Grant Gross
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Senators fail to stop new rules allowing US law-enforcement hacking
Three senators' efforts to stop a major expansion of U.S. law enforcement agencies' hacking powers has failed for now.Proposed changes to Rule 41, the search-and-seizure provision in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, will go into effect Thursday barring any last-minute action in Congress. The rules change will give U.S. law enforcement agencies the authority to cross jurisdictional lines and hack computers anywhere in the world during criminal investigations. Until now, the rules, in most cases, prohibited federal judges from issuing a search warrant outside their jurisdictions. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Senators plan last-ditch push to curb US law-enforcement hacking power
Unless Congress takes 11th-hour action, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies will gain new authority this week to hack into remote computers during criminal investigations.Proposed changes to Rule 41, the search and seizure provision in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, would give U.S. law enforcement agencies the authority to cross jurisdictional lines and hack computers anywhere in the world during criminal investigations.The rules, in most cases, now prohibit federal judges from issuing a search warrant outside their jurisdictions. The changes, approved by the U.S. Supreme Court in April at the request of the Department of Justice, go into effect on Thursday unless Congress moves to reverse them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Senators plan last-ditch push to curb US law-enforcement hacking power
Unless Congress takes 11th-hour action, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies will gain new authority this week to hack into remote computers during criminal investigations.Proposed changes to Rule 41, the search and seizure provision in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, would give U.S. law enforcement agencies the authority to cross jurisdictional lines and hack computers anywhere in the world during criminal investigations.The rules, in most cases, now prohibit federal judges from issuing a search warrant outside their jurisdictions. The changes, approved by the U.S. Supreme Court in April at the request of the Department of Justice, go into effect on Thursday unless Congress moves to reverse them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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How Trump will attack the FCC’s net neutrality rules
Repealing the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's less than 2-year-old net neutrality rules appears to be a top tech priority for President-elect Donald Trump, but it may not be an easy road.Trump blasted net neutrality rules in a November 2014 tweet, saying it was a "top-down power grab" that would apparently require broadband providers to give equal time to liberal and conservative media. There are no such requirements in the FCC's net neutrality rules, however; broadband users determine what media they see.Look for Republicans in Congress to re-introduce legislation to repeal the rules early next year, but with only a narrow majority in the Senate, they are likely to be blocked by Democrats, who can filibuster to stall a bill.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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How Trump will attack the FCC’s net neutrality rules
Repealing the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's less than 2-year-old net neutrality rules appears to be a top tech priority for President-elect Donald Trump, but it may not be an easy road.Trump blasted net neutrality rules in a November 2014 tweet, saying it was a "top-down power grab" that would apparently require broadband providers to give equal time to liberal and conservative media. There are no such requirements in the FCC's net neutrality rules, however; broadband users determine what media they see.Look for Republicans in Congress to re-introduce legislation to repeal the rules early next year, but with only a narrow majority in the Senate, they are likely to be blocked by Democrats, who can filibuster to stall a bill.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Voting security experts call on Clinton to demand recount
Hillary Clinton, the apparent loser in the recent U.S. presidential race, should ask for voting recounts in three states, a group of voting security experts and election lawyers have said, and new results could swing the outcome of the election.There are outstanding questions about voting results in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, where the initial counts have Clinton losing by 1.2 percent or less, the group has told her campaign.The group has so far given no concrete evidence of voting irregularities but is planning to release a report. One news report suggested significant differences in the margins of victory for Trump in Wisconsin in counties using electronic voting machines, compared to counties using paper ballots, but the group has not confirmed those concerns.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Voting security experts call on Clinton to demand recount
Hillary Clinton, the apparent loser in the recent U.S. presidential race, should ask for voting recounts in three states, a group of voting security experts and election lawyers have said, and new results could swing the outcome of the election.There are outstanding questions about voting results in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, where the initial counts have Clinton losing by 1.2 percent or less, the group has told her campaign.The group has so far given no concrete evidence of voting irregularities but is planning to release a report. One news report suggested significant differences in the margins of victory for Trump in Wisconsin in counties using electronic voting machines, compared to counties using paper ballots, but the group has not confirmed those concerns.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Oracle to buy DNS, cloud infrastructure provider Dyn
