Security News
In response to a security breach that exposed personal information from around 1.6 million unemployment claims filed last year, the Washington Senate has unanimously passed a measure that creates a state Office of Cybersecurity. The measure, passed by the chamber on Wednesday, creates the new office within the Office of the Chief Information Officer.
On Wednesday, proposed US legislation to fund defenses against realistic computer-generated media known as deepfakes was approved by the US Senate and the bill now awaits consideration in the US House of Representatives. Introduced last year by US Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Jerry Moran, the Identifying Outputs of Generative Adversarial Networks Act aims to promote research to detect and defend against realistic-looking fakery that can be used for purposes of deception, harassment, or misinformation.
The IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act, a bill that aims to improve the security of Internet of Things devices, passed the Senate on Tuesday and is heading to the White House for the president's signature. Sen. Gardner commented, "I applaud the Senate for passing our bipartisan and bicameral legislation to ensure the federal government leads by example and purchases devices that meet basic requirements to prevent hackers from accessing government systems."
A bill making its way through the U.S. Senate aims to extend nationwide some of the restrictions on the collection of facial-recognition information already imposed by an Illinois state law, as well as expand private citizens' legal powers to sue companies that violate them. The proposed national law would also require that a company acquires written consent before recording anyone's biometric data, and provides both private citizens and state attorneys general to sue companies that violate these terms.
A new report from the Senate intelligence committee on Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election in the United States says WikiLeaks knowingly assisted the Kremlin's influence efforts. The United States has concluded that Russia conducted an extensive influence campaign leading up to the 2016 election, and a significant part of that campaign involved breaking into the computer systems of the Democratic party and Hilary Clinton's campaign and leaking information via the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
The US Senate voted Thursday to bar TikTok from being downloaded onto US government employees' telephones, intensifying US scrutiny of the popular Chinese-owned video app. President Donald Trump, who has locked horns with China on a range of issues including trade and the coronavirus pandemic, has set a deadline of mid-September for TikTok to be acquired by a US firm or be banned in the United States.
An amended version of America's controversial proposed EARN IT Act has been unanimously approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee - a key step in its journey to becoming law. Concerns over the law being used to force tech companies to introduce encryption backdoors led to an amendment [PDF], put forward by Senator Patrick Leahy, that stated online platforms won't face civil or criminal liability if they are unable to break end-to-end encryption in their own services.
A US Senate panel Thursday approved legislation aimed at combatting online child exploitation as civil liberties activists warned the measure could lead to an array of constitutional and privacy problems. The Judiciary Committee voted to approve a revised version of the Earn It Act which would eliminate "Blanket liability protection" for online platforms which fail to protect against child sexual abuse material.
The answer to the "Who" in "Who knows what" is "The government." Last week, the Senate narrowly missed an opportunity to protect Americans' web histories from government surveillance. In June 2015, the Patriot Act was replaced by the USA Freedom Act: a bill meant to clip the NSA's spying powers by slightly inconveniencing its metadata collection from US citizens and introducing more accountability and transparency for it and the FISA court.
The Senate came one vote short Wednesday of approving a proposal to prevent federal law enforcement from obtaining internet browsing information or search history without seeking a warrant. The amendment vote came as the Senate considered renewal of three surveillance provisions that expired in March before Congress left due to the coronavirus pandemic.