Investigating and Prosecuting 21st Century Cyber Threats

Today's hearing will investigate our focus on how America investigates and prosecutes 21st century cyber threats. The United States has been the subject of the most coordinated and sustained computer attacks the world has ever seen. Rival nations, particularly China, have been invading corporate computer systems and stealing intellectual property at an increasing rate. Spying between governments has always been a fact of life, but in the digital age the spying is more pervasive and harder to guard against. The systematic and strategic theft of intellectual property by foreign governments threatens one of America's most valuable commodities, our innovation and hard work. Today the Committee will look at the criminal laws and investigative tools to combat cybercrime. We will determine what changes can be made to our criminal laws to more effectively combat and deter the cyberattacks we are enduring. We will discuss what protection can be provided for the privacy of Americans through data breach notification laws, and we will discuss what steps can be taken by this Committee to protect the intellectual property and sensitive government information that hackers in foreign governments seek to obtain.