CYBERATTACK - U.S. Customs and Border Protection

NOTE:  This article was copied from the e-newspaper, therefore no article link.

"Photos of travelers taken in data breach" San Diego Union-Tribune 6/11/2019

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said Monday that photos of travelers had been compromised as part of a “malicious cyberattack,” raising concerns over how federal officials’ expanding surveillance efforts could imperil Americans’ privacy.

Customs officials said in a statement Monday that the images, which included photos of people’s faces and license plates, had been compromised as part of an attack on a federal subcontractor.

The CBP makes extensive use of cameras and video recordings at airports and land border crossings, where images of vehicles are captured.  Those images are used as part of a growing agency facial-recognition program designed to track the identity of people entering and exiting the U.S.

The CBP says airport operations were not affected by the breach, but it declined to say how many people might have had their images stolen.  The agency processes more than a million passengers and pedestrians crossing the U.S. border on an average day, including more than 690,000 incoming land travelers.

A CBP statement said that the agency learned of the breach on May 31 and that none of the image data had been identified “on the Dark Web or Internet.”  But reporters at The Register, a British technology news site, reported late last month that a large haul of breached data from the firm Perceptics was being offered as a free download on the dark web.

THE WASHINGTON POST

ELECTION THREATS - Highly Probable Russian Interference

"Why this author says it’s ‘highly probable’ Russian interference swung the 2016 election" PBS NewsHour 11/1/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Did the involvement of Russian trolls and hackers swing the 2016 presidential election?  Kathleen Hall Jamieson, author of “Cyberwar,” believes it is “highly probable” that they did.  She joins Judy Woodruff to discuss her research on how the Russians found the right messages and delivered them to key audiences using social media--as well as how we can manage foreign election meddling in the future.

WAR WITH RUSSIA - Do Sanctions Work?

"U.S. uses sanctions to strike back at Russia for 2016 election meddling" PBS NewsHour 3/15/2018

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SUMMARY:  The Trump administration officially moved to punish Russia for cyberattacks and election meddling in the U.S. and Europe by imposing sanctions against 19 Russians -- 13 of whom have been indicted in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.  That word came as officials also accused Moscow of a sweeping campaign to disrupt key industries.  Judy Woodruff reports.

"Do the U.S. sanctions against Russia have any bite?" PBS NewsHour 3/15/2018

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SUMMARY:  U.S. sanctions targeting 19 Russians is the strongest response to Moscow's interference in the 2016 election and other campaigns and cyberattacks since President Trump took office.  Judy Woodruff talks with Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, about whether the sanctions have any bite any what they say about U.S.-Russia relations.

THE WAR WITH RUSSIA - American Election Security

"‘42 states haven’t upgraded their election equipment in over a decade and Russia knows it’" PBS NewsHour 1/10/2018

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SUMMARY:  Primary voting in the 2018 elections is set to being in just two months.  Is the U.S. voting system secure in case Russia tries to interfere?  Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn) join Judy Woodruff to discuss their bipartisan effort to protect future elections, as well as President Trump’s call for Republicans to take over the Russia probe and the immigration negotiations.

THE RUSSIA FILE - Hacked NSA Documents

"Report: Russia hacked NSA documents with aid from antivirus software" PBS NewsHour 10/5/2017

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SUMMARY:  The Wall Street Journal reported that Russia obtained classified information about how the U.S. military protects its computer networks and conducts electronic spying.  The breach occurred when data was stolen by an NSA contractor, then hacked by Russia.  Hari Sreenivasan speaks with The Wall Street Journal's Shane Harris.

CYBER ATTACK- Ukrainian Havoc

"How a sophisticated malware attack is wreaking havoc on Ukraine" PBS NewsHour 6/28/2017

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SUMMARY:  Governments and industries the world over are trying to deal with a new cyberattack, originating Tuesday in Ukraine and spreading rapidly through Europe and beyond.  The new attack shows signs of greater technical sophistication than one in early May, but both apparently used a leaked tool developed by the NSA.  Hari Sreenivasan speaks with Rodney Joffe of Neustar, Inc., about what's at stake.

CYBER WARS - Impact of Worldwide Attack

"Analyzing the impact of the worldwide cyber attack" PBS NewsHour 5/13/2017

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SUMMARY:  Nearly 100 countries around the world worked to restore services after a massive cyber attack on Friday.  The ransomware attack appeared to exploit a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows, which was identified by the U.S. National Security Agency and later leaked to the internet.  Former Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Carlin joins Hari Sreenivasan for more on the attack.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 1/6/2017

"Shields and Brooks on Trump's ‘disdain' for the intelligence community" PBS NewsHour 1/6/2017

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SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the U.S. intelligence report on Russian intervention in the presidential election and its implications for American democracy and foreign policy.  They also review highlights from the NewsHour's interviews with Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  And that brings us to the analysis of Shields and Brooks.  That is syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Happy new year, gentlemen.

MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist:  Happy new year, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Good seeing you in 2017.

So, let's start by talking about this intelligence report.

Mark, the entire intelligence community is behind it.  They're saying without a shadow of a doubt, in so many words, they are confident the Russians tried to interfere in the U.S. election and they developed a clear preference for Donald Trump.

What are we to make of this?  Does it change the way we look at this election?

MARK SHIELDS:  I don't know if it changes the way we look at it, Judy.  It certainly changes the way we look at the United States' relationship with Russia, I think, and in this sense, that the intelligence community said it made these findings with high confidence.

Ever since the weapons of mass destruction era and the decision on invading Iraq, the intelligence community has been very, very careful to avoid high confidence.  That's saying, we really believe this to be true.  They have been more tentative.

There was no question.  They were unequivocal and emphatic.  Every American ought to be angry, ought to be concerned that an unfriendly nation, a nation that has cooperated with us certain places, but doesn't wish us well, sought to sabotage American democracy, American confidence in our own democratic institutions, and to influence the outcome of the election.

That's a cause of concern and worry and anger.  And I would hope that we would respond, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans, to make sure it never happens again.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  David, how should Americans look at this?

DAVID BROOKS, New York Times:  I agree with that, with anger, with shock.

We have sort of gotten used to the idea, because of the news leaks before this report.  But the idea that Russia felt emboldened and apparently fearless to go into our election and manipulate our own election process, whether successfully or not, is a sign that they are outside the norms of normal society.

There's always statecraft.  There's always disinformation.  But this is a step up, a Russia that feels completely free to do this, a Putin who feels completely free to do this, without fear of penalty, and so far paying little penalty.

Partly, it's motivated, I think, by animus toward Hillary Clinton, as we heard earlier in the program, things she said in 2011, 2012, partly, frankly, a desire, a belief that feeling Donald Trump will be tougher on ISIS.

But the thing that should most concern us is a shift in American foreign policy.  We have had a bipartisan belief in American foreign policy based on the post-World War II institutions that believed in democratic global world, which Russia and the Soviet Union was often seen as hostile to.  And most Republicans and Democrats have always basically believed in this world order.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and maybe Marine Le Pen, do not agree with this basic structure of the world.  They seem to have no respect for the institutions that were created after World War II, and they see a potential alliance of populists around the world who would fight Islam and restore a certain semblance of traditional values.

And so we could be seeing a pivot in American foreign policy that may be on the mind of Donald Trump, certainly seems to be on the mind of Steve Bannon, his ideologist.  And this is a piece of that larger shift.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  And, Mark, Donald Trump, the president-elect, does have his own reaction to this report.

I mean, you know, joining in with what David's saying, I mean, he started out by calling it a political witch-hunt.  And then after he was briefed about it, he said — he made a very short comment and said, in so many words that, well, it didn't affect the outcome of the election.

MARK SHIELDS:  As usual, he takes the big picture.  In other words, I won, and anything that in any way diminishes or tarnishes my personal victory, I reject.

His disparagement, make that disdain, openly, for the American intelligence community and its work is damaging to national security.  I mean, the intelligence community, for the security of our nation, for the well-being of our nation, for the economic prosperity of our nation, competitiveness, depends on sources in other places.

And other nations depend upon our intelligence.  And here we have the President-elect dismissing, disparaging, disdaining openly, because it somehow, in his way — his perspective, diminishes his victory, is just astonishing.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  David.

DAVID BROOKS:  It's happening on three levels, like, this story.

There is the big strategic level, which I described.  Then there's the Donald Trump ego level.  And his ego is like a comet the size of Jupiter just traveling through the solar system, and we all have to be affected by its [Trump] gravitational pull.  So all of American foreign policy has to remind us that Donald Trump really did win this election all by himself, and nobody else could have helped, and so it was all me, me, me.

COLD WAR 2 - View of Rep (D-Calif) Schiff

"Rep. Schiff weighs in on the intelligence report about Russian hacking" PBS NewsHour 1/6/2017

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SUMMARY:  Intelligence agencies have released their detailed findings that Russia interfered in the U.S. Presidential election.  The report says Vladimir Putin himself orchestrated a campaign of intervention, specifically intending to boost Trump's election chances "when possible.”  Judy Woodruff talks to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  We return to the report issued this afternoon by the U.S. intelligence community on what it calls, “Russian activities and intentions” in recent U.S. elections.

The report is a public version of a highly classified assessment given to the president and other top officials.  It alleges that Russia used covert operations to steal material from the Democratic Party and others, and disseminated it through media organizations that it controls and through third-party groups.  It called the campaign a significant escalation of Russian efforts to — quote — “undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order.”

For more on the report's findings and its effects, I'm joined from Capitol Hill by California Representative Adam Schiff.  He is the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

And, for the record, we called every current Republican member serving on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees.  None was available.

Adam Schiff, Congressman Schiff, thank you very much for joining us.

Now, this report says it has high confidence that President Vladimir Putin personally ordered this campaign to interfere with the U.S. election.  It doesn't say how it knows that, but after you were briefed and have read the classified report, are you confident that that's what happened?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-Calif.):  Well, I am very confident in it.  And I think all the members of the Intelligence Committee, Democrats and Republicans, are confident in the conclusions about the Russian involvement.

I have been on the committee now for almost 10 years, and this is among the best documented, most ironclad, I think, intelligence reports that I have seen on any major issue.  If this doesn't persuade Donald Trump about the facts, nothing will.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  The report, also, Congressman Schiff, says the Russians developed what they call a clear preference for Donald Trump.  How so?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF:  Well, there are many reasons why the Russians prefer Donald Trump.

I think, in the first instance, they wanted to tear down Secretary Clinton.  They, I think, despised her remarks about the flawed 2011 elections in Russia.  They feared that she would be very tough on Russia in terms of sanctions.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, they had every reason to want.  It was somebody who belittled NATO, who praised Putin, who I think would be much more amenable to their policy in Syria, where they bomb civilians.

So there were a lot of reasons for them to prefer Donald Trump.  It was their aspiration, as the report makes clear, to help him and to hurt her.

COLD WAR 2 - Russian Attack on U.S. Political System

THE RESISTANCE - It should be obvious that Trump (like many) will NEVER believe anything that does not fit his world-view.  Need I say, this is a very, very dangerous in a President of the United States.

"Part 1 — Russian meddling doubters should wait to see report, says Brennan" PBS NewsHour 1/3/2017

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SUMMARY:  John Brennan, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, sits down with Judy Woodruff to discuss the CIA's upcoming report looking into Russia's alleged election hacking, claims by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the CIA's role in preventing cyberattacks and regrets about the Syrian civil war, in the first of a two-part conversation.

Unclassified Full Report (PDF)



"Part 2 — John Brennan on what his CIA successor needs to worry about" PBS NewsHour 1/4/2017

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SUMMARY:  CIA Director John Brennan joins Judy Woodruff for the second installment of our interview to discuss concerns raised by European intelligence officials regarding possible Russian intrusion in upcoming elections, whether the U.S. is on the verge of a new Cold War with Russia, and the nuclear weapon capabilities of North Korea.

"Why trust is essential between the president and intelligence community" PBS NewsHour 1/4/2017

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SUMMARY:  President-elect Donald Trump has routinely taken a skeptical stance toward the U.S. intelligence community.  As the release nears of a report on alleged Russian hacking in the U.S. election, Judy Woodruff gets views from James Woolsey, senior advisor to the Trump Transition and a former CIA director; and Jeffrey Smith, former General Counsel to the CIA.

RUSSIA - The Hack Attack on U.S. Elections

IMHO:  With the complicity of WikiLeaks (International Anti-U.S. Spy Agency).

"In debate on Russian interference and disinformation, there's a lot we still don't know" PBS NewsHour 12/12/2016

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SUMMARY:  The CIA has concluded that pre-election Russian hacking was aimed to sway the vote in President-elect Donald Trump's favor.  What could we learn from serious investigations?  Hari Sreenivasan gets reactions from two men who have extensive experience in intelligence and diplomacy: Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, and former CIA director James Woolsey.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  And we're joined by two men with extensive experience with intelligence and diplomacy.

James Woolsey was CIA director during the Clinton administration.  He's now with Booz Allen, one of the largest defense and intelligence contractors.  He also serves as a senior adviser to President-elect Trump on issues of national security and intelligence.  And Michael McFaul was U.S. Ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration.  He's now a professor of political science at Stanford University.

Mike McFaul, let me start with you first.

Your reaction to the news that Russia may have played an active role in helping President-elect Trump?

MICHAEL MCFAUL, Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia:  Well, for some of us, it's not news.  Some of us have been talking and writing about this for many months now, especially after the hacking of the DNC computers and the data dump from WikiLeaks.

I think the two pieces of news that are new is that the intelligence community is now claiming that they have evidence to show that the Russians gave it to WikiLeaks.  That was uncertain.  Now we know that.

And the second piece is about the Republican — the hacking into the Republican side.  They now have evidence to show that.

And what it all means to me, to be clear, my bottom line is, we need an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate this.  It's not enough for the Obama administration to do their review.  And, frankly, it's not enough to have hearings on it at the U.S. Congress.

This is way too big to be handled in those places.  We need to know the facts.

And, here, I agree with President-elect Trump in the piece you played with him.  He said several times, we don't know.

Well, as an academic, I want to know the facts.  And I think the only way you're going to get it is if you set up that commission.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  James Woolsey, do you agree; is that the right course?

JAMES WOOLSEY, Former CIA Director:  I don't see anything wrong with a well-assembled commission going into an important issue.

I think what needs to be focused on here, though, from the beginning is that we have got a couple of different things going on.  And conflating them causes a lot of confusion.

One is what the Soviets and then now the Russians call disinformation, dezinformatsiya, otherwise known as lying.  And they propagate disinformation throughout the world on all sorts of subjects.

But they particularly focus on organizations and groups that embody values that they find abhorrent, such as the Catholic Church and Judaism.

They are apparently moving into disseminating disinformation about Western political parties.  It's not any different in principle from what they have been doing for decades.

I think that's one set of things that's going on.  Another set of things that conceivably could go on is hacking into the records of the voting in order to change those votes.  I don't know that there is any indication that we have that this latter is taking place, counting people who are dead as voters and the sort of things that you read about in the American system.

So, I think, insofar as someone says that the Russians were not participating in anything may not be correct, because they may have been participating in disseminating disinformation, but not participating in what most of us think of as voting fraud, namely, counting people who vote who are dead and so forth.

"Reconstructing the Russian hacks leading up to the election" PBS NewsHour 12/14/2016

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SUMMARY:  Reports that the CIA believes Russia sought to help the president-elect win the election by hacking Democratic political organizations has rocked the nation.  Mr. Trump dismisses claims that Russia had any influence in the process or that it wanted him in office.  Hari Sreenivasan examines what investigations have revealed with Dmitri Alperovitch of Crowdstrike, and Eric Lipton of The New York Times.

"How Putin could have been involved in U.S. election disruption" PBS NewsHour 12/15/2016

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SUMMARY:  A CIA investigation reportedly found that Russia tried to sway U.S. election results in President-elect Donald Trump's favor.  On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally involved in efforts to disrupt the election.  Judy Woodruff talks to Angela Stent of Georgetown University about Putin and the U.S. options for response.

HACKING THE CAMPAIGN - Election System Vulnerabilities

"How hackers could prey on election vulnerabilities" PBS NewsHour 9/15/2016

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SUMMARY:  This week, emails written by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, which were critical of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, appeared on a website that's reportedly an outlet for hackers tied to Russia.  Judy Woodruff speaks with Dmitri Alperovitch of Crowdstrike and David Sanger of The New York Times about the recent wave of hacks tied to the presidential campaign and the impact on the election.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  This year's political campaign has a new and different wrinkle.  Cyber-hacking has led to regular public releases of documents and private e-mails involving the political parties and key players.

The Democrats are the most frequent targets.  But it's not only them.

The list of election season cyber-attacks is growing.  The latest target, former Secretary of State Colin Powell.  A trove of his e-mails appeared online this week after his personal account was hacked.  In one referring to GOP nominee Donald Trump and black voters, Powell wrote, “He takes us for idiots.”

Another referred to Democrat Hillary Clinton as greedy, not transformational.  The messages were posted on a site that's reportedly an outlet for hackers tied to Russia.

Clinton today did blame the Russians.  The White House wasn't saying.

JOSH EARNEST, White House Press Secretary:  We don't necessarily want to reveal sources and methods that the FBI uses to conduct these kinds of investigations.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  All of this follows the July release of thousands of Democratic National Committee e-mails.  They were published on WikiLeaks just before the Democratic Convention.  And on Tuesday, WikiLeaks tweeted a link to more DNC files.  The Web site's founder, Julian Assange, claimed in an interview with the NewsHour last month that it's done in the public interest.

JULIAN ASSANGE, Founder, WikiLeaks:  And that performs an ongoing role leading to great works in investigative journalism, successful court cases, civil litigation, criminal process, and, of course, also contributes to public understanding.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Meanwhile, Politico reports hackers are also targeting state Democratic officials.  And congressman Michael McCaul, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, says Republican operatives have been hacked as well.

Still, in Washington yesterday, the president's homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, played down any threat to the integrity of the election, but added:

LISA MONACO, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security:  The efforts of malicious actors to intrude upon voter registration databases and other elements of our critical infrastructure, as well as our voting infrastructure, is of concern.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  The White House says if there is a response to the hacking, it may not be announced in advance, or ever.

For a deeper look at the actors and the politics behind the hacks, we turn to Dmitri Alperovitch.  He's co-founder and chief technology officer at CrowdStrike.  That's the cyber-security firm that investigated online breaches of the Democratic Party over the summer.  And David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times.

RUSSIA - Hacking DCCC and Clinton?

"Clinton's campaign and the DCCC are cyber hacked — was it the Russians?" PBS NewsHour 7/29/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Clinton's campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have been cyber hacked.  Sources told the NewsHour the DCCC hacker is the same as one that hit the Democratic National Committee.  U.S. intel officials believe they're Russian.  Judy Woodruff talks with Susan Hennessey of the Brookings Institution and Andrew Weiss, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for insight.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  We return to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.

According to reports, U.S. intelligence has high confidence the Russian government was behind it.  Sources close to the investigation told the “NewsHour” one of the hackers was also involved in the breach of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and then today's revelations that Hillary Clinton's campaign was also hacked.

We explore how the U.S. government should respond now with Susan Hennessey.  She was an attorney in the Office of the General Counsel of the National Security Agency.  She is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution.  And Andrew Weiss; he has worked for both Republican and Democratic administrations, as a staffer on the National Security Council [and] in the State and Defense Departments.  He is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

And we welcome both of you to the “NewsHour.”

Susan Hennessey, let me start with you.

Before I even ask you about the hacking of the Clinton campaign itself, which we just learned about this afternoon, how confident are you that it was the Russian government that was behind the hacking into the DNC and the Congressional Campaign Committee?

SUSAN HENNESSEY, Brookings Institution:  All right, so when attributing cyber-attacks, it's almost impossible to ever be 100 percent certain.

In this case, you are about as certain as you could reasonably expect to be.  There were strong technical indicators that emerged as early as June.

Now I'm hearing that the intelligence community has reported to the president high confidence.  That's a likely indicator that they have found corroborating evidence through other intelligence mechanisms, signals intelligence, financial intelligence, human intelligence

So, at this point, it's a fair operating assumption.  There might be some room for plausible deniability, but it's really quite certain.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  All right, I just want to say, we're having a little difficulty with your microphone.  We're going to trying to get that fixed.

I'm going to turn right now to Andrew Weiss.

What about you?  How much confidence do you have that it's clearly the Russian government behind what we know so far?

ANDREW WEISS, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:  Well, so far, this is a very fast-moving story.  And I think we all need to be cautious, because the facts are not clearly out there.

Yesterday, General Clapper, who is the president's director of national intelligence, was talking in Aspen, and he said he wasn't prepared at this stage to make a call.  But so far, everything that has dribbled out seems to point in the direction of some form of Russian government involvement.

There's been forensic data that has been trumped out — dribbled into the press that points to comparable attacks that have been attributed to Russia over the past several months.  And the attacks on the DNC and the DCCC seem to be fitting within the same group of Russian actors.

