in jackson, mississippi for the next stop on the c-span bus 50 capitals four. jim hunt will be our guest on the bus starting at 9:30 a.m. eastern. senator talkssota about cyber security and the need for more transparency with online ads, including legislation she is sponsoring on a russian interference in the u.s. election. this is part of the state of the net conference. it is about half an hour. >> thank you everyone. i heard a discussion about the weather. about a month ago it was 38 below zero without wind chill in minnesota. it was coldero, in minnesota that it was on mars for one day. you can google it. it happened. the range rover was in a warm

part of march and -- mars. all those people are coming for the super bowl next week. i talked to someone on my staff, we're going to do the dogsledding and the ski thing. he said, senator it is going to be a little cold. i am very excited to speak here. tomorrow night, we are going to appear the state of the union. i am just as excited to get my first state of the net. will be a few differences in our speeches. we excited to be on c-span3, will not try to compete in that way. i think there may be some differences in terms of the focuses that i have and that we need to be talking about as a country. thank the internet education foundation and all of the groups that made this very important conference possible.

focusing on these issues in my speech, i was asked to talk about some of our security issues. you know there are major issues of net that we are dealing with right now. there are also big issues with broadband. i am in a state that has a lot of rural areas. i'm one of the funders of our rural broadband caucus in the senate. we have our own logo. that is very unique in the senate. we have a good bipartisan group. i was disappointed that we were not able to take some of that overseas money and put it into infrastructure, which would have included rural broadband. we will live to fight another day. between the universal service fund and the other with the confines funding, we have to up our game. we have farmers that are doing their business in the mcdonald's parking lot. story recently was

an oncologist that goes to a parking lot of a restaurant when he cannot get to the hospital to do his work for his patients. we need to see some improvement. being called, my state is really focused on technology. we are the state that brought the world everything from the pop-up toaster to the pacemaker. blacklight the recorder and the first supercomputer. #you'reshake -- say welcome. we do a lot of things in the midwest. the do not always get recognized in the tech area. that continues to be a major part of our economy. we have a lot of small, thriving small businesses. it is a big part of it as well. the internet has been important to me. the reason i got involved in some of this -- i would say there are a few reasons.

the first is that i am the daughter of a reporter. career,pent his whole he is now 19 years old, -- 90 years old. ap."rted with "the minnesotaw northern would vote. the guy in new york says, i have three words for you guys. be right. they were. fromterviewed everyone ginger rogers to mike ditka, the famous coach of the bears. that is deep in my roots. free press. free information. accurate information. that is what brings me to this issue at my core.

the second reason i'm so it just said and this is that i spent eight years as the lead prosecutor for about one quarter of our state's population. i did a lot with white color and making sure that we had an even playing field when it came to criminal enforcement. i say that not to scare everyone, but to make the case that i would look at things. it did not matter if someone committed a crime with a crowbar or they committed a crime with a computer. it is still a crime. our laws have to be as sophisticated as those that are breaking them. fromplies to everything intellectual property theft and what we're seeing across the world right now with the interference in our election. the third way i come at this issue, i was thinking about this in the car, i have campaigned. i have run for office. forve run from office --

office from a position of not having personal wealth. in my first race for this job, i was at set 4-1. tivo.d only run ads on no one hardly had cable. the day of the election, my opponent was running them on it network. i was the first candidate ever to have an ad on the newspaper website. big deal at the time. we have so little money. we were looking at ways that would be cheap. i was on cable, some guy calls in. it was a close race. i was running against a republican congressman's sister. i got called into the radio .tation, i had black on white ads on one

thing. i knew what that was like. i ended up winning by less than nine votes per precinct. it was two congressional districts. i did it. i put up 3000 lawn signs. i was in 29 parades. i did 85 pancake breakfast. if i had than 70 i would have lost. there is a reason for this. i have a firm belief in a grassroots politics and an even playing field. when i ran for senate, he was even more pronounced. i was running against a sitting congressman for the u.s. senate. i had never raised more than $5,000. -- per person. nobody would return my calls because they did not say -- they cannot say my name. personal rolodex. remember when you did that?