Oracle plans to acquire internet performance and DNS provider Dyn in an effort to pump up its cloud-based offerings and challenge infrastructure and platform service leaders like Amazon and Microsoft.Dyn, in the news last month when it was targeted in a massive distributed denial-of-service attack, operates a global network that makes 40 billion traffic optimization decisions each day for more than 3,500 enterprise customers, including Netflix and Twitter.Dyn monitors and optimizes internet applications and cloud services with the goal of delivering deliver faster access and reduced page-load times. Dyn's services will give Oracle a one-stop shop for enterprise customers looking for infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS), Oracle said in a press release Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Republicans kill FCC plan to cap prices for business data lines
A U.S. Federal Communications Commission plan to cap, and in some cases cut, prices charged for widely used business data lines is probably dead after Republicans in Congress pressured the agency to drop a scheduled vote.For more than a decade, some U.S. businesses and advocacy groups have been pushing the FCC to regulate prices for middle-mile business broadband connections largely owned by AT&T and Verizon. This so-called duopoly has forced customers to pay billions of dollars in inflated prices, critics say.Supporters of price caps were oh-so-close, with the FCC scheduled to vote on a plan from Chairman Tom Wheeler on Thursday, but the agency abruptly canceled the vote Wednesday afternoon after pressure from congressional Republicans. The proposal remains under consideration by the FCC but appears to be dead, observers said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Republicans kill FCC plan to cap prices for business data lines
A U.S. Federal Communications Commission plan to cap, and in some cases cut, prices charged for widely used business data lines is probably dead after Republicans in Congress pressured the agency to drop a scheduled vote.For more than a decade, some U.S. businesses and advocacy groups have been pushing the FCC to regulate prices for middle-mile business broadband connections largely owned by AT&T and Verizon. This so-called duopoly has forced customers to pay billions of dollars in inflated prices, critics say.Supporters of price caps were oh-so-close, with the FCC scheduled to vote on a plan from Chairman Tom Wheeler on Thursday, but the agency abruptly canceled the vote Wednesday afternoon after pressure from congressional Republicans. The proposal remains under consideration by the FCC but appears to be dead, observers said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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US lawmakers balk at call for IoT security regulations
The U.S. government needs to pass regulations mandating internet of things security measures before device vulnerabilities start killing people, a security expert told lawmakers.A massive distributed denial-of-service attack aided by IoT devices in October "was benign" because a couple of websites crashed, said Bruce Schneier, a veteran cybersecurity researcher and lecturer at Harvard University. But the next attack may be more dangerous.With cars, airplanes, thermostats, and appliances now connected to the internet, "there's real risk to life and property, real catastrophic risk," Schneier told two House of Representatives subcommittees Wednesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Tech groups push policy priorities for the Trump administration
Technology trade groups are already pushing out their policy priorities for President-elect Donald Trump's administration, even though his campaign rarely touched on IT issues.With Silicon Valley largely opposed to Trump during the campaign and his tech policy agenda paper thin, policy recommendations from tech trade groups may be an exercise in wishful thinking. Still, several tech groups congratulated Trump on his unexpected victory and expressed optimism about this presidency.One point of optimism for the tech industry was the Trump campaign's last-minute addition of telecommunications networks to a long list of infrastructure projects he hopes to fund. Other infrastructure projects on Trump's list include roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, railroads, ports, pipelines, and the electricity grid, and it's unclear how he plans to pay for the plan, given that Trump also has promised large tax cuts, and whether telecommunications networks would be a priority. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Tech groups push policy priorities for the Trump administration
Technology trade groups are already pushing out their policy priorities for President-elect Donald Trump's administration, even though his campaign rarely touched on IT issues.With Silicon Valley largely opposed to Trump during the campaign and his tech policy agenda paper thin, policy recommendations from tech trade groups may be an exercise in wishful thinking. Still, several tech groups congratulated Trump on his unexpected victory and expressed optimism about this presidency.One point of optimism for the tech industry was the Trump campaign's last-minute addition of telecommunications networks to a long list of infrastructure projects he hopes to fund. Other infrastructure projects on Trump's list include roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, railroads, ports, pipelines, and the electricity grid, and it's unclear how he plans to pay for the plan, given that Trump also has promised large tax cuts, and whether telecommunications networks would be a priority. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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President Trump: An uncertain future for tech industry, digital rights
