During a House hearing this week, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) discussed supposedly serious threats from cyberattacks.
Specifically, she was addressing cutting-edge technologies like robotics that were under discussion in the hearing, but in context, Republicans like Greene have often propagated baseless conspiracy theories about the integrity of U.S. elections… false claims that sometimes include notions of foreign intrusion affecting U.S. technologies used for balloting.
In this example, Greene was persistent in her description of ostensible dangers from cyberattacks — and the witnesses systematically explained some of the very substantial protections already in place. It was kind of a major flop for Greene to be so easily schooled, somewhat mirroring the recent Senate hearing where Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) seemed to genuinely not know what “intersex” meant. (Though some might be unfamiliar, it’s less excusable for someone in a position of power — with access to substantial knowledge — to have no idea.)
“I’ll speak specifically to the application that we have built that’s being utilized by CBP,” witness Ryan Rawding of Pangiam told the Congresswoman. “Our processes adheres to all DHS and CBP privacy policies. So as they’re building applications within the network, all the security protocols are in place to protect the government cellphones that the agents have, and then the software that there lies within them. Specific to some of the applications that we’ve deployed, is we don’t retain any of that information on the devices once the initial encounter has occurred and they’ve been pushed through the processing center.”
A witness speaking after Rawding explained that the technologies his team handled had gone absolutely massive stretches without any such technological issue like Greene feared. It was an opportunity for the Republican to provide some kind of agenda and policy perspective other than endlessly attacking Biden… and it just spiraled. Check out the proceedings below:
