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Archived Government Notes
Published in 2020
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The Early Internet Years in Government Are a Model For Fostering Innovation
by john kamensky
It’s critical to begin with a compelling vision for how life could be made better for the end user.
Not having a technology background, I had little appreciation for just how cutting edge we were in the 1990s at the National Performance Review, Vice President Al Gore’s reinventing government initiative. But I readily understood the power of letting innovators stretch their imaginations.
In the summer of 1993, I was sitting on my front porch editing, with pen and paper, a draft developed by the team that was writing the NPR report and recommendations for Reengineering Through Information Technology. Grumbling, I kept striking out “the spiderweb” and inserted “the Internet.” The term “Web” hadn’t entered common vocabulary yet, but I clearly lost that editing battle in the long run.
More importantly that summer, the Clinton administration (led by the vice president, the Commerce secretary, the Office of Management and Budget, and NPR) had agreed that the government should not “own” or “regulate” the emerging Internet. This policy helped pave the way for innovation in the years that followed and the massive expansion for the Internet’s place today at the center of most of the world’s economies and societies.
Read full story at GovExec…
first published week of: 04/20/2020
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The FCC Is Now Ready to Fight Section 230
by Kyle Daly
The Federal Communications Commission is making its case this week for why it should go ahead and write rules to curtail tech's broad protections against lawsuits over both moderation decisions and material that internet users post online.
Why it matters: The agency's GOP chairman was a longtime champion of the FCC hewing closely to the powers Congress has explicitly given it and to staying out of rewriting policy beyond its traditional jurisdiction. He now seems to have a very different view of FCC authority.
Driving the news: FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said during a virtual event Thursday that the agency is acting under a provision in the Communications Act that gives it general authority to write rules as it sees fit to enforce that act, the FCC's founding charter from 1934.
- The immunity shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, is part of the Communications Act because it entered U.S. law bundled under an expansive 1996 update to the then-62-year-old statute.
Read full story at Axios…
first published week of: 10/26/2020
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The Pentagon Is Using Zoom. Is it Safe?
by patrick tucker
Experts say the ubiquitous videoconferencing tools bear some risk of accidentally exposing mundane details, and even inviting a new wave of deep fakes. But the risks can be managed.
Like a lot of organizations that are learning to operate with large swaths of telecommuting employees and contractors, the Defense Department is suddenly finding itself using videoconferencing software by Zoom. But as use of Zoom’s products has skyrocketed, so has awareness of various security vulnerabilities — and of the Chinese subcontractors who wrote large portions of its code.
Zoom is officially approved for use in unclassified situations by troops, DoD employees, and contractors.
“The Defense Information Systems Agency reviews and approves third party applications for use on official DOD systems, and Zoom is included in the suite of DOD Enterprise Mobility Personal Use Mobility Apps,” Lt. Col. Robert Carver, Department of Defense spokesman, told Defense One in an email. He said that personnel are expected to practice “strong cyber hygiene and operational security awareness” when using any third-party software, and the Internet generally, but he acknowledges that “there is no official policy with regard to the use of the Zoom platform.”
Read full story at Government Executive…
first published week of: 05/11/2020
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The Pentagon Is Using Zoom. Is it Safe?
by patrick tucker
Experts say the ubiquitous videoconferencing tools bear some risk of accidentally exposing mundane details, and even inviting a new wave of deep fakes. But the risks can be managed.
Like a lot of organizations that are learning to operate with large swaths of telecommuting employees and contractors, the Defense Department is suddenly finding itself using videoconferencing software by Zoom. But as use of Zoom’s products has skyrocketed, so has awareness of various security vulnerabilities — and of the Chinese subcontractors who wrote large portions of its code.
Zoom is officially approved for use in unclassified situations by troops, DoD employees, and contractors.
“The Defense Information Systems Agency reviews and approves third party applications for use on official DOD systems, and Zoom is included in the suite of DOD Enterprise Mobility Personal Use Mobility Apps,” Lt. Col. Robert Carver, Department of Defense spokesman, told Defense One in an email. He said that personnel are expected to practice “strong cyber hygiene and operational security awareness” when using any third-party software, and the Internet generally, but he acknowledges that “there is no official policy with regard to the use of the Zoom platform.”
Researchers have charged that Zoom’s installer software doesn’t give users a lot of warning about what it puts on your computer, essentially getting around the system administrator; the app feeds data to Facebook; and two separate bugs in the software could be used by outside attackers to gain access to people’s computers. (Many of these issues are moot if you are using the service in your web browser rather than using the app.)
Read full story at GovExec…
first published week of: 04/13/2020
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The Widespread Benefits of Federal Predictive Data Analytics
by Gienna Shaw
Health and welfare agencies at the state and local level gain information from national resources.
