The House passed a bill Wednesday banning the installation and use of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing software on all federal computers, systems and networks. Peer-to-peer programs such as BitTorrent, Lime Wire and KazaA pose security risks for the federal government. Rep. Edophus Towns, D-N.Y., introduced HR 4098 after several publicized information breaches involving peer-to-peer programs last year. In one case, confidential House Ethics Committee investigation documents were posted online after a staffer loaded the documents onto her personal computer which had peer-to-peer sharing software installed. Towns praised the House’s 408-13 vote in a statement. While I understand that peer-to-peer file…
Browsing: Congress
The Senate Commerce, Science and Technology Committee voted today to send a key cybersecurity bill to the Senate floor. The bill, S 773,would require the executive branch to work with the private sector to create cybersecurity standards and mandate audits to ensure compliance with those new standards. An earlier version of the bill would have granted the president authority to shut down the Internet in the case of a major cyber attack, but this new bill doesn’t include that authority. Instead, the government and the private sector would work together to address handling a major cybersecurity attack. Sens. Jay Rockefeller,…
The House panel that oversees public buildings will convene tomorrow afternoon to examine whether the General Services Administration has enough money to properly manage and maintain federal buildings. The hearing, entitled “Capital Asset Crisis: Maintaining Federal Real Estate with the Dwindling Federal Building Fund,” follows up on a November interview I had with Bob Peck, commissioner of GSA’s Public Buildings Service. In the interview, Peck acknowledged that GSA would be unable to pay for major building repairs or upgrades within six years because of shortfalls in the fund. A summary briefing on the hearing, issued today by the House panel, cites…
It’s no April Fool’s Joke — Homeland Security Department’s undersecretary for management, Elaine Duke, will celebrate her last day at the agency April 1. Duke told the Federal Times that she has plenty of hobbies and interests to explore after devoting much of the past decade to DHS. She has served as undersecretary of management since August 2008 and has worked for the federal government for 28 years, much of it in contracting. I started with TSA in 2002, and work has really driven my time and energy. I’m looking forward to doing some discretionary things now.” Duke said she…
Former Democratic Rep. Eric Massa’s bizarre explanations for his departure from Congress have been an endless source of entertainment this week. Any conspiracy involving health care reform, nude Rahm Emanuel, tickle fights, and Navy rituals likened to Caligula is just too good to be true. But what I love most is that because Massa first claimed the extent of his inappropriate behavior was grabbing a male staffer and saying “What I really ought to be doing is frakking you,” the sci-fi show Battlestar Galactica’s fictional profanity is now being used on the nightly news.* For those of you who are confused, here’s BSG…
The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein had an interesting column yesterday about Senate gridlock and how it could be forcing President Obama and agency heads to stick with people they’d like to fire. Money quote: The problem gets worse as it goes deeper. It’s not just that [Treasury Secretary Timothy] Geithner can’t be fired. It’s that he, in turn, can’t fire anybody. Treasury is understaffed, and there’s little reason to believe that the Senate will consider its nominees anytime soon. If Geithner is displeased with the performance of an appointed subordinate, he can’t ponder whether America would be better off with…
Hackers defaced 49 U.S. House members’ Web sites hours after President Obama delivered his State of the Union address Dec. 28. The hackers took down all of the Web sites’ material, replacing it with a vulgar string of text: “F— OBAMA!! Red Eye CREW !!!!! O RESTO E HACKER !!! by HADES; m4V3RiCk; T4ph0d4 — FROM BRASIL.” National Journal screencapped the hacked site of Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-Mo. Click here to see the image (strong language, may not be safe for your workplace). Most of the hacked Web sites are still down. The hackers hit sites belonging to both Democrats…
Did President Obama just call out Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., for holding up the confirmation of Martha Johnson to lead GSA? You decide. Here is what Obama said in tonight’s State of the Union address regarding the hold up of several of his nominees: The confirmation of well-qualified public servants should not be held hostage to the pet projects or grudges of a few individual Senators. And here are two links to our past posts about the hold Bond has on Johnson’s full Senate confirmation. Both note the hold is directly related to Bond’s desire to move a federal complex…
The Senate approved dozens of President Barack Obama’s nominees this morning before departing for the holidays. The Senate will return on Jan. 21. Approved nominations include: Adele Logan Alexander as a member of the National Council on the Humanities; Paul T. Anastas as an assistant Environmental Protection Agency administrator; Anne Slaughter Andrew as ambassador to Costa Rica; Alberto Fernandez as ambassador to Equatorial Guinea; Michael Khouri as a Federal Maritime Commissioner; Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis as ambassador to Hungary; David Daniel Nelson as ambassador to Uruguay; John Norris as a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; Robert Perciasepe as deputy…
President Barack Obama signed a 3.4 percent pay raise for service members into law Monday, making 2010 one of a handful of recent years where civil servants and members of the military won’t receive the same raises. A spending omnibus signed recently by Obama gives federal employees a 2 percent raise. Obama said earlier this year that the economy made giving civilian employees the same raises as the military prohibitive. Unions have pledged to return pay parity in 2011. The military raise was included in the fiscal 2010 Defense appropriations bill, HR 3326.