Don’t download that app: US presidential candidates will STALK you with it
Security researchers have uncovered privacy shortcomings in the mobile applications offered by both the Barack Obama and Mitt Romney presidential campaigns.
The campaign teams of the incumbent US President and his Republican challenger have each released apps for both iOS and Android, in good time for the election on November 6.
Experts at GFI Software looked at the Android versions of both apps, discovering both to be surprisingly invasive.
Obama for America and Mitt’s VP request permissions, access to services and data and capabilities beyond their core mandate.
For example, each of the apps features the ability to cross-post on users' behalf and report back to base. One app even has a tool to encourage users to go canvassing on behalf of the candidate, which in GFI's test directed Obama supporters to an unsafe part of a US town – just north of downtown Clearwater, Florida. Read more...
White House exploring executive order to secure critical networks
President Obama is exploring the option of using his executive authority to get government agencies and critical infrastructure owners to implement better controls for protecting their computer networks.
According to a report by Reuters, the White House is considering the move because of the continuing delay by Congress to pass the Cybersecurity Act bill.
The bill is heavily supported by the White House and is designed to bolster cyber security by giving businesses and government agencies better mechanisms for sharing cyberthreat information. It is sponsored by Senators Joseph Lieberman (Ind,-CT) and Susan Collins, (R-ME) and several other democratic lawmakers. The bill calls for the creation of an inter-agency council that would work with critical infrastructure owners to develop new voluntary cybersecurity standards.
The act also requires certain government agencies to submit to an annual security certification process and offers liability protection for private companies that get voluntarily certified each year. Read more...
Mitt Romney Makes Fun of Obama Campaign Slogan During High-Dollar Fundraiser
Mitt Romney this evening, speaking to a group of high-dollar donors at the Ritz-Carlton hotel, poked fun at President Obama's newly unveiled campaign slogan, "Forward," remarking, "Forward, what, over the cliff?"
At first, Romney seemed to muddle the president's campaign slogan, according to an Associated Press report from the event.
"His new slogan is: Progress. No, forward. Forward! That's it! Progress would be better. I might use that one myself, actually," said Romney. Read more...
New Obama campaign video unveils ‘Forward’ slogan, mostly ignores Romney
Mitt Romney has just one brief, silent cameo in the Obama campaign's new seven-minute ad. The presumptive Republican nominee gets about as much screen time as former President George W. Bush and less than tea party demonstrators or top congressional Republican leaders like House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
"Instead of working together to lift America up, Republicans were waging a campaign to tear the president down," the narrator intones, as conservative firebrands Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity appear in archival footage. Then comes Romney's big moment: More than three minutes into the video, we finally get a glimpse of a photograph of him standing at what appears to be a Republican presidential debate with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Read more...
Obama signs bill to boost business startups
(Reuters) - President Barack Obama signed into law on Thursday a bipartisan bill to kickstart small business growth and he promised rigorous oversight to make sure the measure does not harm investors, as critics have warned.
The bill to make it easier for small firms to raise capital and go public marked a rare accomplishment in an gridlocked Congress. Obama, his fellow Democrats and his Republican foes were all eager to show voters in an election year that they could agree on something to boost the fragile economic recovery and fight high unemployment.
"For startups and small businesses, this bill is a potential game changer," Obama said at a White House signing ceremony flanked by lawmakers from both parties. "Startups and small business will now have access to a big new pool of potential investors, namely the American people."
The bipartisanship on display on Thursday is unlikely to last.
Both parties are busy sharpening their election year messages and there is little left on the congressional agenda that has the support of both Read more...
President Obama lords Twitter followers over Aziz Ansari
Actor/comedian Aziz Ansari — the guy who plays "Tom" on "Parks and Recreation" — knows from social media. If you've ever seen his standup bit about harassing his little cousin Harris on Facebook — you'd remember because it would be that 15 minutes of your life where you couldn't breathe because you were laughing so hard — you know what I'm talking about. Read more...
Mobile data privacy is terra incognita to users and developers
President Obama's move Thursday to establish a so-called Privacy Bill of Rights for the Internet can be seen as the consolidation of decade-long efforts by disparate groups to improve privacy protections via countless browser add-ons, settings, and privacy policies. But while it's possible to guard privacy on the desktop, the rapidly growing mobile space is still the Wild West, with an almost endless landscape of privacy pitfalls that challenge even the most vigilant consumer.
Today's mobile phones collect an enormous amount of personal data -- from the user's email address to his or her location, contact list, calendar and even photos -- and tether it to a single unique device ID number. One location-based photo-sharing app reportedly activated users' microphones to narrow down their location beyond what GPS data could provide. There is as yet very little to protect the valuable data on these most personal of devices. Read more...
