US

A White House-backed cyber security bill on Thursday failed to secure the necessary votes needed to bring it to a full Senate vote, effectively guaranteeing that legislation governing computer protection responsibilities for the private sector will have to wait at least another year before being passed.

The largely Democrat-supported Cybersecurity Act of 2012 would have incentivized those companies that operate critical infrastructure to meet a series of security best practices, as part of a voluntary program.

As the U.S. Senate races toward its August recess, lawmakers are filing tons of amendments to the Cybersecurity Act, a number of them designed to add privacy protections.

The amendments are an effort to meet the wishes of pro-business Republicans and pro-privacy Democrats and to reach a compromise that can be enacted into law. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) is pushing to get cybersecurity legislation voted on this week before the Senate breaks for recess in August.

In a summary judgment, a federal judge ruled on Monday that the United States government can continue to classify and redact 23 embassy cables that have already been released in their entirety by WikiLeaks.

In a House Homeland Security oversight subcommittee hearing late this week, members of Congress raised concerns over the potential security risks posed by jamming and electronic hijacking of unmanned aerial systems, and the potential use of drones by terrorists.

The hearing came as the deadline looms for the FAA to devise regulations and licensing that incorporate unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into the national airspace. And the agency is in the process of approving six test sites for UAV operations to help prepare for the full introduction of UAVs in 2015.

The U.S. government has a plan to put the skills of the best hackers in the world to work fighting terrorism and designing security systems for government agencies. John Arquilla, an adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama’s and the man who coined the term “cyberwarfare” told the UK’s Guardian newspaper that the U.S. Defense Department plans to hire about 100 hackers, primarily Russians for the initiative.

The U.S. Congress may need to pass legislation that limits the way government agencies and private companies use facial recognition technology to identify people, a U.S. senator said Wednesday.

The growing use of facial recognition technology raises serious privacy and civil liberties concerns, said Senator Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's privacy subcommittee. Franken, during a subcommittee hearing, called on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Facebook to change the way they use facial recognition technology.

The State of Washington says that early next week it will become the first state in the nation to offer voter registration via Facebook.

In 2008, the Pacific Northwest state became just the second in the union to offer online registration. This week, a new Facebook app created by Microsoft (a Washington company, naturally) will provide a new interface to let voters access the MyVote system.

The United States government has told a Virginia judge that a long list of American connections makes Megaupload subject to US criminal law. The Friday court filing was a response to the company's argument that its lack of a US mailing address makes it immune to criminal prosecution in the United States.

Megaupload points to federal law requiring that notice of a corporate indictment be served on an officer of the corporation and sent to the corporation's last known US address. It has argued that since it doesn't have a US address, it cannot be indicted.

Even though he has been busy accusing Vice President Joe Biden of orchestrating the raid on his home (a charge since denied), having pool parties, and producing ridiculous rap videos, Kim Dotcom now says he’s ready to come to the United States, rather than be extradited, as a way of speeding up the entire judicial process in his international copyright case.

An inquiry by Congressional Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass) has revealed that the number of requests wireless carriers receive from US law enforcement for information about their customers has increased steadily, but just how often the police use mobile phones to track individuals' whereabouts remains unclear.