Hill, The

[Commentary] Tech jobs can be found across the United States in virtually every industry. New York, Denver, Austin and "Silicon Beach" in Los Angeles are just a few tech clusters enjoying rapid growth, with jobs spanning industries such as finance, energy, healthcare and marketing. Jobs once thought of as being outside of tech — installation and repair, human resources, project management, sales and advertising — increasingly heavily rely on tech-driven skills. That's why fostering greater tech diversity starts with rethinking what constitutes a tech job.

Taking a broader view enables a more comprehensive strategy that could foster awareness and diversity, capture various skill levels and include tech employers across all pertinent industries.

[Carew is an assistant policy analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and a doctoral candidate at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. She is also a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute.]

Sen Edward Markey (D-MA) blasted GOP calls for Federal Communication Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler to avoid action on “controversial items" until the new administration. "Blind and visually impaired individuals will suffer because Republicans and their allies on the Commission will not allow a vote to expand the amount of video-described programming available,” Sen Markey said. "Small business, universities, hospitals, and public safety organizations will suffer because Republicans and their allies on the Commission won’t allow a vote on business data services. Republican lawmakers should stop their obstruction and support Commission action on those pro-consumer, pro-accessibility measures without delay.”

A shakeup among Democrats has positioned Sen Mark Warner (D-VA) as the top minority voice on the Senate Intelligence Committee, a key role overseeing the nation’s spies.

Sen Warner, who joined the panel in 2012, ascends to the role of vice chairman following Sen Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) decision to replace Sen Patrick Leahy (D-VT) as Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee. Sen Leahy in 2016 opted to become the senior Democrat on the powerful Appropriations Committee. As Ranking Member of the panel, Sen Warner will work along with Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) to guide oversight of the CIA, National Security Agency (NSA) and other secretive intelligence agencies. The panel will have a key role to play in 2017 as lawmakers contemplate whether to reauthorize a key portion of the 2008 update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which undergirds controversial NSA data collection programs.

[Commentary] In 1995, the Congressional Office of Technological Assessment (OTA) was abolished. The OTA existed from 1972 to 1995 and was tasked with providing congressional members nonpartisan analysis on complex scientific and technical issues. When the OTA was abolished, legislators really did not contemplate the impact and the future need for such an office. They did not anticipate the rates of obsolescence and the "Malthusian" advances in science and technology. They also did not envision the economic implications for manufacturing and the corresponding economic sectors of energy, health, security, agriculture, finance, communications and transportation that constitutes the new American economy.

The time is ripe for the next Congress to consider the value of OTA as it pertains to the future applications of new technologies and processes.

[Brooks serves as the vice president for government relations and marketing at Sutherland Government Solutions. He is also vice chairman of CompTIA's New and Emerging Technologies Committee. Logsdon is the senior director of public advocacy for CompTIA.]

Representatives from social media giants Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn are helping White House staffers find jobs for after President Barack Obama leaves office. Facebook and Instagram figures are advising staffers on the current job market, while LinkedIn officials are offering help with resumes and marketing their skills.

Georgetown University is also offering a customized career development program called “Future44,” named after Obama’s service as the 44th president. The program, funded by an anonymous donor, has hosted 271 White House staffers so far. Several high-profile former Obama staffers landed at tech companies after their White House service.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus are pressing Facebook to change an advertising feature that allows advertisers to exclude certain racial groups. “We are writing to express our deep concerns with reports that Facebook’s 'Ethnic Affinities' advertising customization feature allows for advertisers to exclude specific racial and ethnic groups when placing housing advertisements,” they wrote in a letter to Facebook on Nov 1. “This is in direct violation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, and it is our strong desire to see Facebook address this issue immediately."

The letter was signed by Rep Robin Kelly (D-IL), the ranking member of the Oversight Subcommittee on Information Technology, and members from the House Commerce Committee, including CBC Chairman GK Butterfield (D-NC) and Reps Yvette Clarke (D-NY) and Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO). The lawmakers' letter also hammered Facebook on diversity at the Menlo Park (CA) tech giant. “With 2 percent of Facebook’s U.S. employees being African American, and 4 percent Hispanic, we remain convinced that a stronger commitment to diversifying the ranks of your company ... will help in ensuring that innovative and inclusive platforms continue to be promoted by your company,” they wrote.

