Chambliss addresses security issues in Athens appearance | Online Athens

Hacking of corporate databases, particularly by the Russians, the Chinese and the Iranians, has been a serious, but largely hidden, issue in this country for some time, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, Georgia’s senior senator, told an Athens Rotary Club audience Wednesday.

Computer hackers have cost companies billions of dollars in terms of stolen intellectual property, Chambliss said, noting that when Congress returns from its current recess, he and Democratic California Sen. Dianne Feinstein will be introducing legislation aimed at addressing the issue.

Under the legislation, which Chambliss described Wednesday in broad strokes, companies would share information on hacked databases with the federal government, and would, in turn, get real-time help from the federal government in terms of access to countermeasures against the hacking.

In other comments Wednesday, Chambliss, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, talked at some length about government access to Americans’ phone records. Saying that “we need to look at” how the government is accessing those records, he said that “we can be, and should be, more transparent” regarding that access.

Chambliss did, though, defend the data-gathering, noting that a number of Supreme Court decisions have likened that access to the fact that American telephone customers receive bills each month that detail their calling activity, and that as a result, people should have no reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to that activity.

via Chambliss addresses security issues in Athens appearance | Online Athens.