Homeland Security officials are considering declaring the upcoming election a "critical infrastructure," so the group can take control of security over the elections the same way it has over Wall Street and the electric power grid.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said, "We should carefully consider whether our election system, our election process, is critical infrastructure like the financial sector, like the power grid. There's a vital national interest in our process."
Johnson made the comments at a Christian Science Monitor conference earlier in August, according to the Washington Examiner.
Johnson's comments came before the FBI identified cyber attacks on at least two separate state election boards.
A major issue is that there is no central system that could be attacked, since individual states run election, Johnson said, and "there's no one federal election system. There are some 9,000 jurisdictions involved in the election process."
The Department of Homeland Security explained the importance of "critical infrastructure" on its website, stating, "There are 16 critical infrastructure sectors whose assets, systems, and networks, whether physical or virtual, are considered so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof."
The Examiner noted a White House policy directive that said, "The federal government also has a responsibility to strengthen the security and resilience of its own critical infrastructure."
In a press release August 15 on DHS's website, Secretary Johnson said that DHS is not aware of any specific or credible threats to the systems involved in the general election.
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