According to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the true extent of cyber crime may be impossible to judge.

“A lot of these cyber attacks go undetected and unreported because the victims are frightened to report them,” said Lieberman Monday during a Homeland Security Committee hearing.

Lieberman explained that cyber crooks had sophisticated methods, such as commandeering an unknowing individual’s computer to traffic money.

Lieberman said that in 2007, the TJX Corporation, a leading retailing organization, experienced a breach of its wireless networks in which up to 94 million credit and debit card numbers were put the at risk of being used illegally.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is the Committee’s ranking member, pointed to computer hacker Albert Gonzalez, who was indicted in August for his alleged involvement in the largest credit and debit breach ever in the United States, as a symbol for how dangerous cyber crime has become. Gonzalez pleaded guilty recently to charges stemming from the theft of tens of millions of credit and debit card numbers from the computers of several major retailers. Authorities believe this was not Gonzalez’s only major cyber crime.

“Protecting our cyberspace has become critically important. In the past 18 months, this Committee has held three hearings on the topic of cyber security,” said Collins.

The witnesses at Monday’s hearing included Philip Reitinger, deputy undersecretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate for Homeland Security Department; Michael Merritt, assistant director of the U.S. Secret Service’s Office of Investigations; William Nelson, president and CEO of Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center; and Robert Carr, chairman and CEO of Heartland Payment Systems, Inc.

Sen. Joe Lieberman says if the nation has more options for clean coal energy, prices will come decrease for consumers. (0:56)

 

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Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said people fear making changes to improve environmental policy, but says changes are coming and a necessity. (0:22)

 

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By Laura Smith, University of New Mexico – Talk Radio News Service

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that climate change presents a growing threat to the United States.

“The environmental concerns have merged with two other major American national interests. One is economic. The second coalescence is that climate change is a matter of national security,” Lieberman said during a panel discussion with the Reserve Officers Association in Washington, D.C.

Lieberman, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, added that climate change does not threaten the stability of the U.S. alone.

“The Minister of Defense from Bangladesh is planning what they will have to do for the unrest that will occur if global warming is not checked and tides rise,” said Lieberman.

Lieberman noted that legislative changes would need to be enacted to offset the risks, conceding that while there is a resistance to change, the U.S. is making progress.

“This is not easy because of the change involved. And yet as the years have gone by the number of stake holders, including businesses that have come forward and said they want to be part of the change because they see it coming … has grown.”

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) says that U.S. safety is not improving and that a new system is required to adequately prepare the nation for possible biological terrorist attacks. (0:23)

 

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By Learned Foote- Talk Radio News Service

The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is weighing the possibility of levying economic sanctions against Iran. During a hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday, the committee discussed ways to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Nicholas Burns, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and former State Department official during the Bush administration, said that Iran’s hotly contested presidential election has compromised the power of its government, and that America “should seek to diminish its strength further.” He said that “Americans should seek to maintain our position as the dominant power in the Middle East, because our influence is positive in that region, and Iran’s is not.”

Burns said that President Obama has generally followed former President’s Bush “basic strategy” by trying to end the nuclear weapons project in Iran through negotiations before applying “draconian” economic sanctions. He said that he did not believe negotiations alone will successfully end Iran’s nuclear program, but said that financial, economic, and energy sanctions would be more effective.

Dr. Suzanne Maloney, a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute, discussed the economic outlook in Iran. She said the country faces “serious economic problems: double-digit inflation, power shortages, a tumbling stock market, stubbornly high unemployment rates,…increasing dependence on volatile resource revenues, and perhaps most ominously for the Iranian leadership, a rising tide of popular indignation about economic frustrations.”

The panelists agreed that unilateral sanctions will not be effective unless other countries join in sanctions against Iran. “We alone in the United States don’t have the capacity to cripple the Iranian economy with our sanctions,” said Maloney. She argued that “multilateral steps represent the only real alternative to a negotiated solution.”

Testifying before the committee, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I- Conn.) praised an amendment added to the Defense Authorization bill, which passed last week. The amendment places a time limit on how long Iran would have to respond to U.S. requests for negotiation before sanctions would be imposed.

“This bill will basically say to companies worldwide who are selling gasoline to Iran, who are shipping it to Iran, or who are insuring or financing those shipments, you got a choice to make. You can continue what you are doing with Iran, or you can do business in the United States of America. You cannot do both,” said Sen. Lieberman. He said that the amendment would not force President Obama to act, but would grant him the authority of enacting economic sanctions.

Sen. Lieberman said that the amendment had bipartisan support. “No matter what may divide us on other issues, we are very united in our concern, our anger about the Iranian program of nuclear weapons development,” he said. “The greatest threat to peace is for Iran to get a nuclear weapons capability.”

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) says that the Iranian regime cares more about its survival than obtaining nuclear weapons, and that economic sanctions would encourage the regime to stop trying to build a nuclear weapons program. (0:24)

 

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Sen. Joe Lieberman (I- Conn.) says that there is bipartisan support for preventing Iran from establishing a nuclear weapons program. He says there is commitment from members of both parties to halt these developments. (0:26)

 

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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S. Car.) says he is proud of the way President Obama has responded so far to the Iranian regime’s oppression of its citizens. (:36)

 

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Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) says legislation he and fellow Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S. Car.) are about to put forth will show Iranian protestors that America stands with them. (:23)

 

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