In three presidential debates, including the final one Wednesday night, the two candidates did not talk about the H-1B visa program. This was the last opportunity for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to compare and contrast what may be tech's most controversial issue.The portion of the debate set aside Wednesday night for immigration quickly shifted to a discussion about hacked emails and Kremlin meddling. Fox New anchor Chris Wallace may be criticized for allowing this portion of the debate to run off the rails, but the person who deserves the most blame is Trump, the Republican nominee.Trump had everything to gain by raising the temporary visa issue and its use in offshore outsourcing. The tech industry has thrown its financial support behind Clinton, the Democratic nominee.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
ORLANDO, Fla. -- A person who had access to the nation's deepest secrets, Robert Gates, the former CIA chief and U.S. Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011, is lot more open in retirement.Gates had the crowd at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo laughing over his observations about IT and applauding at some of the things he believes in.On stage here, for instance, Gartner analyst Richard Hunter fired off questions, asking at one point whether Edward Snowden, the former security contract employee who in 2010 took thousands of classified documents, was a "traitor or hero?"To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
ORLANDO, Fla. -- A person who had access to the nation's deepest secrets, Robert Gates, the former CIA chief and U.S. Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011, is lot more open in retirement.Gates had the crowd at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo laughing over his observations about IT and applauding at some of the things he believes in.On stage here, for instance, Gartner analyst Richard Hunter fired off questions, asking at one point whether Edward Snowden, the former security contract employee who in 2010 took thousands of classified documents, was a "traitor or hero?"To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
ORLANDO, Fla. -- A person who had access to the nation's deepest secrets, Robert Gates, the former CIA chief and U.S. Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011, is lot more open in retirement.Gates had the crowd at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo laughing over his observations about IT and applauding at some of the things he believes in.On stage here, for instance, Gartner analyst Richard Hunter fired off questions, asking at one point whether Edward Snowden, the former security contract employee who in 2010 took thousands of classified documents, was a "traitor or hero?"To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella faced sharp questions from Gartner analysts Tuesday about the privacy-invading implications of its $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn, and its all-knowing virtual assistant, Cortana.Helen Huntley, one of the Gartner analysts questioning Nadella at a conference here, was particularly pointed about the fears.Cortana, said Huntley, "knows everything about me when I'm working. She knows what files I'm looking at, she knows what I'm downloading, she knows when I'm working, when I'm not working," she said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Data security is a simmering issue in offshore outsourcing. The offshore workers who staff help desks, call centers and manage systems are accessing data in the U.S. The University of California IT employees, who will soon lose their jobs to overseas workers, are trying point this out.The IT employees say workers in India will have access to UCSF medical and financial information as well as to files with research and study data. The data will reside on hardware based in the U.S.They believe the university has an obligation to disclose its plans to the broader university community and give researchers, in particular, options about who can access this data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Data security is a simmering issue in offshore outsourcing. The offshore workers who staff help desks, call centers and manage systems are accessing data in the U.S. The University of California IT employees, who will soon lose their jobs to overseas workers, are trying point this out.The IT employees say workers in India will have access to UCSF medical and financial information as well as to files with research and study data. The data will reside on hardware based in the U.S.They believe the university has an obligation to disclose its plans to the broader university community and give researchers, in particular, options about who can access this data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A University of California IT employee whose job is being outsourced to India recently wrote Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for help.Feinstein's office sent back a letter addressing manufacturing job losses, not IT, and offered the worker no assistance.The employee is part of a group of 50 IT workers and another 30 contractors facing layoffs after the university hired an offshore outsourcing firm. The firm, India-based HCL, won a contract to manage infrastructure services.That contract is worth about $50 million over five years and can be leveraged by other university campuses -- meaning they could also bring in HCL if they so choose.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Voting machines are privately manufactured and developed and, as with other many other IT systems, the code is typically proprietary.The use of proprietary systems in elections has its critics. One Silicon Valley group, the Open Source Election Technology Foundation, is pushing for an election system that shifts from proprietary, vendor-owned systems to one that that is owned "by the people of the United States."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The upcoming U.S. presidential election can be rigged and sabotaged, and we might never even know it happened.This Election Day voters in 10 states, or parts of them, will use touch-screen voting machines with rewritable flash memory and no paper backup of an individual's vote; some will have rewritable flash memory. If malware is inserted into these machines that's smart enough to rewrite itself, votes can be erased or assigned to another candidate with little possibility of figuring out the actual vote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. government's attempt to stop a lawsuit challenging the legality of the H-1B lottery was rejected Thursday by a federal court judge.The government tried to get this case dismissed on legal technicalities but failed. U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon, in Oregon, denied the government's dismissal motion in a 24-page ruling.This case may now be decided quickly. The plaintiffs are seeking a summary judgment with oral arguments schedule in December. If the summary judgment is granted, the lottery could end -- the plaintiffs hope -- as early as next year.The case was brought by Tenrec Inc., a web development firm, and Walker Macy LLC, a landscape architecture, urban design and planning firm. Both firms filed petitions to hire a person who needed an H-1B visa, but lost the lottery.