INTERNET - Hacking Insurance Companies

"Why are hackers targeting insurance companies?" PBS NewsHour 2/5/2015

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SUMMARY:  Hackers broke into a database at Anthem, the nation’s second largest health insurance provider, which contained names, social security numbers, income data and addresses of 80 million people.  Judy Woodruff speaks with Mark Bower of Voltage Security about who might be behind the attack and why they would want to target an insurer.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Today’s disclosure of a major hacking attack on the nation’s second-largest health insurer, Anthem, is setting off alarms about cyber-crime at a new level.

Hackers were able to crack a database that included records for 80 million people.  The cyber-criminals were able to get names, addresses and e-mails, as well as Social Security numbers and income.  But hospital and doctor information related to patients wasn’t hacked.

Bloomberg News reported that investigators believe Chinese state-sponsored hackers are involved.

Mark Bower is a noted expert on these issues.  He’s also a vice president at Voltage Security in California.

Mark Bower, welcome.

So, compared to the hacks we have seen until now, how serious is this one?

MARK BOWER, Voltage Security:  Well, certainly, we have just started the year off with a bang in terms of data breaches; 80 million records is a very substantial amount, so this is quite a serious attack

And the nature of the data, you have got lots of personal data that can potentially be monetized.  It’s going to be very inconvenient for those individuals and also quite costly for the organization that this affects.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 12/19/2014

"Shields and Brooks on reconciling with Cuba, Sony censorship" PBS NewsHour 12/19/2014

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SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including the choice to censor a Hollywood film about the assassination of Kim Jong-un, President Obama’s move to renew U.S. ties with Cuba and early signs that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush could be a 2016 presidential candidate.

THAT'S A WRAP - President Obama on Cuba, North Korea, Race Relations

"Obama closes 2014 with remarks on Cuba, North Korea" PBS NewsHour 12/19/2014

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  President Obama said today that the United States would respond proportionally and at time of its choosing to the cyber-attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment.  The FBI confirmed this morning that North Korea was behind the attack on the company.

Mr. Obama spoke on that and other issues at a year-end news conference.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:  Well, all I want for Christmas is to take your questions.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF:  It was a year-end review dominated by the events of one week.  As the fallout continued from the Sony hacking scandal, and the studio’s decision to cancel the release of the movie about assassinating North Korea’s leader, the President weighed in.

BARACK OBAMA:  Again, I’m sympathetic that Sony as a private company was worried about liabilities and this and that and the other.  I wish they had spoken to me first.  I would’ve told them, do not get into a pattern in which you’re intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Without divulging specifics, he said the U.S. will respond to the attack.

Mr. Obama also discussed his move to reopen diplomatic relations with Cuba.  He acknowledged the country’s regime still oppresses its people, but did find room for optimism.

BARACK OBAMA:  What I know deep in my bones is that if you have done the same thing for 50 years and nothing’s changed, you should try something different if you want a different outcome.  And this gives us an opportunity for a different outcome.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  His action on Cuba was just the latest instance of Mr. Obama’s using the power of the executive.  Last month, he acted to shield millions of illegal immigrants from deportation.  Both moves enraged Republicans, who will control both houses of Congress come January.

Despite their differences, and the gridlock that has gripped Washington for much of his tenure, the President said he still believes cooperation is still possible.

BARACK OBAMA:  We’re going to disagree on some things, but there are going to be areas of agreement, and we have got to be able to make that happen.  And that’s going to involve compromise every once in a while, and we saw during this lame-duck period that perhaps that spirit of compromise may be coming to the fore.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Mr. Obama took just a handful of questions, and only from women reporters, including one on race relations in America.  It comes as the nation deals with anger over grand jury decisions in New York City and Ferguson, Missouri, not to indict white police officers in the killing of two black men.

The President says the country’s made progress, but work remains.

BARACK OBAMA:  I actually think it’s been a healthy conversation that we have had.  These are not new phenomena.  The fact that they’re now surfacing, in part because people are able to film what have just been in the past stories passed on around the kitchen table allows people to, you know, make their own assessments and evaluations.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  The President left tonight for his family’s Christmas vacation in Hawaii.

"How should the U.S. government respond to North Korea’s attack on Sony?" PBS NewsHour 12/19/2014

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President Obama told the White House Press Corps that Sony was wrong to withdraw its film, “The Interview,” and that the U.S. would react “proportionally” to the damaging cyber-attack by North Korea.  Judy Woodruff turns to Dmitri Alperovitch of CrowdStrike and Jack Pritchard, the former U.S. special envoy for negotiations with North Korea, about options for an American response.