On the recordApril 22, 2015
I want to thank our ranking member and also the chair for bringing forward this bipartisan and necessary legislation. As we speak right now, Americans are under attack, and these attacks are not coming in the form of anything that we have been used to before. People are not kicking down front doors of homes and businesses; instead, they are attacking us through our networks. Our bank accounts, our health care records, our social media accounts, our cell phones, all are being hacked every day. CNN reported that, in 2014, half of the Nation's adults were hacked. The examples are voluminous: 70 million Target customers were hacked; 56 million Home Depot customers were hacked; 4.6 million Snapchat users were hacked. This is Snapchat, which is supposed to be an impenetrable account that allows data to come in and disappear. They were hacked. Hackings are happening every day. Our privacy is under attack. The problem, today, there is virtually zero relationship between private industry and government--private industry, which has about 85 percent of the networks, and government, which has about 15 percent of the networks but has vast resources that can help protect individuals against attacks. Our government has a duty, a responsibility, to protect the American people, and that is what this bill seeks to do. It does it in a number of ways. First and foremost, this is a voluntary program that is being created.…
