Christopher Krebs, the Department of Homeland Security’s top cybersecurity expert, says there is a “much lower” risk of election interference in November than in 2016.
“From a cybersecurity risk landscape, [is] a particularly different risk landscape than in 2016.” Much, much lower, especially when talking about country-state adversaries,” Krebs said in an interview with CBS News’s senior Washington correspondent Major Garrett Krebs, director of DHS’s Infrastructure and Cybersecurity Security Agency, spoke to Garrett for this week’s episode of the podcast “The Takeout”.
“We took a few hits and after 2016, however, we recommitted to this bipartisan and almost apolitical association of electoral security and made sure that 2020 is as safe as possible,” Krebs said, referring to Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections.
Krebs said “all 50 states” ran in combination for election security and called the differences between 2020 and 2016 “day and night.”
“The entire U.S. government’s national security force defends that election,” Krebs said.
Krebs also praised the vote by mail, saying he created a written record of the accuracy of the poll count.
“Every time you introduce paper in the process, choice or whatever, you give the opportunity to conduct an audit. And auditing is of the utmost importance because if you find anomalies, you can reverse the tape, right? Receipts, you can check what the genuine result is,” Krebs said. President Trump has said, without evidence, that widespread mail voting would lead to increased voter fraud.
Krebs talked about running with Republican and Democratic secretaries of state.
“Cybersecurity is apolitical. So whether it’s a California Democratic secretary of state or a Republican Iowa secretary of state, we’re running with everyone,” Krebs said.
Krebs also praised secretaries of state for making election data available to the public.
“They did a task to drive advice, awareness and data,” Krebs said. “Access your trusted data resources at the state point to accurately locate how the election will be conducted in your jurisdiction.”
In this week’s episode of “The Takeout,” Garrett met with the secretaries of state from Washington, Colorado, Michigan, Iowa, and New Mexico.
To be more informed about Major’s verbal exchange with Krebs and the secretaries of state, download the podcast “The Takeout” on Art1nine, iTunes, GooglePlay, Spotify and Stitcher. New episodes will be held every Friday morning. You can also watch “The Takeout” on CBSN on Fridays at five p.m., nine p.m. 12 p.m. ET and Saturday at 1 p.m., 9 p.m. 12 p.m. Et. For a full archive of episodes of “The Takeout”, visit www.takeoutpodcast.com. And you can pay attention to “The Takeout” on some CBS News Radio affiliates (see their local lists).
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