Obama online privacy plan faces challenge
Privacy advocates Thursday welcomed a White House privacy plan that would give consumers more control over how personal data is collected, used, stored and shared by websites and online advertisers.
In a 60-page Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights released today, the Obama Administration spelled out a series of proposals aimed at getting various Internet stakeholders to develop baseline codes of conduct for handling consumer data.
The document makes it clear that the Administration will work with Congress to enact legislation that would implement the codes of conduct.
But the larger focus of the plan is to get Internet companies, privacy and consumer advocacy groups, state attorneys general, law enforcement agencies and academicians to jointly develop voluntary standards for ensuring the security of consumer data. Read more...
NASCAR racing team turns to Google+ Hangout to prep fans for Daytona 500
We’ve seen quite a few genius uses of the Google+ Hangout feature, including a question and answer session with President Barack Obama and 24-hour concerts from musician Daria Musk. For those who are doubting Google’s social features, the Hangout feature is getting traction from some interesting figures and brands and it’s becoming harder to deny that Google has a hit on its hands.
It’s also hard to deny that coming face to face with your favorite public figure beats out any other social medium we have at our disposal and NASCAR has taken notice and one of the more popular teams is holding two live “hangouts” on the Google+ platform. Read more...
Obama’s H-1B answer in forum may haunt him
Until President Barack Obama responded to a question about H-1B visas during an online forum last week, the administration had said little about the controversial program.
But that has changed, thanks to the question posed by Jennifer Wedel of Fort Worth, Texas.
Wedel wanted to know why the government continues to issue H-1B visas when many U.S. tech workers are jobless. Her husband, Darin Wedel, a semiconductor engineer, was laid off from his full-time job at Texas Instruments three years ago following a plant shutdown, she told Obama. Read more...
Obama confronted on H-1B use during Google+ hangout
President Barack Obama faced perhaps his toughest and most direct question ever on the H-1B program by a Texas woman during an online town hall Monday.
The woman, Jennifer Wedel, was polite and direct but tenacious in getting the president to reveal some of his views about the H-1B program whe she asked: "Why does the government continue to issue and extend H-1b visas when there are tons of Americans just like my husband with no job?" Her husband is a semiconductor engineer.
Weddel succeeded in getting Obama to acknowledge that there should be limits to the H-1B program.
The visa "should be reserved only for those companies that say they cannot find somebody in that particular field," Obama said.
The H-1B program is also heavily used by offshore outsourcing companies that transfer IT work overseas. See: The top 10 H-1B visa users in the U.S. Read more...
Obama attacks offshoring, seeks visa reform
In his State of the Union Speech, President Barack Obama Tuesday night attacked offshoring, urged businesses to bring jobs back to the U.S., and renewed his appeal for visa reforms to keep foreign students from returning home after earning advanced degrees.
Obama Tuesday made many references to tech, to business start-ups and to innovation in the speech.
He urged Congress to back policies that help "every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs."
Laurene Powell Jobs, his widow, was among the invited guests.
Obama to date has had mixed record in the IT sector, especially in returning tech manufacturing jobs from offshore.
Obama has had no success in persuading Congress to undertake employment-based immigration reform and last year also appealed to Congress to give green cards to foreign students earning advanced degrees. Read more...
Obama wants less offshoring, as vendors see U.S. shift
President Barack Obama is trying to encourage U.S. companies not to send work overseas. This might not be as hard a job as it seems for some types of IT work.
A number of vendors believe offshore outsourcing is becoming less attractive and are working to make the most of this shift. Among them is a former CEO of the large IT services firm Keane, Brian Keane, who is setting up a new firm, Ameritas Technologies, to address the domestic IT services market. The Keane firm was recently sold to Japanese-based NTT Data Company.
Keane said his company will be "focusing on jobs that have gone offshore, but should have never gone offshore." Some software applications are strategic to a company and require extensive interaction with users, Keane said. Offshore developers "just don't understand how the application is being used," he said.
Stephanie Moore, an analyst at Forrester, agrees with this view. Read more...
Obama wants feds to digitize all records
President Obama this week gave government agencies four months to come up with a plan to improve records management by moving to electronic records management systems "where feasible."
In a memorandum, Obama said one aim of the plan is to improve public access to government records by moving them to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which will "provide the prism through which future generations will understand and learn from our actions and decisions."
Paul Wester, chief records officer for the U.S. Government, said in an interview with Computerworld that the president's directive is really about driving a more open government where citizens can access information in a more "Web 2.0" format. Read more...