The Secret Service needs to become a full-service protection outfit for presidential candidates, including staving off cybersecurity threats, Robby Mook wrote in a column for The Washington Post.
The assassination of Robert Kennedy 50 years ago was the tipping point for presidential candidates to receive physical protection from the Secret Service; the hacks that doomed Hillary Clinton in 2016 should compel the digital protection of them, too, Mook wrote.
"Given the warning from Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats that we are 'just one click of the keyboard away' from another attack on our elections, Congress should act to protect candidates as it did after Kennedy was killed," wrote Mook, Clinton's 2016 campaign manager.
"It’s time the Secret Service provided digital security to presidential candidates, their families and their campaigns," Mook writes.
"Campaigns simply do not have access to the information required to take on nation-states," Mook writes. "The Secret Service, however, can get the full benefit of our intelligence community and synthesize threat intelligence between campaigns."
Mook's doomsday scenario for a candidate:
"Imagine running for president and, after attacking Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, seeing a 'blogger' claim that she has an entire cache of your 14-year-old daughter’s private messages.
"If they’re released, your daughter will endure withering humiliation online. If you just pipe down about Putin, all will be well. Do we really want this to be possible?" Mook writes.
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