A new version of B4UFLY, an app to help drone operators follow FAA rules, is coming soon.
( Jacob Lund/shutterstock.com)
The Federal Aviation Administration is partnering with Kittyhawk, a Boeing-backed San Francisco-based drone operations startup, to redevelop and revamp its first mobile application, B4UFLY.
The free app aims to help drone pilots comply with FAA rules and regulations when they fly.
“We want to provide drone pilots with the best tools possible so they fly safely and responsibly,” FAA Administrator Dan Elwell said in a statement. “As drone sales increase and our nation's airspace becomes busier and more complex, it's vital that we work smarter and partner with the private sector to develop innovative products that advance safety.”
The original B4UFLY app launched in 2016 and has been marred by low-star reviews since its inception. The app currently holds 1.5 out of 5 stars in Apple’s iOS app store. Users fault the app for operating slowly, having glitches, and offering unclear information.
Read full story at NextGov…
first published week of: 03/04/2019
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr visited the Tower Installation Program at Aiken Technical College today, which provides the practical and classroom training that enables workers to find jobs as tower climbers. Carr delivered remarks on ensuring the United States has the skilled workforce in place to build next-gen wireless networks and win the race to 5G. In particular, he identified the need for more Telecom Tower Technicians (known as “TTT-1”s) and how the U.S. can achieve that goal by expanding on Aiken’s model program.
“A skilled workforce is essential to winning the race to 5G and building next-gen networks in communities across the country,” said Commissioner Carr. “I’ve seen firsthand the work that tower crews are doing to deploy this infrastructure and the challenges they face in meeting the exploding demand for their services. Wireless crews estimate that they need an additional 20,000 skilled workers to complete this build. Here at Aiken Tech, Gemma Frock and her team have built a seven-week program that provides climbers with the right mix of physical, safety, and technical skills to land a good-paying job in this field. It’s time we build on the success here at Aiken and stand up similar tower training programs in community colleges and technical schools throughout the U.S. Doing so will address our country’s need for more TTT-1 certified workers and help close the skills gap by turning our country’s community colleges into pipelines for 5G jobs. I’m already working toward that goal with efforts underway through the National Wireless Safety Alliance to establish similar programs in other communities.”
first published week of: 04/22/2019
It’s the FCC’s official duty to promote connectivity throughout the U.S., and as part of that it issues a yearly report on improvements to broadband deployment. The latest report, however, seems to contain an error large enough to throw its numbers completely off what Chairman Ajit Pai has already claimed. His office says that they are “looking into the matter.”
The information comes from advocacy organization Free Press, already a thorn in this administration’s side for having pointed out the highly questionable nature of economic claims used to justify the Commission’s new, weaker net neutrality rules.
In a comment (PDF) filed in the upcoming 2018 Broadband Deployment Report’s docket, the organization points out a single huge outlier that vastly, and incorrectly, inflates the numbers of new broadband connections in the country.
These official FCC documents are based on “Form 477” paperwork self-reporting broadband availability, submitted by internet providers abiding more or less by the honor system — which critics already point out is completely an inadequate one on which to base policy.
In the last batch of 477s was one from a company called BarrierFree, an ISP based in the Northeast that was submitting its data for the first time ever. Unfortunately there is a slight discrepancy between the numbers on its form and the numbers in reality.
Read full story at TechCrunch…
first published week of: 03/11/2019
Sweeping bans on Kaspersky Lab, ZTE and Huawei products were the right move, but Grant Schneider thinks the government needs a more scalable approach.
Agencies need to trust the tech they buy from private industry is free of bugs and malware, but today’s approach to securing the federal IT supply chain is too narrow for any such guarantees, according to the country’s top cybersecurity official.
Over the last year, federal leaders have barred multiple companies from doing business with the government citing possible security risks. The Homeland Security Department and Congress both banned agencies from buying products from Kaspersky Lab, a Russian anti-virus company with potentially problematic ties to the Kremlin, and the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act placed similar prohibitions on the Chinese tech firms ZTE and Huawei.
But while those individual bans certainly made the federal supply chain safer, the government needs a much more scalable approach to stay ahead of the latest threats, said federal Chief Information Security Officer Grant Schneider.
“Those [were] good approaches to get at one-off solutions,” Schneider said Thursday at the McAfee Security Through Innovation Summit. “However, in my mind, they’re really whack-a-mole solutions to a challenge that we need a far more systemic approach to.”
Read full story at NextGov…
first published week of: 04/29/2019
A two-year campaign to spy on U.S. government internet traffic seems to be what prompted the Department of Homeland Security in January to issue its first-ever emergency directive that gave agencies 10 days to implement protections against a global effort to hijack domain name servers.The operation appeared to be "a straight espionage, read-the-traffic kind of play" according to a Hill staffer who attended a DHS briefing on the exploit and U.S. response.Now, a top DHS cybersecurity official said, an initial forensic review has determined that there is no evidence at this time to indicate any DNS records for federal domains were altered or manipulated.
