Remember that “national emergency” surrounding cyber security threats? No? Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon remembers.
The White House has been unable to detect a single cyber security threat more than six months after issuing a “national emergency” to deal with what the administration identified as growing and immediate danger, according to a new government report.
Six months after President Barack Obama invoked emergency powers to block the assets of any person caught engaging in “malicious cyber-enabled activities,” the administration has not identified a single qualifying target, according to the Treasury Department, which disclosed in a report that “no entities or individuals have been designated.”
The April 2015 directive issued by the White House identified an “increasing prevalence and severity of malicious cyber-enabled activities” among individuals living outside the United States.
These activities were said to constitute “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” prompting Obama to declare “a national emergency to deal with this threat.”
A half a year later, the White House still has not invoked this power to combat growing cyber threats, despite a rise in such activity among rogue nations such as Iran, North Korea, and China.
“The Department of the Treasury took no punitive licensing actions, and it assessed no monetary penalties,” according to the department’s first periodic review of the president’s emergency order.
The White House has not explained why it has not yet invoked its powers, even following reports that Russian hackers penetrated the State Department and “sensitive parts” of the White House’s computer networks last year.
The Pentagon and other branches of the U.S. government also have been the targets of these types of attacks, which officials have traced back to the Russians, North Koreans, and others.
