1. Monthly archive
  2. September 2015

September 2015

Nationwide 'Suspicious Activity' Files Now Document Sketchy Online Activity

In April 2013, an intrusion at the PG&E power substation in Silicon Valley (CA) knocked out local 911 services and cell phone service in the area. A team of gunmen who opened fire at the plant late at night and damaged 17 transformers was to blame. But an intelligence community program manager warns a hack attack possibly could have had the same effect. Now, a counterterrorism surveillance program that logs reports of suspicious behavior from spots across the country is also documenting reports of suspicious activity across the Internet.

The Director of National Intelligence in 2008 stood up the "suspicious activity reporting," or SAR, program as a post-Sept 11 national security initiative. Authorities were trained to monitor for certain behaviors at airports, train stations and large events that might indicate a security threat. Local authorities currently send reports of sketchy behavior to Homeland Security Department-funded, regional fusion centers, where analysts make sense of the narratives. Today, as physical systems become connected to the Internet of Things, and federal watchdogs warn of plane-hacking, authorities also are filing suspicious online activity reports.

2015 E-Rate Funding Decisions Update from the Universal Service Administration Company

The Federal Communications Commission provided a target of September 1 to complete all “workable” E-rate applications. The Universal Service Administration Company (USAC) adjusted the date to September 24 to reflect the effect of the three week FCC Form 471 deadline extension. USAC received approximately 48,000 applications of which about 42,000 were classified as “workable,” by September 24. With the help of the E-rate community, USAC reviewed and committed 41,852 applications, 225 applications short of the target. These remaining applications will be completed by October 2.

In total USAC has approximately 6,000 “unworkable” applications remaining. While the definition of “unworkable” is clear in the FCC order, the term does not fully capture the reality of these applications. For the most part, these applications are, in fact, workable, but they do require additional review and information requests of varying scope. However, nearly all of these are in process and USAC projects that most will be completed in the next 90 days. This issue is particularly important because these applications represent over $1 billion in value and thus represent a greater proportion of the program dollars than application volume. As USAC works to finalize these remaining applications, it also has begun a review of its internal review processes and procedures so that it can meaningfully accelerate the pace of decisions for all Funding Year 2016 applications.

Lifeline: Bringing Broadband into the 21st Century

[Commentary] In August, Public Knowledge filed comments urging the Federal Communications Commission to modernize its Lifeline program to support broadband Internet access service. On Sept 30, we submitted reply comments to explain that the FCC has overwhelming support to move forward and update the program.

The record in the Lifeline proceeding is impressive. Hundreds of companies; non-profit organizations; and state, local, Tribal, and federal elected officials weighed in with near unanimity that the FCC should update the Lifeline program to help make broadband more affordable for the most vulnerable of Americans. Additionally, there was mostly universal agreement that Lifeline should also continue to support mobile and landline voice services. Now, the hard work begins for the FCC -- sorting through hundreds of comments to determine how best to structure and reform Lifeline to support broadband. We look forward to working with the FCC to bring broadband into the 21st century as an essential service for all Americans.

Statewide Fiber Networks Interconnect, Enhancing Ethernet Offerings

Iowa Network Services (INS) and Indiana Fiber Network (IFN), two statewide fiber networks run by independent telecommunication company consortiums, have interconnected their networks via an Ethernet network-to-network interface at a Chicago point of presence operated by INDATEL, a nationwide consortium of state and regional fiber networks.

The move illustrates new opportunities for rural telecom carriers and the statewide and regional fiber network operators -- such as INS and IFN -- to which they are connected. IFN now will be able to provision a business or carrier customer’s service from an endpoint connected to the IFN network to an endpoint connected to the INS network as easily as if it was connecting endpoints on its own network.

EU to Rule on European, US Data Pact in Early October

The European Union’s highest court said it would decide on Oct 6 on a highly publicized case that could invalidate a data-transfer agreement between the EU and the US that is crucial to thousands of businesses. Judges at the European Court of Justice will deliver their decision less than two weeks after an adviser to the court published a nonbinding recommendation that the long-standing agreement, known as Safe Harbor, should be invalidated. A court decision scrapping Safe Harbor risks wreaking havoc on the companies that use the framework to transfer data for everything from payroll information to company phone books. The 15-year-old trans-Atlantic deal allows firms, such as Facebook and Yelp, to store Europeans’ data in the US as long as the companies agree to comply with Europe’s stricter privacy laws.

Yves Bot, an advocate general to the high court, said the deal should be nullified because Europeans’ data is unprotected in the US, “because the surveillance carried out by the US is mass, indiscriminate surveillance.” US officials criticized Bot for basing his opinion on “inaccurate assertions” about US intelligence practices.

Senators press Defense and intelligence officials on rules of war for cyberspace at Armed Forces Committee hearing

A week after President Barack Obama announced an agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping to limit corporate espionage -- a tentative step toward setting up norms of state behavior on the Internet -- a panel of Senators on Sept 29 urged cybersecurity officials in the Defense Department to go further in establishing clear rules of war for cyberattacks.

As members of the Senate Armed Forces Committee pushed for a more clearly delineated cyber policy -- and better follow-through to make US intentions clear -- the committee's Chairman, Sen John McCain (R-AZ), suggested the lack of such policy is illegal. In a heated exchange, Chairman McCain pressed Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work on his department's progress in developing an "integrated policy" for cybersecurity, a task Congress assigned the department in the fiscal year 2014 Defense reauthorization bill. Chairman McCain said, "We have not got a policy, and for you to sit there and tell me that you do -- a 'broad-strokes strategy' -- frankly is not in compliance with the law."

In Cyber-Heavy Week, Lawmakers Grill Obama Officials

If the number of hearings held are any sign, it’s clear lawmakers are worried about the US government’s delay in adopting a cyberdefense policy in the wake the recent agreement with China. The Senate Armed Services Committee was the first to express their concerns Sept 29, and there are three more congressional hearings during the week of Sept 28 on the same topic.

The issue comes into focus after President Barack Obama reached a “common understanding” on cyber conduct with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Separately, lawmakers are also anticipating reconsideration of a Senate’s cybersecurity bill sometime fall 2015. The Armed Services Committee brought some heavy hitters to testify, with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work and Director of the National Security Agency Admiral Michael Rogers at the witness table. Deputy Secretary Work and Adm Rogers are slated to appear before the House Armed Services Committee on Sept 30.

With Librarian of Congress Stepping Down, An Opportunity to Bring the LOC into the Digital Age

Under the leadership of current Librarian of Congress James Billington, the Library of Congress has earned a reputation as a technology laggard with a spotty record on everything from digitizing records to improving archaic IT systems. And so, as the 86-year-old Billington steps down, tech advocates are pushing for an Internet-savvy replacement -- seeing a rare chance to modernize a cultural and policy-making institution that’s fallen far behind in the digital age.

The challenges in modernizing the Library of Congress are daunting. The institution has neglected to digitize many of the country’s founding documents; George Washington’s papers are online, for example, but Thomas Jefferson’s largely aren’t. The Copyright Office, housed inside the library, is largely paper-based, full of row upon row of musty card catalogs. A highly publicized project to archive every Twitter message -- announced five years ago -- has yet to materialize. And a spring report from the Government Accountability Office found that the Library could not calculate how many computers it has. “The Librarian of Congress should be like the Pope of libraries,” setting the tone and the agenda for libraries as a whole, says John Blyberg, director of the highly-regarded public library system in Darien (CT). “People in that position are going to need the technical chops to understand what the issues are,” while having political savvy to operate in Washington, he said.

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