Espionage and intrigue on the campaign trail ’16 – FBI trains campaign staffs to avoid spies

The FBI on Wednesday provided separate “voluntary awareness briefings” about foreign spies to low-level staffers for both major presidential campaigns, ABC News reported.

The agency noted the meetings were “not precipitated by any particular [known] threat” and more of a reaffirmation of “standard best practices.”

The meetings come amid increasing suspicion about the illicit role of foreign intelligence agencies in this year’s election — particularly Russia.

Both campaigns have hired companies to help defend against attacks from foreign intelligence agencies. Both are believed to have been targeted by Russia, but there are no reports either campaign has been breached.

Many in the intelligence committee believe recent hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee stem from Russia.

The Kremlin was also fingered in a hack of the Illinois Board of Elections through what is known as an SQL injection — an unsophisticated attack on the SQL database protocol — and an unsuccessful attack on Arizona’s election system.

In the past week, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) asked the FBI to look into Russian influence in the election and four House Democrats separately asked the agency to investigate Russia’s connection to the Trump campaign.

 

Read More: The Hill

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