“Well, I’m not bored anymore,” Mark Warner told me when I got him on the phone this week. It’s an unusual thing for a senator to admit, that he’s often found the job to be a little pointless.

"The public deserves to know what happened, how it happened and what effects it had on our democratic process....”

“I can’t think of anything that I’ve been involved in that is more important,” Warner told CQ. "We’re talking about the Russian government trying to undermine the democratic process.”

Sen. Warner led a hearing where top senior intelligence officials will testify on Russia’s role in election hacks.

As our society struggles to adapt to changing digital technology and the security implications of those changes, we should not let our recent focus on encryption of mobile phones blind us to larger issues at stake for digital security at the national and personal levels.

"Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) and Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) are drafting a bill they intend to introduce next week that would establish “a national commission on security and technology challenges in the digital age” composed of “the brightest minds from the technology sector, the legal world, computer science and cryptography, academia, civil liberties and privacy advocates, law enforcement and intelligence.”"

"House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., a former tech entrepreneur who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, will introduce a bill next week to create a national commission on digital security."

For years, lawmakers have grappled with how to balance individual privacy protections and law enforcement’s need for access to encrypted communications. They haven’t gotten very far. That could change, thanks to a bipartisan partnership forged between House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Senate Intelligence Committee member Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.).

"House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who serves on the Intelligence Committee, are set to brief reporters this week on a bill that would create a national commission on security and technology to come up with creative ways to solve the problem."