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A major health insurer, Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), is planning to outsource part of its information technology operation. The employees don’t have all the details about what’s in store for them, but this may be a large IT layoff.Employees were recently informed that 70% of the positions in the IT group, mostly in the area of infrastructure, will be outsourced, according to two IT workers who requested anonymity. Estimates on the number of employees who would be affected varies, but the move could involve 540 people in IT. The layoffs are planned from February to April.The jobs that would be moved to an outsourcer include monitoring and incident resolution, helpdesk support, and problem and patch management. Other areas would be partially outsourced, such as infrastructure product development, cloud and automation. HCSC will retain governance and planning. The outsourcing vendor has not been named, the employees said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump responded to series of questions about science policy, including two questions on immigration.What the answers reveal is this: Clinton and Trump are as divided as night and day on H-1B reforms. Trump supports reform and U.S. worker protections; Clinton simply avoided answering the question.But both candidates support the idea of making it possible for foreign students who graduate from U.S. schools to remain in this country. The only difference is that Clinton outlines a way to accomplish this policy objective, and Trump does not.The questions were put together by ScienceDebate.org, a group representing dozens of professional scientific organizations. The candidates' answers were released Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday will vote on H-1B legislation aimed at closing a loophole that has made it inexpensive to replace U.S. workers with visa holders.But the bill, introduced by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), and Scott Peters (D-Calif.), is worrisome, as well. It may do little to protect U.S. workers from displacement, say critics, who fear the legislation -- if approved -- could be used as a cudgel against more comprehensive H-1B reforms.The “Protect and Grow American Jobs Act,” (HR 5801) is intended to tighten, but not eliminate, a 1998 loophole in the law.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A decision by the University of California to lay off IT employees and send their jobs overseas is under fire from U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif) and the IEEE-USA.The university recently informed about 80 IT workers at its San Francisco campus, including contract employees and vendor contractors, that it hired India-based HCL, under a $50 million contract, to manage infrastructure and networking-related services.The university employees will remain on the job until the end of February, but before then they are expecting to train their foreign replacements. The number of affected employees may expand. The university's IT services agreement with HCL can be leveraged by any institution in the 10-campus system.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The University of California is laying off a group of IT workers at its San Francisco campus as part of a plan to move work offshore.The layoffs will happen at the end of February, but before the final day arrives the IT employees expect to train foreign replacements from India-based IT services firm HCL. The firm is working under a university contract valued at $50 million over five years.This layoff may have huge implications. That's because the university's IT services agreement with HCL can be leveraged by any institution in the 10-campus University of California system, which serves some 240,000 students and employs some 190,000 faculty and staff.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
People living in Silicon Valley, including San Francisco and Oakland, have contributed some $31.2 million to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Donald Trump, in contrast, is getting pocket change.Trump has raised just over $3 million from all of California, according to campaign finance data analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics. The totals are based on contributions of more than $200 from individuals.Trump's lag in California is striking in comparison to the 2012 presidential contest. Then the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, raised $41.3 million overall in California, versus President Barack Obama's $62.8 million. Clinton has raised $76.4 million so far in California.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A Virginia couple has pled guilty to H-1B fraud charges in a scheme that made them millions, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday.A married couple -- Raju Kosuri, 44, and Smriti Jharia, 45 -- created a visa-for-sale system involving some 900 H-1B visa petitions over a multi-year period, according to the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia.Court records detail an elaborate operation that required a series of fictions to pull off.Through a series of shell companies that purported to provide IT staffing and services to corporate clients, the defendants H-1B visa petitions on behalf of workers. These workers had to pay the visa fees, legal and administrative costs -- as much as $4,000 -- in violation of the visa program's rules.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Four former Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) employees, all of them over 50 years of age, allege in a lawsuit that the firm pushed older workers out so it could increase the number of younger employees -- millennials in particular.The federal age-discrimination lawsuit, which marshalled statistical evidence, job ads and internal memorandum to support its claims, will also cite public statements by HPE CEO Meg Whitman in its case.For instance, in a CNBC interview last November, Whitman was asked by an interviewer: “You did announce significant job cuts about a month or so ago.… Is that going to be it for HP?” (HP announced cuts of up to 30,000 jobs in September last year)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A plan by the U.S. government to require some foreign travelers to provide their social media IDs on key travel documents is drawing outrage.People who responded to the government’s request for comment about the proposal spared little in their criticisms. They call it “ludicrous,” an “all-around bad idea,” “blatant overreach,” “desperate, paranoid heavy-handedness,” “preposterous,” “appalling,” and “un-American.”But the feds are most serious about it.The plan affects people traveling from “visa waiver” countries to the U.S., where a visa is not required. This includes most of Europe, Singapore, Chile, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand -- 38 countries in total.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Patrick Thibodeau