A Christmas gift for hackers.
How a
government shutdown affects America’s cybersecurity workforce
… Among the heaviest hit agencies would be the
National Institute of Standards and Technology, which would have 85
percent of its staff furloughed. Only 435 employees are considered
“essential,” according to a planning
document from the Department of Commerce.
… Also seeing sharp reductions are the
Director of National Intelligence’s analysis and operations
workforce, which would see a 60 percent reduction in active workforce
to just 345 employees, according
to documents.
… It appears
that the Department of Homeland Security’s new Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency, created just last month, is among the
most protected in the event of a government shutdown. The agency
would only have 45 percent of its workforce furloughed, with 2,008
employees exempt.
For my Software Architecture students to ponder.
Last-Minute
Shoppers Increasingly Trust Only Amazon to Deliver
Olivia Zimmermann started her holiday shopping
early this year, buying a Bluetooth speaker from Best Buy for her
sister. It was supposed to arrive by Dec. 10, two weeks before
Christmas.
The speaker never showed up — and the post
office said it had delivered the package to a different town. Best
Buy apologized and offered to reship it. But Ms. Zimmermann, who
works in marketing in Chicago, was over it.
“I just want a refund,” she told the retailer,
and then added: “At this point, I have already ordered from Amazon
because I know for a fact
it will be here when they say it will.”
Perspective. How tight do you get before you
reach Big Brotherhood?
Russia’s
Tightening Control of Cyberspace Within its Borders
Russian federal lawmakers have just drafted
legislation
that would ban the publication of online materials
that “blatantly disrespect Russian society, the state, official
state symbols, the Russian Constitution, and law enforcement
agencies.” Such a law would exacerbate the severity of existing
laws, which Human Rights Watch has said
already “sought to stigmatize criticism or alternative views of
government policy as disloyal, foreign-sponsored, or even traitorous”
and crack down on physical mechanisms of protest like public
assembly.
At the same time as that new legislation, Russia’s
internet “regulator,” Roskomnadzor, has proposed
a law that would permit the agency to entirely
block search engines that don’t comply with requests of
state authorities.
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