[Commentary] Rather than give the Department of Justice — and, assuming jurisdictional issues are resolved, perhaps even the Federal Communications Commission— an opportunity to look dispassionately at the facts of AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, law and economics of the transaction, some consumer groups are going for the political jugular. But then again, who can blame them?

As FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has actively encouraged such conduct by steadfastly choosing to ignore substance and view every major policy initiative from network neutrality to set-top boxes to municipal broadband through a political lens, this playbook appears to be quite successful. Still, ignorant sophistry is no excuse for ill-formed policymaking. Let's just hope that the new administration — regardless of party — rejects the politicized approach to telecom policy favored by the Obama Administration and returns to first principles: an honest, rigorous and dispassionate review of the transaction.

[Spiwak is the president of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies]

[Commentary] In the wake of recent cyberattacks, many policymakers are left wondering what, if anything, they can do to prevent future attacks and how they can make the burgeoning Internet of things more secure. Fortunately, there is a relatively simple step that Congress could take to jump-start cybersecurity in the fledgling internet of things: require companies to publish a security policy. Most companies today publish a privacy policy. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), in particular, has actively monitored the privacy practices of the private sector and held companies accountable for adhering to their stated practices. The overall result is that companies in the United States have a significant degree of autonomy and flexibility in how they collect and use personal data, which has allowed innovation to flourish, but they still must answer both to their users and to government regulators.

As the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) has argued before, the United States, like most other countries, has a schizophrenic approach to cybersecurity that is broken and ineffective. The current policy emphasizes relative security over absolute security. Nations want to be able to hack in to the systems of their adversaries, but they do not want their own systems to be vulnerable. So rather than working together to improve global information security practices for everyone, nations spend billions to penetrate systems and horde zero-day vulnerabilities. This needs to change. But in the interim, there is at least one concrete step policymakers can take to begin to change the security practices of the private sector and help pave the way for a more secure Internet of things.

[Castro is vice president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation]

The hacker or hackers who stole National Security Agency-built cyber tools have dumped new files in what appears to be yet another change of plans in monetizing the heist. The new files provide some insight into the targets of the NSA affiliated hacking team called The Equation Group. Those targets include government servers in China and universities in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. This is the second dump of files that came from the group The ShadowBrokers, who in August released sample files containing previously unknown hacking techniques used to circumvent popular security hardware.

The August files also contained a tracking code used by the NSA that matched previously unreleased Edward Snowden documents, appearing to confirm the breach’s provenance. In August, the group offered the complete cache of documents for auction. Not seeing the bidding totals they wanted, the group changed to a crowdfunding approach, saying it would release all files publicly if enough people donated money to a bitcoin address. The latest leaks contain yet another change in business model: a direct appeal to the United States to purchase the remaining files from the group. “How bad do you want it to get? When you are ready to make the bleeding stop, payus, so we can move onto the next game. The game where you try to catch us cashing out! Swag us out!” wrote the Brokers in their latest release. The newly released files are divided by NSA target in folders titled with domain names and internet addresses. If authentic, they would reveal hundreds of historic targets across the world — the files appear to be nearly a decade old — in nations ranging from Russia to Japan to Germany and Hungary.

[Commentary] Free speech is an American’s birthright. But for the first time in living memory, ordinary people are pushing the boundaries of the First Amendment. Message boards, on-line comment sections and social media make the problem even worse. A lot of these people may think that they are just blowing off steam. But when you are actually discussing using violence to overthrow the government or to interfere with an election, there’s a very thin line between “just talk” and criminal conspiracy.

In the modern world, it is perfectly possible to become a member of a criminal conspiracy by “liking” a tweet. Conspiracy is a little different than most crimes. The essence of conspiracy is an agreement by two or more people to do something illegal. Some conspiracy statutes require that at least one of the participants take some concrete step — known as an “overt act” — toward actually carrying out the conspiracy. Some statutes do not. The First Amendment is a national treasure. It protects our right to speak our minds without fear of government sanction. But the First Amendment also has limits. It does not protect violent conspiracy or planning bloody revolutions. It doesn’t protect casual talk about the “need” to assassinate the President. Know those limits and respect them. On Nov 9th, this election will be over and we will need to start putting the country back together. Start that process today. Speak out against calls for violence. Be a voice for civility and calm. Stand up for our democratic traditions. Not only will this help keep you out of trouble, it will help keep our country out of trouble.
[Truax is an appellate attorney in San Diego, California.]