Getting information about road closures in Prince William County just got easier.
The county’s Geographic Information System division worked with the Public Safety Communications Center to create an online application so people can see road closures in the county in real time.
In addition to the map, the application allows users to sign up for notifications about road closures via text or email through the Prince William Community Alert Network. continued…
first published week of: 08/22/2016
Looking just for records that should have been unsealed but remain secret
Two lawyers and legal researchers based at Stanford University have formally asked a federal court in San Francisco to unseal numerous records of surveillance-related cases, as a way to better understand how authorities seek such powers from judges. This courthouse is responsible for the entire Northern District of California, which includes the region where tech companies such as Twitter, Apple, and Google, are based.
According to the petition, Jennifer Granick and Riana Pfefferkorn were partly inspired by a number of high-profile privacy cases that have unfolded in recent years, ranging from Lavabit to Apple’s battle with the Department of Justice.
As they wrote in their Wednesday filing:
Most surveillance orders are sealed, however. Therefore, the public does not have a strong understanding of what technical assistance courts may order private entities to provide to law enforcement. continued…
first published week of: 10/03/2016
Voter registration databases (VRDB) and election systems are rich targets and may continue to experience frequent attempted intrusions. This problem is not unique to individual states—it is shared across the nation. The keys to good cybersecurity are awareness and constant vigilance.
What are the threats that may place voter data at risk?
Malicious actors may use a variety of methods to interfere with voter registration websites and databases. Some methods of attack are listed below.
What prevention measures should I employ to protect against these threats?
DHS encourages election officials and network administrators to implement the recommendations below, which can prevent as many as 85 percent of targeted cyber attacks. These strategies are common sense to many, but DHS continues to see intrusions because organizations fail to use these basic measures.
A commitment to good cybersecurity and best practices is critical to protecting voter registration data. Here are some questions you may want to ask of your organization to help prevent attacks against voter registration websites and databases:
How do I respond to unauthorized access to voter registration data?
Implement your security incident response and business continuity plan. It may take time for your organization’s IT professionals to isolate and remove threats to your systems and restore normal operations. In the meantime, you should take steps to maintain your organization’s essential functions according to your business continuity plan. Organizations should maintain and regularly test backup plans, disaster recovery plans, and business continuity procedures.
Contact law enforcement or DHS immediately. We encourage you to contact your local FBI field office, the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), or DHS’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) immediately to report an intrusion and to request incident response resources or technical assistance.
first published week of: 09/19/2016
Rarely do top executive branch officials or members of Congress issue an explicit warning to federal employees that they risk criminal prosecution if they follow directions from their department bosses that run contrary to accepted practice.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump opened that door in the Oct. 9 debate when he threatened his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton with prosecution and jail time, presumably on charges of mishandling classified information related to her use of a personal email server to conduct government business when she served as Secretary of State.
The comments echoed a little-noticed Capitol Hill exchange last month. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Trump's onetime rival for the GOP nomination, warned current federal employees that they risked jail time for violating federal statues regarding spending on a proscribed government activity. continued…
first published week of: 10/24/2016
Supervisor Eric Mar (center) is proposing a new tax on technology companies in San Francisco.
( Gabrielle Lurie, Special To The Chronicle)
The proposal championed by SF Supervisor Eric Mar would have imposed a 1.5 percent payroll tax on technology companies.
Highly paid tech workers are often blamed for the city’s housing crisis. Now, three supervisors want to levy a tax on technology companies in an effort to make them pay for the city’s two biggest woes: the high cost of housing and homelessness.
Dubbed the tech tax, the proposed November ballot measure would impose a 1.5 percent payroll tax on technology companies. That would be a big shift. In 2012, 71 percent of San Francisco voters supported a measure to eliminate the city’s payroll tax and replace it with a gross receipts tax.
The proposed measure has a lot of ifs, including whether it will even make the ballot. It has three co-sponsors — Supervisors Eric Mar, Aaron Peskin and David Campos — but needs the support of at least six to qualify.
That will be an uphill battle. None of the five moderate supervisors is likely to support it, and one of the six progressives, Jane Kim, may be unwilling to take on tech companies while she is running for state Senate.
Should the measure make it to the ballot and pass, the city controller’s office estimates it would generate about $115 million annually continued…
first published week of: 08/01/2016
Communicating with the people that are supposed to represent you in government can sound like a fruitless task, but it is possible. You just need to remember they don’t always communicate the way you do. Here are some of the best ways to reach them.
According to Emily Ellsworth, a writer and former Congressional staffer, reaching out via things like Facebook or Twitter aren’t going to be very effective. Staffers check these mediums occasionally, but they’re largely ignored. Sending letters is more helpful, but they also get so many letters that it’s impossible to give them individual attention. The best way to get in touch? Phone calls.
As Emily explains in a detailed tweet chain, phone calls have to be dealt with when they occur and they can’t be ignored. A large volume of phone calls can be overwhelming for office staffers, but that means that their bosses hear about it.
