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The hacking of one of Fox News' Twitter accounts today, July 4th, was disturbing, given the messages posted proclaimed President Obama was dead, and raises the need for tighter security within social media.

Twitter obama dead hoax security

"On December 18, 2010, President Obama signed into law the “Red Flag Program Clarification Act of 2010” (S.3987), which amends the Fair Credit Reporting Act with respect to the applicability of identity theft guidelines to creditors. The law limits the scope of the Federal Trade Commission’s Identity Theft Red Flags Rule (“Red Flags Rule”), which requires “creditors” and “financial institutions” that have “covered accounts” to develop and implement written identity theft prevention programs to help identify, detect and respond to patterns, practices or specific activities that indicate possible identity theft."

Privacy Red Flag Rules Obama

"It looks as if the
recent public scrutiny of online privacy and data collection, including
controversial reports on the issue from the Wall Street Journal, have
rattled the Obama Administration. The Journal itself reports this
morning that the White House is about to unveil new legal proposals to control
the industry and suggest a new watchdog to oversee Internet privacy."

Behavioral Tracking privacy Obama

"Consumer privacy advocates are
outraged that the
Federal Trade Commission
(FTC) has decided to
stop investigating why
Google
(Nasdaq: GOOG) was collecting personal
information transmitted by users over private WiFi networks.

Google has admitted to collecting such data -- which in some cases included
individual emails and user passwords -- in the course of mapping WiFi networks
as a means of improving the accuracy of its Google Maps service. Google also
contends the gathering of personal information was unintentional, and that the
practice stopped as soon it was brought to the attention of company
management.

The issue first became public last May, when
government officials in Germany began asking Google why the camera-equipped cars
it uses to pinpoint the locations of WiFi networks and photograph streets were
also grabbing messages off consumers' networks. When word of that inquiry
reached the U.S., the FTC launched its own investigation.

In addition to halting the collection of personal information, Google has
announced new procedures that it says should prevent a similar situation from
occurring again. It also said it plans to delete any personal data that already
has been collected as soon as possible."

Google Obama Privacy Failure

"The Electronic Privacy Information Center has given the
Obama Administration mediocre grades in its second annual privacy report card
released this week.

The report is based on an analysis by EPIC's advisory board of the
administration's efforts to foster better privacy practices in cyberspace, and
around consumer data and health care data. The report also assessed the
administration's records on civil liberties.

Overall, EPIC gave the administration Bs for its privacy efforts in
cyberspace and in protecting health care data, a C for consumer data protection
efforts and a D on civil liberties."

Report Card Privacy EPIC Obama Disappoints

"The Republican Party chief called on Senator Harry Reid on Sunday to step down as Senate majority leader over racial comments about President Barack Obama, while Democrats tried to put the issue behind them.

Barack Obama

Reid, a key figure in pushing Obama's agenda through Congress, apologized to the president on Saturday over remarks published in a new book calling Obama a "light-skinned" black man "with no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one."

Both Obama and Reid are Democrats.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said Reid should step aside as Senate majority leader, saying if a Republican made the same remarks Democrats would be "screaming for his head."

"Oh yeah, there's a big double standard here," Steele, who is black, said on the NBC program "Meet the Press.""

Reid Obama Democrat Racism

"President Barack Obama will on Thursday receive a preliminary report from intelligence agencies on how a would-be terrorist was able to slip through terrorism databases and board a Detroit-bound aircraft on Christmas Day, as his administration tries to avoid repeat attacks.

The preliminary report is aimed at reassuring a jittery public that the skies are safe and at countering criticism that the Obama administration was too slow to address what the president on Tuesday called ”human and systemic failures” in the intelligence sharing system."

Terrorism Obama Airport

"HHS and the Obama administration's Office of Science and Technology Policy are standing firm about a recent series of closed-door meetings on health IT policy.

Either they are not responding to requests for citations of legal authority for closing the meetings, or, in one instance, saying the law didn't require the meeting to be open, but not providing the specific reason it was closed.

Neither have responded to the question of whether, in light of President Barack Obama's recent order to foster openness and transparency in government, it was appropriate to close the meetings even if they had legal authority to do so.
"

HHS Obama Health Care IT transparency

"A leading EU data protection official has given US President Barack Obama's administration a mixed review for its record on protecting data privacy.

European data protection supervisor Peter Hustinx was speaking at a data protection conference in Washington this week.

A report on the Europolitics website said Hustinx praised the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for enforcing the EU-US Safe Harbor Agreement, whereby companies can legally transfer data from the EU to US as long as a self-certifying process is followed.

Europolitics reports that Hustinx noted the FTC's first-ever action against companies not complying with the Safe Harbor agreement, in this case against six companies that claimed they were self-certified, but were not.

But asked about the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS)'s approach, Hustinx said there had been "no major initiative yet"."

Privacy data obama EU

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama warned American teenagers on Tuesday of the dangers of putting too much personal information on Internet social networking sites, saying it could come back to haunt them in later life.

Obama privacy Personal Information

The Obama administration has urged closer cooperation between public and private sectors to address cybersecurity.

Though collaboration between security vendors and practitioners across all sectors is a must, many cooperative efforts has been attempted and have met with only modest success.

So what must be done to bridge the information-sharing gap between the public and private sectors and ensure that digital assets are properly protected?

Let's begin by examining the problem to understand why, despite our enormous investment in security technology and research, our digital assets are at extreme risk. Start by looking at the trends and conditions of the country's current state of data management.