As the federal government makes headway with predictive data analytics at the federal level — using automation and better data management to try and put itself in a proactive position — agencies are also using those resources to support state and local entities. The Department of Health and Human Services, for example, is working to improve child welfare outcomes using predictive models to estimate future risk of maltreatment, serious injury or fatality; forecast the likelihood of repeated maltreatment; or evaluate a neighborhood’s risk level for abuse, for example. Predictive analytics can also improve agency operations by evaluating caseworker turnover or identifying trends in the quantity of incoming cases, letting local- or state-level employees focus on current caseloads rather than trying to tease out future trends but giving them the information they need to prevent those trends if they’re unwelcome ones. In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is using predictive analytics to forecast future probabilities of disease patterns, health behaviors and other variables, using population and other data to influence health decision-making.
Read full story at FedTech…
Health and welfare agencies at the state and local level gain information from national resources.first published week of: 11/23/2020
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U.S. Lawmakers to Introduce Bill That Threatens Encryption on Tech Platforms
by nandita bose
U.S. legislation will be introduced in the coming weeks that could hurt technology companies’ ability to offer end-to-end encryption, two sources with knowledge of the matter said, and it aims to curb the distribution of child sexual abuse material on such platforms.
This law shields certain online platforms from being treated as the publisher or speaker of information they publish, and largely protects them from liability involving content posted by users.
The bill threatens this key immunity unless companies comply with a set of “best practices,” which will be determined by a 15-member commission led by the Attorney General.
Read full story at Reuters…
first published week of: 02/24/2020
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UC San Diego Health Tests Drones to Deliver Medical Samples
by Paul Sisson
UC San Diego Health is conducting a drone trial with the overall goal of delivering medical samples around the medical campus. UCSD Health is the second medical campus to utilize drone technology.
On Thursday afternoon, a white unmanned drone spun up its four propellers, pulling itself into the sky from a landing pad not much larger than a coffee shop table, hovering far overhead for a moment before lowering back to the spot where it started.
As trips go, it was not particularly fruitful. But the demonstration, conducted under the scrutiny of news cameras, was really an announcement of things to come, a technological "hello world" to those who will soon see such quadcopters buzzing through the sky, carrying medical samples from university medical facilities to labs more than a mile away.
At least, that's the goal of the drone trial now underway at UC San Diego Health.
Read full story at GovTech…
first published week of: 03/30/2020
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Union Urges [UK] Government to Reign in Employee Surveillance Tech
by laurie clarke
( Fox Business )
In November 2018, Facebook announced plans to launch an independent oversight board, billed as a ‘supreme court’ for content decisions. Once it’s launched, the organisation will review user-submitted appeals about posts that were taken down or left up. But an insurgent group, self-styled as the ‘real Facebook oversight board’, appears eager to upstage this effort.
The provocatively titled group brings together members of the Stop Hate For Profit campaign, which lobbied Facebook to step up regulatory action on hate speech over summer, including the NAACP, Color of Change, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Free Press. A number of companies participated in the campaign, suspending advertising for the month of July to ratchet up the pressure on Facebook. Other board members hail from academia, journalism and politics.
Read full story at NSTech…
first published week of: 10/19/2020
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US Defense and Aerospace Sectors Targeted in New Wave of North Korean Attacks
by catalin cimpanu
Soldier is Using Laptop Computer for Tracking the Target and Radio for Communication During Military Operation in the Desert
( Getty Images )
Cyber-security firm McAfee publishes details about "Operation North Star."
While the world was in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, North Korean hackers were targeting the US defense and aerospace sectors with fake job offers in the hopes of infecting employees looking for better opportunities and gaining a foothold on their organizations' networks.
The attacks began in late March and lasted throughout May 2020, cyber-security firm McAfee said in a report ...
Tracked under the codename of "Operation North Star," McAfee said these attacks have been linked to infrastructure and TTPs (Techniques, Tactics, and Procedures) previously associated with Hidden Cobra -- an umbrella term the US government uses to describe all North Korean state-sponsored hacking groups.
Read full story at ZDNet…
first published week of: 08/03/2020
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US Government Built Secret iPod With Apple’s Help, Former Engineer Says
by dan goodin
iPod engineer says only four people inside Apple knew of project.
An Apple engineer who helped launch the iPod said he helped the US government build a secret version of the device that could covertly collect data.
David Shayer, the second software engineer hired for the iPod project in 2001, said he first learned of the project in 2005, when he received an office visit from his boss’s boss.
“He cut to the chase,” Shayer recounts in a post published on Monday by TidBITS, an online newsletter covering all things Apple. “I have a special assignment for you. Your boss doesn’t know about it. You’ll help two engineers from the US Department of Energy build a special iPod. Report only to me.”
Custom hardware, custom OS
Shayer said that over the next few months, he regularly helped the two men, who he identified only as engineers Paul and Matthew working for Bechtel (their purported redacted business cards are pictured above). There were mundane tasks, such as Shayer shuttling them from the lobby into the ultra secure quarters where iPod development took place.
Read full story at arsTechnica…
first published week of: 08/31/2020