Russia hack

The U.S. Border Patrol apprehends 1 percent to 2 percent of the drugs smugglers move across the Mexican border into the United States, said Deputy Chief Carla Provost. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., thinks drones could help Border Patrol monitor the flow of these substances.

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Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., spearheaded a letter signed by 15 members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to request that the committee hold a hearing on the attempts by foreign powers to influence the U.S. presidential election.

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In determining whether agency CIOs have learned their lesson after the 2015 OPM data breach, Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, commended NASA CIO Renee Wynn on her “unprecedented” move to refuse an end-user service provider the authority to operate due to a lack of knowledge about the potential risks of that service.

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AR

In the “Wild West” of augmented reality applications, the U.S. government has to balance the concerns of helping to protect consumer privacy and security while also leaving room for companies to freely innovate, according to witnesses at a Senate Energy and Commerce hearing.

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census

In light of the recent distributed denial of service attack that prevented access to multiple U.S. websites as well as the increasing cybersecurity threat posed by Internet of Things devices, the Federal government “needs a new agency” to deal with cybersecurity, according to Bruce Schneier of Harvard University.

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The Government Accountability Office launched Priorities for Policy Makers, a mobile app that allows people to monitor the presidential and congressional transitions.

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In the wake of recent Dyn attacks that temporarily shut down major websites such as Twitter, Amazon, and PayPal, Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., sent a letter to President Obama this week to request a strengthening of the U.S. ability to detect and respond to major vulnerabilities.

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Yahoo last year produced a software program that would search customer emails for information specified by U.S. intelligence officials, according to a report by Reuters. Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., condemned such actions, calling them “Big Brother on steroids.”

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A group of U.S. senators wrote a letter to Marissa Mayer, chief executive officer of Yahoo, on Tuesday about the hack on 500 million accounts in 2014. They ask what went wrong and how Yahoo plans to protect consumer data in the future.

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The Food and Drug Administration lacks sufficient security controls, jeopardizing the confidentiality and availability of its data and systems, according to a recent GAO report.

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The House of Representatives today passed the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act, which endeavors to provide agency CIOs with the funding and framework to modernize aging IT systems.

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Members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology disagreed on Wednesday on whether the Cybersecurity Responsibility and Accountability Act of 2016 acted as a partisan dig against former Secretary of State and current Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her use of a private email server.

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The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will mobilize 911 emergency services at the insistence of the Federal Communications Commission.

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Facing criticism over the awkward nature of the FedRAMP process and the use of $150,000 to create a FedRAMP Dashboard that already exists in the private sector, the GSA was told on Tuesday that it needed to clean up the program or have Congress step in.

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Members of Congress are working to pass the Kelsey Smith Act, which would give law enforcement access to phone location data in some emergency situations, despite claims from privacy groups that the law could be abused.

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Due to the breadth and depth of cyberattacks and breaches in the Federal government, most especially the Office of Personnel Management, agencies should be implementing a policy of zero trust when it comes to who is accessing their data, according to Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. His committee released a report titled “The OPM Data Breach: How the Government Jeopardized Our National Security for More than a Generation.”

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As the Internet of Things becomes increasingly prevalent, the government will play an important role in enabling and regulating how the industry will develop, according to panelists at a National Telecommunications and Information Administration workshop. They listed a number of areas in which that advice can take shape. […]

Democratic and Republican policy advisers in the House are meeting this week to craft a bipartisan compromise that would combine the key elements of two major IT modernization bills introduced earlier this year into a legislative package that sources say has the backing of Republican appropriators and stands a good chance of being signed into law before President Barack Obama leaves office.

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