Techno-politics

The Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration spent almost half of its IT budget last year to remediate a cyber attack that barely happened. Commerce’s inspector general found in a report released last week a string of errors and miscommunications led to EDA’s overreaction of removing employee email and website access from the main agency network. Continue Reading →

Every July 4th, we remember George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, the hallowed presidents etched into Mount Rushmore. What if we replace the four men with the most influential people of our generation? Introducing the ‘Millennial Mount Rushmore.’ There you have it. Mark Zuckerberg, LeBron James, Lena Dunham and Justin Timberlake are the four most influential people of Continue Reading →

237-ish years ago, a great, nascent political experiment fought its way into being. A government of the people, by the people and for the people – just writing the words makes you feel proud. Like many Americans during these past few weeks, I have started to question the state of our Union, and wonder about "the government" in ways I have not wondered about it before. Continue Reading →

The Department of Defense has awarded a $2.9 million contract to build an app store for use on its networks. Maryland firm Digital Management has been given a year-long contract and tasked with developing a “mobile device management system and mobile application store” that can handle the Pentagon’s security needs. For the past few years, Continue Reading →

When asked about the NSA's seemingly overreaching surveillance, President Obama thoughtfully said, “I think it’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.” Continue Reading →

Days before an amended online child protection rule by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) comes into effect, Yahoo has laid out its plans to comply with the changes required. The updated Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which aims to strengthen privacy protection for children under 13 and give parents more control over the Continue Reading →

The Obama administration for more than two years permitted the National Security Agency to continue collecting vast amounts of records detailing the email and internet usage of Americans, according to secret documents obtained by the Guardian. The documents indicate that under the program, launched in 2001, a federal judge sitting on the secret surveillance panel Continue Reading →

Google on Saturday confirmed that it has been contacted by lawyers from the Federal Trade Commission over the company’s $1.1 billion acquisition of the mobile navigation company Waze, which closed in mid-June. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on details of the antitrust review by the FTC. Representatives of the agency didn’t immediately respond to Continue Reading →

Top secret documents submitted to the court that oversees surveillance by US intelligence agencies show the judges have signed off on broad orders which allow the NSA to make use of information “inadvertently” collected from domestic US communications without a warrant. The Guardian is publishing in full two documents submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence Continue Reading →

Google has filed a petition with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court citing its first amendment rights as it asks for permission to disclose controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests. The company revealed in a Google+ post that it is seeking to separate out federal criminal requests from those related to national security: “We have Continue Reading →