i called everyone i ever knew in my life. this is a true story. i raised $17,000 from ex boyfriends. as my husband has pointed out, it is not an expanding base. [applause] why does this matter? i am obsessed with having fairness in campaigns. that is why i hated the citizens united decision. that is why i do not like this dark money behind the scenes. reason, i am from minnesota. we have the highest voting turnout in the country. we tend to like fairness and transparency, some of it is our scandinavian tradition. when you see this kind of shenanigans, that is a minnesota nice word for fraud and criminal

activity, influencing elections, you have a real problem on your hands. thee want to guarantee right for free elections, we are to have to do something about this. i put it in two prongs. is the election infrastructure. senator langford and i have a bill, along with kamala harris and lindsey graham, which is focused on putting $400 million -- we found a week two paper with leftover rant money. money.t that is 3% of the one aircraft carrier. are spending this much money on our national defense, the fact that we are being outspent and out done on the internet when it comes to protecting our democracy in this greatest country that has developed all of these incredible technologies and the

internet itself, that is a problem. wet is why think come as look at our own national security priorities and look at protecting our elections, we have to start seeing our election infrastructure as a major part of that. what is happening? according to our own department of homeland security, russians attempted to hack 21 states election systems and 2016. russia also lost -- launched a cyber attack against the u.s. voting company. last september, the chicago board of elections reported that names, addresses, and other sensitive information of tens of thousands of registered voters were exposed. they did not just try to hack into our election system, as you all know. they also launched an extended and sophisticated information war designed to divide our

country and destroy americans confidence in our political system. as a perfect round as we go into this year, which has been a to almostith year, -- exactly a year ago on the inaugural stage, i was replaced as the first lithuanian american by melania trump. fromas born and hour away where my relatives are from in slovenia. every time i look at her, it is like looking in the mirror. [laughter] that, my actual end of the year of 2016 was spent with john mccain -- we are hoping that his health is getting better. we're on the front line with the ukrainian troops in the middle of the night on new year's eve. there we were.

we had also visited lithuania, estonia, and georgia. to hear the stories of what these countries have been dealing with for years of foreign relations -- the democrats just put out a report on this. this is no surprise on what we have heard. they have seen this movie before. they get mad at estonia, russia does, they get into a big thing about it. they cut off their internet because they moved a statue of a russian soldier from a public square into a cemetery where the other statues like that word. -- were. latvia or lithuania, when they are having their 25th individually -- anniversary of independence, they invite some , tohe opinion -- ukrainian the celebration. russia gets mad.

this kind of stuff has been going on for a long time. the influence in the election. the best example i had, we heard directly when we were in munich. the norwegian prime minister told us this directly. the russians had been mad at norway because they had been building up their military. they have been running fake ads. they were saying that noaa's economy was taking at the running out of fruits and vegetables in the entire country of norway. all of these russians who had seen it on their own russian tv were coming and arriving in norway to see their friends and relatives with bags and bags of fruits and vegetables. i love that story. it is not just a political intrigue story. it can hit people directly as they try to understand what this fake news is about. i go back to that story and i remember that time, with that

blizzard coming at us. he has machine guns. he gave lindsay a pistol. he gave me two daggers. we had stand up to show our american might. we are protecting our internet. we are a beacon of democracy because we have a free and fair election that we know how to handle. when we have learned is that we did not know how to handle it. , whichot just a hacking we have since learned. too long toyle -- learn. it is about the very absence of american political campaigns and how you communicate. do you have a playing -- and even playing field? when you put ads out, you have to have disclaimers, disclosures. what did we find out?

russia spent $100,000 on facebook ads to influence of the 2016 election. we know that the disinformation reached more than 126 million americans. we know that russia has a factory that employs a thousand agents that work 12 hour shifts and are expected to make hundreds of comments on social media that are intentionally divisive. all of it is fake. all of is bankrolled by president clinton. -- putin. we all know there is a lot of fake things here. we can deal with some of those fake things. when you have people in our state that do not know that they fake things, that is a whole other issue. one of them as directed people to text their votes in. that happened in america.

we have those ads that were put out on social media over and over again. don't deal with the lines, just text in your vote for hillary. here is the texting number. that is criminal! that is a direct interference with the election. former director of national intelligence testified last your russia will continue to interfere in our political system. he said, i believe russia is now emboldened to continue such activities in the future, both here and around the world, and to do it even more intensely. election is 281 days away from today. that is why james lankford and i are working so hard to try to get that funding out there. that is the first bill i want to mention to you guys.

386 million four election security. security.ction peopleires that certain in each state have a secret clearance to receive information. many states did not find out until it went public. talking about this issue for months. we did not know it. illinois got right into the voter security. we have support for this bill from the freedom caucus. mark meadows is carrying a similar version, the identical bills when i did with lindsay. little bit different than the one that senator langford and i have. both of those bills are aimed at this. there was concern on the left and right. if you have a hack somewhere when you have dozens of states

that have not updated their election infrastructure equipment in the past decade, do you think russia does not know that? they do. i am not disclosing a secret. on andu have that going you have 10 or 12 states that do not even have backup paper ballots, so there is no way to audit afterwards. the bill says, let us get the money out to the states. let us make sure that the information is shared from homeland security. let us have auditing so that if something goes wrong, you have a way to prove it. minnesota is unique. we have had a lot of recounts and close elections. the we do that when you are trying to check out a close election is by having backup paper ballots. those other components of the bill. it is something you would like to get done. secondly, this is the honest as bill i was mentioning. we have some a well-known