Which office you target also matters. Members of Congress have offices in DC, but they also have offices in their home district that they represent. Target your letters and phone calls to your local office and you’ll have an easier time getting their attention. continued…
first published week of: 11/14/2016
Residents survey the flood water on Old Jefferson Highway at Bayou Manchac in Prairieville, La. on Aug. 16.
( Max Becherer/AP)
Hurricane Hermine made landfall in Florida last week. Some 200,000 residents have had their power knocked out, and others have been forced to evacuate due to possible storm surge of up to nine feet. Although the category-one hurricane has been downgraded to a tropical storm, the National Weather Service estimates that some Florida communities could see as much as 10 to 15 inches of precipitation by Saturday, at which point the storm will likely have moved northward to the Carolinas and Virginia, bringing with it sopping rain and the risks of more coastal flooding.
"These types of rain totals, especially when they fall in just a few hours, could lead to flooding similar to what we saw in Louisiana just a few weeks ago," one CNN meteorologist warned Thursday. That event unleashed nearly 30 inches of rain on some parts of Louisiana over three days. The unnamed storm displaced some 20,000 people and damaged twice as many homes. The American Red Cross called it the worst natural disaster since Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
“Natural disaster” is a strange term, though. Hurricanes and superstorms are fundamentally natural occurrences (notwithstanding human influence on the atmosphere), but the property damage they leave behind is not. The extent to which these events wind up as “disasters” is determined by how many people and buildings are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In fact, with floods, the most common natural disaster in the U.S., we exacerbate the damage by paving over flood plains, trapping stormwater at a higher level than it would otherwise be. The number of people living along Florida’s shores has grown steadily over the past decade, and the population of coastal counties nationwide is projected to grow by 50 to 144 percent over the century, accompanied by more development. As the southeastern seaboard gets drenched in what is shaping up to be a very active hurricane season, it’s worth reflecting on why we do that, and why so many people choose to live in the path of storm-driven disaster in first place. A big factor in determining that? Federal flood risk maps. continued…
first published week of: 09/12/2016
Lovefone leases the phone box units from the Red Kiosk Company
( Credit: Lovefone)
A smartphone and tablet repair outfit has found a fitting way to breathe new life into the UK's iconic red telephone boxes. Lovefone is converting the underused booths into the kind of mobile phone repair shop that should probably be avoided by those with a fear of enclosed spaces. Each one will sport workbenches, charging stations and free Wi-Fi.
As the proliferation of mobile phones has slowly but surely rendered the UK's fleet of recognizable phone boxes redundant, it looked as if they may have been decommissioned and removed from the country's streets altogether. Instead, many are being repurposed for use in other ways, such as solar-powered mobile device chargers and mini work pods.
Lovefone is exploring yet another approach. The Lovefonebox takes the firm's device repair services out of its shop premises and into the 1-sq m (10.8-sq ft) units across London and beyond. continued…
first published week of: 08/29/2016
No access to world's servers thwarts "criminal and national security investigations."
The US Department of Justice isn't giving up its fight to access content stored in overseas servers. Federal prosecutors in New York late Thursday asked a federal appeals court to reconsider its July decision that allowed Microsoft to successfully claim that authorities had no legal right to access data stored on its servers outside the country, even with a warrant from a federal judge.
A three-judge panel of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that federal law, notably the Stored Communications Act, allows US authorities to seize content in US-based servers, but not in overseas servers—in this case, Dublin, Ireland.
The dispute is an outgrowth of a years-long battle over whether Microsoft must hand over e-mails to New York prosecutors in a narcotics investigation. But the case has broader implications far beyond the drug probe. The case touches on consumer privacy, international relations, and the government's desire to investigate criminal activity. continued…
first published week of: 10/24/2016
A new report ranks the 50 most segregating borderlines in the country.
A few blocks away from Bernita Bradley’s house, the Detroit Public School district ends and the Grosse Pointe Public School System begins. The border is invisible, but with a 12-year-old daughter enrolled in DPS, the reminders for Bradley are impossible to ignore. There are the MacBooks in every Grosse Pointe student’s hand. There’s the annual Grosse Pointe toy drive, which distributes free bicycles to every child who needs one. And there are the parks with shiny new playground equipment, where parents routinely ask Bradley, “Do you live around here?”
“Ours are torn down and dilapidated,” says Bradley. “Just seeing theirs makes me feel bad.“
According to a new report and interactive map by the education think tank EdBuild, the district border that Bradley navigates as a parent and an activist (she helped launch Enroll Detroit, which distributes information about school enrollment requirements to families) is the most income-segregating in the nation. The median property value in DPS is $45,100, versus $220,100 in suburban Grosse Pointe, and roughly half of the city student population lives in poverty, compared to one out of every 15 students across the district line—a difference of 42 percentage points. Local per-pupil public revenue is about the same, at around $4650 per student, but that’s because Detroit now taxes properties at a rate of 8.7 percent each year to pay for its schools, 47 percent higher than the rate paid in Grosse Pointe, “where, it goes without saying, there are most likely no vermin carcasses under the desks,” says Rebecca Sibilia, founder and CEO of EdBuild, in an email to CityLab. continued…
first published week of: 08/29/2016