Border Security: Actions Needed by DHS to Address Long-Standing Challenges in Planning for a Biometric Exit System Federal Research Opportunities: DOE, DOD, and HHS Need Better Guidance for Participant Activities, GAO-16-128: Published: Jan 20, 2016. Publicly Released: Jan 20, 2016. Foreign Assistance: USAID Venture Capital Approach Relies on Evidence of Results but Could Strengthen Collaboration… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Records
FTC Issues Biennial Report to Congress on the National Do Not Call Registry
News release: “The Federal Trade Commission has issued its biennial report to Congress on the use of the Do Not Call Registry by both consumers and businesses over the past two years. As of September 30, 2015, the National Do Not Call Registry had more than 222 million active registrations, an increase of more than… Continue Reading
Digital Preservation Coalition Report – Personal Digital Archiving
Digital Preservation Coalition Technology Watch Report ‘Personal Digital Archiving’, by Gabriela Redwine, Digital Archivist at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. “This free peer-reviewed report is aimed at individuals who are concerned about how best to manage and preserve their own personal digital archives, as well as professionals who advise people… Continue Reading
A Victory for Privacy and Transparency: HRW v. DEA
EFF – “A Victory for Privacy and Transparency: HRW v. DEA – In a victory for millions of people in the U.S. who have placed telephone calls to locations overseas, EFF and Human Rights Watch have confirmed that the Drug Enforcement Administration’s practice of collecting those records in bulk has stopped and that the only… Continue Reading
Annual Assessment of IRS Information Technology Program
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Annual Assessment of the Internal Revenue Service Information Technology Program, September 30, 2015. Reference Number: 2015-20-094 “For FY 2015, TIGTA designated Security for Taxpayer Data and Employees as the IRS’s number one management and performance challenge for the fifth consecutive year. The IRS faces the daunting task of securing… Continue Reading
Federal Court Lifts Gag Order on National Security Letter Recipient
EPIC – “For the first time, a federal court has lifted a national security letter gag order, allowing an Internet Service Provider to publish the FBI’s demands for records of user web browsing history, IP addresses, online purchases, and location information. The FBI issues thousands of NSLs each year, forcing companies to disclose troves of… Continue Reading
Want to Obtain FBI Records a Little Quicker? Try New eFOIA System
“The FBI recently began open beta testing of eFOIA, a system that puts Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests into a medium more familiar to an ever-increasing segment of the population. This new system allows the public to make online FOIA requests for FBI records and receive the results from a website where they have… Continue Reading
Oversight Committee Announces FITARA Scorecard
“Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a scorecard assigning letter grades to federal agencies on their implementation of the bipartisan Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), enacted in December 2014. Full Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), IT Subcommittee Chairman Will Hurd (R-TX) and Ranking Member Robin Kelly (D-IL), and Government… Continue Reading
Dept. of Interior OIG Memo Cites Recurring Network Cyberattacks
Inspector General’s Statement Summarizing the Major Management and Performance Challenges Facing the U.S. Department of the Interior Report No. 2015-ER-068. November 9, 2015. “External threats to Federal information systems are persistent and increasing, and the risk for real damage is high. Because of the large size of its networks, and because those networks contain sensitive… Continue Reading
23andMe Transparency Report
Along with other companies that provide paid services to customers that comprise the collection and identification of sensitive PII specific to health and genealogy issues, such as Ancestry.com, there is increasing focus on how this information can impact individuals at work, for security reasons, and when attempting to qualify for various types of insurance. 23andMe… Continue Reading
OMB – Federal Information Security Modernization Act Audit FY 2015
“In FY 2015 OPM was the victim of a massive data breach that involved the theft of sensitive personal information of millions of individuals. For many years we have reported critical weaknesses in OPM’s ability to manage its information technology (IT) environment, and warned that the agency was as an increased risk of a data… Continue Reading
Cell Phone Location Tracking Laws By State
ACLU: “Location records can reveal an enormous of information about a person, especially with the proliferation of smartphones that constantly track our whereabouts. Because privacy laws haven’t kept up with advances in technology, police have long claimed the authority to access this information from cell phone companies without warrants. That’s changing. While Congress and the… Continue Reading
