00:00The surveillance here is massive.
00:03These flock cameras are even near police departments, military bases, for all we know,
00:09important intelligence sites in the United States.
00:12Just to give you an example, there was one city in Georgia that allowed up to 2,000 other
00:19agencies to access the information from its flock cameras, and it was receiving information
00:25from 1,300 other agencies.
00:28And as you all know, the regulations, the laws and the regulations on security required
00:35by these agencies is almost nonexistent.
00:38We almost require no security at all from them.
00:42Whatever they do is voluntary.
00:44And so my concern here is that we have essentially centralized this pot of data of surveillance
00:57for China such that it doesn't matter whether they own the camera or not, if they can hack
01:01into a weakly protected system, they can access the information.
01:05And I think that that's exactly where we find ourselves today.
01:10And I'd like to see if you all could speak to that so that we face this hard truth as
01:14a country.
01:19Ah, there we go.
01:21I would start broad and say that the challenge we saw with Volt Typhoon was that the Chinese
01:30will penetrate a range of critical infrastructure.
01:33For me, the cameras are part of a broader challenge of the ability of the Chinese and intent to penetrate
01:41systems that include the cameras you talk about, but also CCTVs in private settings, critical
01:49infrastructure, financial, healthcare networks.
01:52networks.
01:53My question is, who is overseeing the defenses, the cyber defenses of these networks to strengthen
02:01on the defensive side the ability of adversaries to penetrate?
02:05And I think we all know the answer to that.
02:07And the answer is that there's very little protection or that it's voluntary.
02:12And so why would they need to send a spy to take photos when they can hack into the unregulated
02:17and vulnerable cameras and just take the data?
02:20To me, we've essentially set up an opportunity for espionage by proxy.
02:25Mr. Castro, I think you raise a really important set of questions.
02:30And part of it is just how we organize as a country around this.
02:36No one would have put a camera up as a critical infrastructure sector.
02:40But if you look at how we focus our resources, we're looking at it through sectors, not necessarily
02:46functions, things that could have mass impact on Americans.
02:50The questions you're raising have significant privacy questions as well as security questions.
02:56And honestly, I think it does warrant, it's easy to add something new to the, I've been
03:03advocating forever that space needs to be designated a critical infrastructure.
03:07The fact that it isn't is kind of asinine in my eyes, to be very blunt.
03:11But that gets into the military, it gets into Title 10, Title 50 issues, far beyond critical
03:18infrastructure.
03:19But I think you're hitting a point that we often forget when we look at critical infrastructure,
03:25it's where can you have the biggest impact and bang for the buck?
03:28And you're right.
03:29You basically make their collection job a whole lot easier if they can access that.
03:34That said, the solution sets, I think, have to be discussed.
03:40And I would put that at the top of the list, I really would.