Read full story at GCN…
first published week of: 02/25/2019
Michigan is in line to receive close to $4 million in funding to bring the next generation 911 to communities.
Across the country, $109 million in federal dollars will be split among 34 states and two tribal nations.
Many West Michigan 911 dispatch centers are already ahead of the game when it comes to the future of getting you the help you need in a hurry.
You’re driving through Ionia County on I-96 and you have emergency, but you’re not sure where you are. You pull off the road and use your cellphone to call 911. There’s a good chance the county dispatchers will know exactly where to find you. Using Smart911 technology, they can pinpoint you cellphone not by pinging off towers, but rather by GPS.
Read full story at WoodTV…
first published week of: 08/19/2019
Michigan is in line to receive close to $4 million in funding to bring the next generation 911 to communities.
Across the country, $109 million in federal dollars will be split among 34 states and two tribal nations.
Many West Michigan 911 dispatch centers are already ahead of the game when it comes to the future of getting you the help you need in a hurry.
You’re driving through Ionia County on I-96 and you have emergency, but you’re not sure where you are. You pull off the road and use your cellphone to call 911. There’s a good chance the county dispatchers will know exactly where to find you. Using Smart911 technology, they can pinpoint you cellphone not by pinging off towers, but rather by GPS.
“Through our Smart911, they partnered with a company called Rapid SOS. The Rapid SOS system actually zeroes in on the GPS coordinates that the phone’s providing,” explained Jim Valentine, Ionia County’s 911 director.
Smart911 is one of the technologies used by many 911 centers.
Read full story at WoodTV.com…
first published week of: 09/30/2019
In 2018 U.S. federal government policy and budget aligned to amplify excitement around the long-promised application of private sector IT innovations to public sector missions. We began to see action as government policies such as the President’s Management Agenda and National Defense Strategy combined with a bipartisan budget agreement to send a clear message that government agencies need to embrace cloud operating models and explore new technologies to reduce costs, move faster and serve constituents more effectively.
In a prevailing movement that Technology Business Research calls Wallet vs. Will, the federal market’s pursuit of commercial IT represents a fundamental shift from traditional procurement models predicated on bespoke, costly and difficult-to-replace proprietary technology to a more agile model leveraging configurable off-the-shelf solutions enabled by open standards.
Read full story at Washington Technology…
first published week of: 01/07/2019
Secret Service Director James M. Murray
While election interference, espionage and power grid threats get all the attention, nation-states also lean on cyber criminals to conduct operations on their behalf, according to Director James Murray.
As government leaders work to defend the country’s digital infrastructure against foreign adversaries, they shouldn’t overlook the role cyber criminals play in those geopolitical clashes, according to the head of the Secret Service.
When it comes to international cyber conflict, people tend to focus their attention on election interference, economic espionage and other threats posed by nation-state actors. And while fighting those malicious campaigns is essential to national security, pursuing digital criminals is an equally important part of the equation, said Secret Service Director James Murray.
“I’m not looking to downplay the threats posed by nation-states,” Murray said Wednesday at the Aspen Cyber Summit in New York City. “On the contrary, I’m saying that … we see the arrest and conviction of transnational organized criminals as an indispensable component of addressing the wider challenge. It is an essential element of the whole-of-government approach to reducing the full range of cybersecurity threats, including those threats posed by nation-states.”
While the Secret Service is best known for protecting top government officials and their families, the agency is also responsible for investigating financial fraud and cyber crimes. And in recent years, the latter has skyrocketed, Murray said.
Read full story at NextGov…
first published week of: 10/07/2019
Conversations about the Census tend to revolve around funding and political representation. But in its inaugural digital year, data gathered from the count could affect cities and citizens for the next decade.
Much of the discussion about the 2020 U.S. Census has been dominated by President Trump’s push to add a citizenship question, as well as critics who say he’s doing so to undermine the count. But officials across the country are also grappling with conducting a Census in a country and world that have drastically changed in the past decade due to an acceleration of technology and new online threats.
Basically, when the 2020 U.S. Census arrives next spring, it will be seeking to accurately count a vastly different country than the one it surveyed 10 years ago.
The reference day used for the Census will again be April 1, as it has been since 1930, and the geographic space the Census covers will be the same. So too will the people, for the most part. What has changed since the federal government took its last sweeping decennial count of the population, however, is the way society engages with, shares, uses and values information.
Read full story at GovTech…
first published week of: 09/23/2019