hearings that went on on this. aboutct that we do know 1.4 million was spent on online ads in 2016. that is nearly eight times the amount that was spent in 2012. everyone agrees this trend will continue, whether it is up to 3 billion or 4 billion. we do not know that in 2018. those are the kinds of protections that we are seeing. there is going to be a lot of migration of campaign money over to the social media side. poll found that 65 percent of americans used the internet for election related information. workinglatforms are cable.- dwarfing that is why, when we look at our election laws, they were all

for radio, print, and tv. introducey we want to this save ads. an even playing field and sending a message to, not just russia, to all thatries across the world, we see this as a priority. ourill protect long-standing freedom to vote and freedom to have a fair election. you think about this. this is not sharing a cap video or an snl skit with your coworker. these are paid a political ads. will they get rid of all of our problems? of course not. it does not get bought issues. -- bot issues. it gets at paid political as.

that is why i ask you to look at this bill. i know that facebook, twitter, google have taken some measures. we appreciate that. they have called out as a problem from back in the last election. i believe the only way you are going to make this work is if you apply it across the board. company doing one one thing and another country taking this measure. -- company taking this measure. at this hearing set it would be difficult for them to cover -- follow that law. the current law says if you have a candidate add, which some of the providers say they will disclosures on, or if you had an ad of national legislation of -- legislative importance, you have to have a disclaimer prepared and pay for. you have to have the disclosure. canada's opponents and of the press are going to be able to see what these ads are.

they cannot pop up on a facebook and then go away so that nobody ever knows that they existed. the answer he got was, that will be hard for us to figure out what those ads are. my radio station in a minnesota can figure it out. they keep them in a file or they put it online. i believe that the greatest companies and america should be able to figure out, just like a , just likeons do network tv does, they're able to figure out what those ads are. they get a lawyer's opinion. the note these ads are. that is the same thing we have to do for paid political ads on the internet. it is one step towards protecting our elections. i am hopeful that people will see the light here and we will be able to get it done. i will close with a reminder of what is at stake and why we

cannot wait to act. in 1923, many years before the internet, even before sputnik and our race with russia to was askedeph stalin about a vote in the central committee of the party. they were unconcerned about the vote. whor all, he explained that voted was completely unimportant. what was extraordinarily important, he said, was who would count the votes and how. [laughter] now 95 years later. sometimes, it seems like we are back at square one. we have the russians trying to come in my mind, influence who votes by suppressing votes and putting these ads out. they also possibly control who counts the votes, as in our voting infrastructure. we have been trying to attack that on both ends.

we know that they are not our only threat. ourughout the 21st century, adversaries will continue to use cyber warfare. we need to be prepared to defend our networks against these threats no matter where they come from. nothing, and i make this case strong despite everything you hear, nothing could be less partisan than securing the future of our elections. the freedoms that those elections preserve. it was marco rubio said during this last election, one-time they're they are going after one party and one candidate, the next time it will be the other candidate and the other party. stalin and then quoting marco rubio. i will tell him that today. i thought he would enjoy that. a four-starare general, a fourth-grader, or a computer engineer at foursquare, this is an issue that unites all of us.

protecting our democracy and allowing technology to flourish the hand in hand. the freedom to speak, to participate freely, is closely intertwined not just with who we are as americans in our hearts, the daughter of a newspaper reporter, it is also about how are our a comment works and how we innovate and how we move forward as a nation. this will be the true measure of the state of the internet. this year and the years to come, it is whether or not we can make sure, yes it is available to all. it also whether it continues to enhance our freedoms and not limit them. that is what i hope you think about as you heard -- hear all of the presentations today. internet that has done well for so long to be used for truth, to shine a light, and it

should be used to ensure that american people get more information, accurate information, to choose their leaders and the government in -- and that their own future. thank you very much. enjoy the event. ipers being able -- appreciate being able to launch you off tonight. [laughter] [applause] >> monday night, we are in las vegas for the second part of our coverage for the consumer electronic show. each year, tech companies and feel -- unveil new products and give light to what is ahead. watch the communicators monday night at 8:00 eastern on announcer: coming up next, a conversation with supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg

followed by election security and later, deputy homeland talks aboutine duke cyber security and ways to the public of potential threats. at a recent event in washington, supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg told an audience she had no plans to retire. she also talked about her life in public service and offered career advice for young women. ais is just under an hour and half. [crowd noise] rabbi holtzblatt: good evening. welcome. my name is rabbi lauren holtzblatt. what is your name? [laughter] this is rabbi aaron alexander. we are aut