Rep. Jason Chaffetz threatens to subpoena officials at the Office of Personnel Management in the wake of a massive data breach that gave hackers sensitive information for millions of government workers.
Reports Roll Call:
Chaffetz’s committee is holding a hearing on the data breach on Tuesday, and the Utah Republican doesn’t seem to have much sympathy for government cyber security workers. “It’s clear we should have seen thing coming a long time ago,” Chaffetz said, adding that OPM officials have been “very resistant” to coming to testify before the congressional panel.
“I’m prepared to issue a subpoena, if need be, to get them there,” Chaffetz continued.
The OPM hack appears to be much larger than first reported. Millions — potentially more than 10 million — government workers had sensitive data accessed by hackers for months, maybe even more than a year. While there are whispers that China was behind the cyber attack, Chaffetz would only go so far as to call them “very nefarious actors,” though he did allude to the fact that it could have been China.
Chaffetz said he didn’t think U.S. officials took the cyber threat seriously enough, and he’s looking to find out during Tuesday’s hearing exactly what kinds of information was exposed.