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's vision for the country's economy-driving technology industry is largely a blank canvas, and when he's dipped his toe into IT issues, he's made people nervous. Trump's campaign was dominated by debates over illegal immigration, lost manufacturing jobs, and character issues. Silicon Valley firms largely opposed Trump, and one of his signature issues, rewriting free trade deals between the U.S. and other nations, likely will hurt U.S tech companies' ability to sell products overseas. Meanwhile, digital rights groups say they expect Trump to call for expanded government surveillance programs to fight terrorism and fewer protections for privacy. And a Trump administration will likely work to gut net neutrality rules that the Federal Communications Commission passed only last year, although repealing the rules won't be easy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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President Trump: An uncertain future for tech industry, digital rights
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's vision for the country's economy-driving technology industry is largely a blank canvas, and when he's dipped his toe into IT issues, he's made people nervous. Trump's campaign was dominated by debates over illegal immigration, lost manufacturing jobs, and character issues. Silicon Valley firms largely opposed Trump, and one of his signature issues, rewriting free trade deals between the U.S. and other nations, likely will hurt U.S tech companies' ability to sell products overseas. Meanwhile, digital rights groups say they expect Trump to call for expanded government surveillance programs to fight terrorism and fewer protections for privacy. And a Trump administration will likely work to gut net neutrality rules that the Federal Communications Commission passed only last year, although repealing the rules won't be easy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Is Trump’s unexpected victory a failure for big data? Not really
Most election prediction shops and public polls in recent days foresaw Republican Donald Trump losing the U.S. presidential race to Democrat Hillary Clinton.They got it wrong, bigly. And the failed predictions could cast doubts on some hot technology sectors, including big data and customer relationship management.Not so fast, say some data experts. The problem with the polls and with forecasters like FiveThirtyEight may have more to do with data collection than data crunching, they say.Data analysis worked well in the Moneyball model for the Oakland Athletics, but baseball stats are different than election polling, said CRM analyst Denis Pombriant, founder of Beagle Research Group. Statisticians have been collecting "highly reliable" baseball data for more than a century, while polling data is more squishy, he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Security vendor demonstrates hack of US e-voting machine
A hacker armed with a US$25 PCMCIA card can, within a few minutes, change the vote totals on an aging electronic voting machine that is now in limited use in 13 U.S. states, a cybersecurity vendor has demonstrated.The hack by security vendor Cylance, which released a video of it Friday, caught the attention of noted National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, but other critics of e-voting security dismissed the vulnerability as nothing new.The Cylance hack demonstrated a theoretical vulnerability described in research going back a decade, the company noted.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Security vendor demonstrates hack of US e-voting machine
A hacker armed with a US$25 PCMCIA card can, within a few minutes, change the vote totals on an aging electronic voting machine that is now in limited use in 13 U.S. states, a cybersecurity vendor has demonstrated.The hack by security vendor Cylance, which released a video of it Friday, caught the attention of noted National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, but other critics of e-voting security dismissed the vulnerability as nothing new.The Cylance hack demonstrated a theoretical vulnerability described in research going back a decade, the company noted.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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UK government to spend $2.3 billion to bolster cybersecurity
The U.K. government will spend £1.9 billion (US $2.3 billion) over the next five years to pump up its cybersecurity defenses and pay for new research, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond said. The goal of the spending, part of a new national cybersecurity strategy, is to make the U.K. one of the "safest places in the world to do business," with a world-class cybersecurity industry and workforce, Hammond said Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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UK government to spend $2.3 billion to bolster cybersecurity
The U.K. government will spend £1.9 billion (US $2.3 billion) over the next five years to pump up its cybersecurity defenses and pay for new research, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond said. The goal of the spending, part of a new national cybersecurity strategy, is to make the U.K. one of the "safest places in the world to do business," with a world-class cybersecurity industry and workforce, Hammond said Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here