.  
8. (U) NSA  DIRNSA, May 5, 2017.

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COMMITTEE SENSITIVE—RUSSIA INVESTIGATION ONLY