The House of Representatives has passed H.R. 2410, the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 2010 and 2011, which includes Title VIII on Export Control Reform and Security Assistance.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Emergency Communications plans to post job announcements on the USA Jobs website in coming weeks for 10 regional coordinator positions at the GS-14 level. Those hired will lead the office’s support efforts with federal, state, local and tribal bodies to advance the adoption of national emergency response and emergency communications policies, programs, and practices, the agency said. Each coordinator will be assigned a region.
The National Applications Office of DHS is closing after a five-month review conducted in coordination with the Department’s law enforcement, emergency management and intelligence partners, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement Tuesday. The program was introduced during the last administration to expand the use of spy satellite imagery by domestic law enforcement and other agencies. Napolitano said that closing the office will allow her agency to focus its efforts on more effective information-sharing programs that better “protects the civil liberties and privacy of all Americans, and makes the country more secure.” Three weeks ago Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., chair of the Homeland Security Intelligence & Terrorism Risk Assessment Subcommittee, introduced two bills to shut down the NAO.
Privacy and security don’t have to be in conflict with innovation, federal CIO Vivek Kundra said in opening remarks at a DHS-sponsored workshop Monday on “Government 2.0: Privacy and Best Practices.” The Federal CIO Council has created a working group to look at privacy, specifically how privacy can be built into new solutions from the beginning, he said. The government should be thinking, not necessarily how it can securitize everything, but how it can create an ability for people to provide anonymous feedback to the government, he said. It should also think in terms of how an individual sees the government. With more than 24,000 federal Web sites, the person seeking government services must “navigate the physical bureaucracy, because we've mirrored it” online, he said. Businesses must deal with local, state and federal government agencies. The logical thing is to abstract the layers so the experience is seamless, but that raises a host of information sharing and security issues that must be dealt with, he said.
Government efforts to block workers from using social networking tools, on the job or privately, are depriving agencies of valuable collaboration and even public diplomacy, agency officials and experts told a “Government 2.0” workshop Monday. The larger concern should be creating trusted sources of data and taking the offense against sources that undermine the government’s ability to get its message out, they told the event sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security. A quick response by the State Department even mitigated a recent international crisis, said Mark Drapeau, associate research fellow at the Defense Department’s National Defense University.
The National Industrial Transportation League filed a brief to join the American Trucking Association in its litigation to reverse, on appeal, the portion of a district court order that upheld aspects of the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports' concession programs imposing new requirements on truckers. NITL brief available athttp://www.nitl.org/NITLBrief-No09-55749.pdf
An existing 3GPP registration mechanism allows for allocation of cell broadcast message identifiers for any use, including identifiers for emergency alerting and civic purposes required by ITU-T, the 3GPP said in a letter to a study group. The study group is trying to put a national registry of cell broadcast identifiers into place, said Dan Warren, director of technology at the GSM Association. 3GPP already has a similar registry in place, he said. Administration and allocation of multicast addresses for civic purposes is outside ITU-T’s scope, 3GPP said (CD March 23 p12). 3GPP wants a single registry for cell broadcast identifiers, said Stephen Hayes, chairman of 3GPP’s service and system aspects group. 3GPP and GSMA “have serious concerns” with the ITU-T proposal to “be administrators for the allocation of identifiers for emergency alerting for civic purposes,” 3GPP said. Having two registration mechanisms in the industry will cause confusion and may result in inconsistencies, 3GPP said. “It is crucial that the single, global registration mechanism already in place within 3GPP be retained.” 3GPP could reference identifiers developed by ITU-T, Hayes said. 3GPP’s registry could also be referenced in ITU-T’s, he said.
According to U.S. tobacco growers, a bill which recently passed Canada's House of Commons and is currently before the Canadian Senate, would have the effect of banning all imports and sales in Canada of U.S.-grown burley tobacco and cigarettes. The bill, C-32, would amend Canada's Tobacco Act with new controls on, among other things, little cigars, additives, and advertising, but is written so broadly as to apply to all cigarettes containing flavoring agents normally used with burley tobacco to lessen harshness, according to industry representatives. Virginia Farm Bureau release available at http://www.vafb.com/news/2009/june/061809_3.htm. Draft of Canadian Bill C-32 available at http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Sites/LOP/LEGISINFO/index.asp?Language=E&Chamber=N&StartList=A&EndList=Z&Session=22&Type=0&Scope=I&query=5835&List=toc-1
Verizon Wireless updated a telemarketing lawsuit originally filed in April, naming additional companies as defendants, the company said. OnStar, which offers wireless connections to emergency services to vehicles using Verizon’s network, joined the lawsuit as it alleged that its customers received more than 400,000 telemarketing calls. The calls to OnStar-equipped vehicles must be answered due to the nature of OnStar’s emergency services, causing significant damages, the company said. The lawsuit named three classes of defendants: Caller defendants, including VoiceTouch and Tele Europe; Advertiser Defendants, including Transcontinental Warranty, Direct Protect Warranty, Dealers Preferred Warranties, Dealer Warranty Services, Dealer Warranty, and National Dealers Warranty; Facilitator defendants, including Telephone Management Corporation and TM Caller ID. Filed in the U.S. District Court in Trenton, N.J., the lawsuit seeks permanent injunctions against these companies and monetary damages, the court filing said.
The Department of Homeland Security oversaw an annual exercise Wednesday to test federal agencies ability to carry out, with White House help, plans to keep running in an emergency. The exercise tests the ability of agencies to move to an alternative site while keeping in touch with each other. “Today’s exercise was critical to testing our continuity of operations procedures and ensuring coordination across the federal government in the event of a major emergency,” said DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. “A carefully designed and well-practiced national continuity plan significantly enhances our ability to react swiftly and effectively to any incident we may face.”