Collaborate Disseminate
Before you vote, take a look at this interactive map that lets you browse by house representatives or senators and find out all the details on your incumbents. Continue reading This Map Shows You How Much Money Every Member of Congress Got from Big Telecom
Lawmakers still need a hands-on demonstration of voting equipment vulnerabilities to fully grasp the urgency of election security, according to Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif. “I think that if we can fashion some kind of an interactive experience for members to watch… then we’ve got their attention,” Speier, a member of the intelligence committee, said in an interview. “We need that moment and we need that equipment, and we need that hack. And so once we can do that and do it in a way that the average luddite can understand, then we’ll be golden.” DEF CON, the hacking conference where researchers pick apart voting machines, provides that kind of visual demonstration. But Speier appeared to be the only lawmaker in attendance last week as the organizers of the DEF CON Voting Village presented their findings on Capitol Hill. (Some congressional staff did attend.) Election security vaulted into the spotlight on […]
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Continue reading Rep. Speier: Congress needs a hack demo to understand election vulnerabilities
Three representatives asked the Director of National Intelligence to create a report about how deepfakes could be used against the U.S. by hostile nations. Continue reading Lawmakers Demand Intelligence Community Release a Report on Deepfakes
A US senator has announced a bill that would force the President to punish overseas hackers found targeting the US, or explain why he hadn’t. Continue reading Proposed US law would require President to act against overseas hackers
Apple’s working to keep iPhones from eavesdropping on us, through privacy policies, short buffer windows, local storage, and app review. Continue reading Siri is listening to you, but she’s NOT spying, says Apple
Interest is rising in a program that stations technology experts with Congress, giving lawmakers a sorely needed way to understand the litany of society-shifting tech issues that come to their attention. TechCongress opened up its application process for its 2019 Congressional Innovation Fellowship class last week. Started in 2016 with two fellows, the number of fellows has been rising every year since. The 2018 class saw seven fellows, with a record-high five receiving job offers. The 2019 class which will have up to ten fellows. Although cybersecurity and data privacy experts are in the highest demand, health and transportation experts like former Economist editor Sunmin Kim and biotechnologist Robbie Narang have gone through the program. The 2018 class of fellows, which is still active, includes Washington D.C.-based researcher Collin Anderson, former Mandiant consultant James Gimbi and former U.S. Army special operations veteran James Price. The most publicly well-known fellow may be Chris Soghoian, […]
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Continue reading TechCongress program grows as Capitol Hill plays catch-up on tech issues
Inquiring lawmakers’ minds want to know, for one thing, whether our mobile phones are actually listening to our conversations. Continue reading Apple and Google questioned by Congress over user tracking
T-Mobile and Sprint are trying to merge, which would make three major cell phone providers instead of four. Continue reading T-Mobile CEO Tells Congress That Reducing Competition Will Increase Competition
For years, U.S. government officials have been trying to provide firms with actionable threat data in time for corporate officials to block hackers from compromising their networks. The 2015 Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) gave firms legal cover to provide threat data to the government; the Department of Homeland Security rolled out an automated threat-sharing program in 2016; and Republican and Democratic administrations have preached the information-sharing gospel at conferences across the country. But today, amid consistent nation-state cyberthreats to U.S. companies, there is a growing consensus in Congress and in the private sector that these federal efforts are falling way short of expectations and needs. Two years after DHS established its Automated Indicator Sharing (AIS) program, just six non-federal organizations are using it to share threat indicators with the government, a DHS official told CyberScoop. “That’s unacceptable and it surely doesn’t reach the threshold I hoped it was going […]
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Continue reading Private sector isn’t sharing data with DHS’s threat portal
A new bipartisan Senate bill would try to get to the bottom of supply chain risks by setting up a new federal acquisition council that would include representation from the intelligence community and Defense Department. The goal of the bill is to help streamline coordination between agencies so that the government can avoid buying technology that’s bugged by foreign spies. The “Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act” was introduced Tuesday by Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. It tasks agencies across the government with creating a strategy to tackle supply chain threats embedded in federally procured technology systems. If a malicious piece of equipment enters the supply chain of government agencies, experts say it could be used for espionage or more destructive purposes. The announcement comes after a year in which top officials have repeatedly grappled with national security concerns surrounding Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, an anti-virus software maker that […]
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