Collaborate Disseminate
Newly proposed federal privacy framework comes with protections for biometric data and against discrimination.
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A group of 10 U.S. lawmakers on Friday asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate companies that sell Americans’ personal data by exploiting online advertising, calling for any lawbreaking firms to be shut down. The lawmakers, including Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Bill Cassidy, R-La., decried the data-selling practices as an “outrageous privacy violation,” citing reports that Mobilewalla, a data broker, compiled data from Black Lives Matter protestors for marketing purposes. The broader market for consumers’ personal data is lucrative, and includes a bidding process for online ads that include code for gobbling up information on users’ locations and personal devices. The lawmakers want the FTC to use its investigative power to determine if data brokers have broken a federal law that prohibits “unfair and deceptive” business practices. An FTC spokesperson declined to comment. “[T]here is no effective way to control these tools absent intervention by regulators and Congress,” the lawmakers wrote to FTC Chairman Joseph Simons. “Technological […]
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The HACKED Act is actually about making sure people don’t get hacked. The bipartisan bill — with the full title “The Harvesting American Cybersecurity Knowledge through Education Act” — was introduced Tuesday by four senators who say it would boost cybersecurity education and expand workforce training. The legislation comes as the Trump administration, Congress and industry have all taken steps to boost the cybersecurity workforce through training, recruitment and retention. “America is facing serious cyberthreats every day in today’s increasingly connected world, yet there is a serious shortage of workers needed to confront this urgent challenge,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., one of the cosponsors and the Commerce Committee’s ranking member, said in a statement. “The bipartisan HACKED Act of 2019 would help address this by training cybersecurity educators and skilling American workers to do these jobs, as well as increasing coordination on these issues throughout the government.” The bill includes proposals to incentivize recruitment of […]
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The top Democrats on the House and Senate energy committees have urged the Department of Homeland Security to assess cyber and physical protections for natural gas and oil pipelines following an audit that criticized the department’s approach to the issue. “The results of this assessment will help policymakers evaluate the security of our nation’s energy assets,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr., D-N.J. wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Wednesday. Operators of the nation’s 2.7 million miles of pipelines for oil, natural gas, and other hazardous liquids have grappled with cybersecurity risk as their infrastructure becomes more digitized. Those pipelines are a natural target for nation-state hackers, a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission official said in August, according E&E News. Cantwell and Pallone, Jr., said much more needs to be done to counter the threat. They were reacting to a Government Accountability Office audit that found […]
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A pair of Senate Democrats have introduced legislation that would give the National Guard a bigger role in defending everything from election systems to dams from cyberattacks. The bill from Sens. Maria Cantwell, Wash., and Joe Manchin, W.Va., would set up National Guard “cyber civil support teams” in every state and territory “to bridge the gap between federal and non-federal cybersecurity efforts,” the senators’ offices said in a release. The bill would put $50 million toward the National Guard teams, which would be tasked with preventing and mitigating the impact of cyber incidents, training critical infrastructure operators, and relaying classified threat information from U.S. Cyber Command to the states and private companies. States would have until September 30, 2022 to make their National Guard cyber teams operational. Another Democrat from Washington State, Rep. Derek Kilmer, has introduced companion legislation in the house. “As cyberattacks on the United States increase, we must […]
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