Why digital assets are at risk:

Privacy Security Digital Assets Obama Public Private

Melissa Hathaway's resignation from her role as acting senior director for cyberspace at the National Security Council is likely to increase the pressure on the Obama administration to quickly appoint someone to serve as the White House cybersecurity coordinator.

The coordinator's position was created by President Obama in May to oversee the development and implementation of a governmentwide cybersecurity strategy. Although eight weeks have passed since Obama's announcement, the White House has yet to name anyone for the job.

Hathaway's resignation is likely to heighten the urgency to do so, however, analysts said.

Cyber-Security Obama

The White House has erased all mention of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board from its Web site. The removal, which was done wth no public notice, has underlined questions about the Obama administration’s commitment to the board, which was created on the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission to oversee the federal government’s actions on civil liberties and privacy.

Privacy Obama Whitehouse.gov

Since Obama's landmark speech on cybersecurity in May, his administration hasn't revealed much about its long-percolating plans to shore up the government's defenses against hackers and cyberspies. But privacy advocates monitoring the initiative are already raising concerns about what they know and what they don't: the details that have trickled out--including the involvement of the National Security Agency--and the veil of classified information that still covers much of the multibillion-dollar project.

"It feels like the Bush administration all over again," says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. "Not enough people know the details about these programs to have a good public discussion. We all want good security of government systems, but you have to balance the cloak and dagger elements with civil liberties."

Privacy Security government Obama

The Obama administration is pulling back from some of its most ambitious ideas for overhauling the financial system, after determining that the consolidation of power under fewer federal agencies would face grave opposition by lawmakers and regulators, sources familiar with the discussions said.

Although the unveiling of the plan is a week away, several central elements have already been pummeled in public by lawmakers, wary of the concentration of authority in few hands, and in private by some economists and financial executives consulted by senior officials.

The administration had originally sought to eliminate turf wars among agencies and gaps in their oversight, for instance by centralizing the power to oversee banks in one body and combining the two agencies that police financial markets.

Those proposals have fallen by the wayside, the sources said. Instead the administration increasingly is focused on adding new layers of regulation on top of old. Officials are planning to empower the Federal Reserve with new powers to manage risk across the financial markets, but are considering setting up a council of regulators to keep the central bank in check.

The plan's evolution reflects the administration's revised judgment that some changes, while desirable, do not get at the causes of the financial crisis, while other elements, such as the elimination of entire agencies, would be rejected on Capitol Hill. What remains, however, would still be the most sweeping overhaul of financial regulation since the Great Depression.

Regulation Finance Obama

The Obama administration plans to unveil on June 17 its sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation, according to a source familiar with thinking at the U.S. Treasury Department.

The proposal will serve as a framework for lawmakers as they embark on the thorny task of restructuring how banks, hedge funds, derivatives, and other financial firms and securities are policed.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will testify on June 18 before the House Financial Services Committee on the proposal, the source said, speaking anonymously because the administration has not formally announced the dates.

A Treasury spokeswoman did not immediately provide a comment.

Financial Regulation Obama

The Obama administration is trying to take the lead on a number of technology issues, including cybersecurity, network neutrality and broadband availability. But one prominent omission is privacy, a topic about which the administration has said very little.

At the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Washington on Tuesday, one administration official did address privacy somewhat. Susan Crawford, a member of the National Economic Council looking after science and technology policy, listed some of the efforts by the Federal Trade Commission to press for new rules for behavioral advertising. But she didn’t mention that all of those rules were written under the Bush administration.

Peter Swire, an Ohio State law professor who served on the Obama transition team, offered one reason it might be difficult for the administration to find its voice on privacy. There is a split, he told the conference, between the typical view of privacy among technology experts and the emerging view of people brought up in the social networking, Web 2.0 world.

Privacy Obama Web 2.0

The digital battlefield is proving to be difficult terrain for President Barack Obama.

As he unveiled his plan Friday to make the nation's computer networks more secure, he fulfilled a campaign pledge to make cyber security a top priority. But he fell short on another promise to create a cyber adviser "who will report directly to me."

cyber czar Obama

Next week, the White House will launch a blog to discuss the Obama administration's open government initiative. In a nod to openness and citizen participation in government, the administration also plans to soon open White House blogs to public comments.

In a speech to an annual National Archives and Records Administration conference, Beth Noveck, deputy CTO of the open government initiative at the Office of Science and Technology, asserted that the Obama administration continues to make strides toward opening up the government's data and operations to public scrutiny.

Government Blog Transparency Obama

A government-advisory board said Wednesday that the government needs to adopt new practices and update current laws to better protect private information citizens send to government agencies or leave behind when they surf government Web sites.

The report is likely to provide fuel for privacy advocates who have been trying to convince the White House's Office of Management and Budget and Congress to update federal privacy rules and policies for years. Current privacy laws and regulations "do not reflect the realities of current technologies and do not protect against many important threats to privacy," the report said. It was released Wednesday by an advisory board to the Commerce Department.

Thursday, the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based nonprofit, proposed draft legislation that would help update privacy laws and regulation. Many of the recommendations addressed in that legislation would address some of the issues raised by the government board. A Center for Democracy and Technology official was on the government board and helped draft the report.

The proposed legislation calls for standardized "privacy impact assessments," which are used by federal agencies to guide how they use and store consumer information. The legislation also would expand the Privacy Act to cover data mining, which is used by agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security to analyze information from different databases to sniff out suspicious activities and prevent terrorist attacks.

Privacy Act Privacy Obama