WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), speaking at a Senate Finance Committee hearing today, said that the recent security breach at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is “so deeply alarming” and that “we urgently need to understand what happened, and how IRS walls were breached.”
“Clearly, there is a war going on. On one side we have the government, taxpayers, and business. And on the other, hackers and criminals, organized syndicates and lone wolves. Perhaps even national governments,” said Roberts. “Right now, it looks like we are losing this war, and so we need to use this latest breach to consider how we can regroup to win this fight, because it is a fight — it is a war.”
The hearing, with witnesses IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and IRS Inspector General Russell George, was designed to examine how the recent data breach at the IRS exposed the personal information of more than 100,000 taxpayers.