I wasn’t aware of this until today, but TechFreedom filed a motion seeking leave to submit an amicus brief in FTC v. LabMD. The brief supports LabMD’s position and urges the Commission to uphold Judge Chappell’s initial decision in favor of LabMD. You can read their brief here. Not surprisingly, I agree with their argument that…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Lawmakers Roast the Education Dept.’s Top Technology Officer Over Ethics and Data Security
Kelly Field reports: Angry lawmakers hammered the Education Department’s chief information officer, Danny A. Harris, at a hearing Tuesday, accusing him of ethical lapses and failing to secure the agency’s “vulnerable” information systems. “Cybersecurity for the federal government is a matter of quality management and effective leadership, not just tech,” said Rep. Will Hurd, a Texas Republican…
Voter Data Modeling: Does it Threaten Our Privacy?
Evan Halper writes about an issue I’ve raised in my own commentary on the risks of the explosion of voter profiling. …. But as presidential campaigns push into a new frontier of voter targeting, scouring social media accounts, online browsing habits and retail purchasing records of millions of Americans, they have brought a privacy imposition…
DHS Needs to Enhance Capabilities, Improve Planning, and Support Greater Adoption of Its National Cybersecurity Protection System: GAO
From a GAO report released today: The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) National Cybersecurity Protection System (NCPS) is partially, but not fully, meeting its stated system objectives: Intrusion detection: NCPS provides DHS with a limited ability to detect potentially malicious activity entering and exiting computer networks at federal agencies. Specifically, NCPS compares network traffic to known…
NYS Comptroller’s audit of Haldane Central School District reveals IT weaknesses
It’s been a while since the NYS Comptroller’s Office has released any school district audits on information technology, but they’ve released one this week on Haldane Central School District. They summarize the findings of their audit, which covered the period July 1, 2014 — August 19, 2015 this way: We also found that the District…
The Data Breach You Haven’t Heard About: Hurd
Rep. Will Hurd writes that Congress and officials still don’t have answers about the discovery in December by software developer Juniper Networks of a backdoor in its ScreenOS software that could have allowed foreign entities to decrypt and read government communications. The backdoor is thought to have been inserted in 2013. And while the OPM breach…