The
first failure of the 2020 election shows what is to follow.
App
Used to Tabulate Votes Is Said to Have Been Inadequately Tested
The app that the Iowa Democratic Party
commissioned to tabulate and report results from the caucuses on
Monday was not properly
tested at a statewide scale, said people who were briefed
on the app by the state party.
It was quickly put
together in just the past two months, said the people,
some of whom asked to remain anonymous because they were not
authorized to speak publicly.
And the party decided to use the app only after
another proposal for reporting votes — which entailed having caucus
participants call in their votes over the phone — was abandoned, on
the advice of Democratic National Committee officials, according to
David Jefferson, a board member of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan
election integrity organization.
… A spokeswoman for the state party issued a
statement late Monday denying that the delays were the result of the
new app’s failure.
“We found inconsistencies in the reporting of
three sets of results,”
said Mandy McClure, the spokeswoman. She added that this was “simply
a reporting issue, the app did not go down and this is not a hack or
an intrusion.”
… Matt Blaze, a professor of computer science
and law at Georgetown, said that introducing apps in the midst of an
election posed many problems. Any type of app or program that relies
on using a cellphone network to deliver results is vulnerable to
problems both on the app and on the phones being used to run it, he
said.
… Jerry Depew, the Democratic county chairman
from Pocahontas County, said that the
report line and the help line were the same phone number.
“I had not expected it to be busy at 8 p.m.,”
he said, when he tried to call in results from his precinct. “But
if caucus chairs were calling for help at the same time that easy
caucuses were trying to report results, the phones could have been
overloaded.”
(Related) Here’s a suggestion: Any voting
related software or hardware should be independently certified.
DoD to
Require Cybersecurity Certification From Defense Contractors
The
United States Department of Defense (DoD) announced that defense
contractors will have to meet a basic level of cybersecurity
standards when replying to a government acquisition program's request
for proposals by 2026.
The
Cybersecurity
Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) framework version
1.0 was released on January 31 and it is "a unified
cybersecurity standard for future DoD acquisitions."
If
this had not been so horribly mismanaged, it would have been resolved
years ago.
Andy
reports:
The New Zealand Supreme Court has declined Kim Dotcom’s appeal in his bid to access private communications captured illegally by the country’s spy agency. Dotcom will still be entitled to damages for the unlawful intrusion into his private life but he says this matter is not about money. Instead, he seeks to hold the GCSB agency accountable for its illegal behavior, for the benefit of all New Zealanders.
In the weeks and months leading up to and beyond the 2012 raid on Kim Dotcom and his former associates, the Megaupload founder was being spied on by the authorities in New Zealand.
Between December 2011 and March 2012, the highly secretive Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) spy agency listened in on the private communications of Kim and former wife Mona Dotcom, plus Megaupload co-defendant Bram van der Kolk.
Since
the impact is more immediate, I hope we take action sooner.
Outgoing
NSA legal chief warns hacking threats from Russia, China, and Iran
are as dangerous to the US as climate change
… Gerstell
predicted mounting hacking threats against the US in an interview
with The
Washington Post published Monday, comparing the challenge to that
posed by climate change.
"The
challenges presented by the digital revolution … are of such a
magnitude and coming at us with such a rapidity that there's a danger
we will treat it conventionally and underestimate its significance,"
Gerstell said.
The
GDPR is finding its stride.
GDPR
Fines Top $126 Million With Over 160,000 Data Breaches Reported
… This
information comes from the recently published GDPR
Data Breach Survey conducted
major multinational law firm DLA Piper.
[Request
the report:
https://www.dlapiper.com/en/us/insights/publications/2020/01/gdpr-data-breach-survey-2020/
(Related)
Many, but not yet very large.
Guess what?
GDPR enforcement is on fire!
While fines are not always particularly high, our
analysis shows that, in terms of volume, data protection authorities
(DPAs) are rapidly increasing their GDPR enforcement activities.
Some interesting trends are also emerging:
DPAs have levied 190 fines and penalties to date.
Failures of data governance -- not security -- trigger the most fines and penalties
Breaches get the enforcement ball rolling but are just a starting point.
Compromised data from a single customer can be expensive.
Failure to respect individuals' rights will lead to the next wave of fines and penalties
Third-party risk management is the next big thing in the privacy arena.
Still working through GDPR. If I called my
opponent an idiot in order to win election, would I be in violation?
Perhaps I would have a Facebook-like “Politicians are allowed to
lie” exemption?
Odia
Kagan of Fox Rothschild writes:
Key
takeaways:
- An opinion can include personal data.
- If the opinion is not recorded — GDPR does not apply.
- If made or recorded for someone’s “purely personal or household” activities, with no connection to a professional or commercial activity, GDPR doesn’t apply.
What are the law firm’s responsibilities here?
They have already lost client data.
Maze
Ransomware Hits Law Firms and French Giant Bouygues
… The Maze group has a dedicated website
where it first names victim organizations and then releases stolen
data if they refuse to pay the ransom.
… “It's the equivalent of a kidnapper
sending a pinky finger. If the organization still doesn’t pay, the
remaining data is published, sometimes on a staggered basis.”
That’s potentially bad news for the latest firms
to fall victim to Maze ransomware. At present, only two of the law
firms have had sensitive customer data published but, ominously for
the other victims, the group promises that the “proofs” are
coming soon.
… It’s not unusual for the group to charge
its victims twice, $1m for the decryption key and a further $1m for
‘deletion’ of the stolen data. There’s the added jeopardy
that, if they’re not paid, stolen data will be leaked onto Russian
hacker forums, as has happened in the past.
Can you have too much information? Lots of slides
to steal…
Every
single stat you need to know about the internet
TheNextWeb
–
“Our
new Digital
2020 reports
– published in partnership with We
Are Social and
Hootsuite
–
show
that digital, mobile, and social media have become an indispensable
part of everyday life for people all over the world. More than 4.5
billion people now use the internet, while social media users have
passed the 3.8 billion mark. Nearly 60 percent of the world’s
population is already online, and the latest trends suggest that more
than half of the world’s total population will use social media by
the middle of this year. Some important challenges remain, however,
and there’s still work to do to ensure that everyone around the
world has fair and equal access to life-changing digital
connectivity. You’ll find the full Digital
2020 Global Overview Report in
the SlideShare embed below, but read on to find our summary of this
year’s key headlines, numbers, and trends…”
Is there enough detail to suggest ways to reduce
the number of shootings?
Tracking
Police Shootings in the United States
Washington
Post – 950
people
have been shot and killed by police in the past year – “In 2015,
The Washington Post began to log every
fatal shooting by
an on-duty police officer in the United States. In that time there
have been nearly
5,000 such shootings recorded
by The Post. After Michael
Brown, an unarmed black man, was killed in
2014 by police in Ferguson, Mo., a Post investigation found that the
FBI
undercounted fatal police shootings by
more than half. This is because reporting by police departments is
voluntary and many departments fail to do so. The Post’s data
relies primarily on news accounts, social media postings and police
reports. Analysis of more than five years of data reveals that the
number and circumstances of fatal shootings and the overall
demographics of the victims have remained relatively constant…
Although half of the people shot and killed by police are white,
black
Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate.
They account for less than 13 percent of the U.S. population, but
are killed by police at more than twice the rate of white Americans.
Hispanic Americans are also killed by police at a disproportionate
rate…”
I think I have it figured out. Russia is afraid
I’ll run for President and defeat Trump. (Last week)
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