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“The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) will permanently close its brick-and-mortar bookstore at 710 North Capitol Street NW in Washington, DC on January 4, 2021. After lengthy consideration, GPO, in consultation with the Joint Committee on Printing and its congressional oversight committees, determined that the bookstore is no longer financially viable due to changes in …
bellingcat: “In the wake of the first wave of coronavirus and subsequent lockdowns in early 2020, governments around the world scrambled funds to support furloughed workers and keep businesses afloat. These programs distributed a huge amount of money and succeeded in many of their goals. Not only that, they did so in rapid time. However, …
Politico – The government doesn’t do much to verify the security of software from private contractors. And that’s how suspected Russian hackers got in: “The massive monthslong hack of agencies across the U.S. government succeeded, in part, because no one was looking in the right place. The federal government conducts only cursory security inspections of …
New documents show political appointees sought to influence at least 13 reports as they ignored warnings from career officials: “The House panel probing the Trump administration’s coronavirus response released new documents detailing political appointees’ extensive efforts to modify or scuttle scientific Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports, as it also ordered top Trump health …
MIT Technology Review – And why it could take months more to discover how many other governments and companies have been breached – “To carry out the breach, the hackers first broke into the systems of SolarWinds, an American software company. There, they inserted a back door into Orion, one of the company’s products, which …
24/7 Wall St: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation tracks gun sales and publishes a list of how many are handled as part of its National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Each month, the figures are reported by state. Nearly everyone put through this system qualifies as a buyer. People who are excluded usually have …
The New York Times – “Regulators are relying on insiders like Dina Srinivasan, who left her digital ad job after concluding that “Facebook and Google were going to win and everybody else is going to lose…With no background in academia but an insider’s understanding of the digital ad world and a stack of economics books, …
The New York Times Opinion by Erica Newland, counsel at Protect Democracy – she worked in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department from 2016-18. “I was an attorney at the Justice Department when Donald Trump was elected president. I worked in the Office of Legal Counsel, which is where presidents turn for …
Bleeping Computer: “Since the SolarWinds supply chain attack was disclosed last Sunday, there has been a whirlwind of news, technical details, and analysis released about the hack. Because the amount of information that was released in such a short time is definitely overwhelming, we have published this as a roundup of this week’s SolarWinds news. …
EPIC – [week of December 14, 2020]: “Two antitrust lawsuits were filed against Google by state Attorneys General. On Wednesday, Texas and eight other states filed a suit alleging anticompetitive conduct, exclusionary practices and deceptive misrepresentations in connection with Google’s role in advertising technology. “Google’s entire business model is to collect comprehensive data about every …
Washington Post – “Thick packets have been delivered regularly to President-elect Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home, providing meticulous details on each potential Cabinet member’s strengths, weaknesses and possible areas of conflict. Biden has been conducting virtual interviews with final candidates, focusing on their values and life stories nearly as much as their approach to the …
The New York Times – “As Democrats look to the incoming Biden administration to reverse much of President Trump’s work, the conservative imprint he has left on the federal courts is only deepening. Much attention in recent months has focused on the Supreme Court and its newly appointed justice, Amy Coney Barrett. But an analysis …
