Congress needs to step in on cybersecurity harmonization, White House official says

ONCD’s Nicholas Leiserson endorses draft legislation from Sen. Gary Peters that would create an interagency committee to handle cyber regulations.

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ONCD report: ‘Fundamental transformation’ in cyber, tech drove 2023 risks

Evolving critical infrastructure risks, ransomware, supply chain exploitation, commercial spyware and AI were the top trends, the office reported.

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Feds’ spending on facial recognition tech continues unmitigated, despite privacy concerns

The FBI on Dec. 30 signed a deal with Clearview AI for an $18,000 subscription license to the company’s facial recognition technology. While the value of the contract might seem just a drop in the bucket for the agency’s nearly $10 billion budget, the contract was significant in that it cemented the agency’s relationship with the controversial firm. The FBI previously acknowledged using Clearview AI to the Government Accountability Office but did not specify if it had a contract with the company. The FBI didn’t respond to a request for comment, but it isn’t the only federal law enforcement agency to ramp up its procurement of privately-owned facial recognition technologies in recent months. In September, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent almost $4 million on facial recognition technology from a company called Trust Stamp, as Business Insider first reported. The same month agency purchased a contract with Clearview AI starting at […]

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US watchdog urges federal law enforcement to better track facial recognition amid accuracy concerns

More than a dozen U.S. federal agencies where law enforcement officers use facial recognition technology are unable to account for which systems their employees use, according to a federal watchdog report released Tuesday. The U.S. Secret Service, Customers and Border Protection and the FBI are among the agencies that don’t track the type of facial recognition technologies used used from sources other than the federal government, according to a Government Accountability Office report examining use of the surveillance technology. The examination provides an unprecedented look at the use of facial recognition systems in the federal government, and illuminates a lack of accountability could lead to increased privacy risks for the public, government auditors concluded. “In particular, these risks can relate to privacy and the accuracy of a system,” the agency warned. That concern stems from a growing body of evidence that facial recognition technologies, which are unregulated by the federal […]

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Report: FBI Doing Poor Job Securing 411 Million Facial Recognition Photos

Privacy experts are arguing this week the FBI isn’t doing enough to safeguard the treasure trove of facial recognition photos in its possession. Continue reading Report: FBI Doing Poor Job Securing 411 Million Facial Recognition Photos

IRS: 390K More Victims of IRS.Gov Weakness

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) today sharply revised previous estimates on the number of citizens that were hit by tax refund fraud since 2014 thanks to a security weakness in the IRS’s own Web site. According to the IRS, at least 724,000 citizens were victims of refund fraud after crooks figured out how to abuse a (now defunct) IRS Web site feature called “Get Transcript” to steal victim’s prior tax da Continue reading IRS: 390K More Victims of IRS.Gov Weakness