A California senator playing a key role fighting cyberattacks is raising new concerns that street-view mapping sites such as Google are revealing too much detailed information, so much that they might be a burglar’s best friend.
Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who co-authored a controversial cybersecurity bill this year, also said cyberterrorists are moving so fast to outsmart authorities that the nation’s electric grid, dams and the U.S. air traffic control system are threatened.
“I believe that it’s only a matter of time before these attacks progress to our critical infrastructure,” she said. “When that happens, we won’t be talking about stolen money, or destroyed systems, we’ll be talking about thousands of lives that have been endangered,” she said.
Despite the public outcry for new Internet security measures following major data breaches, Feinstein said she has faced pushback from many quarters. But she isn’t giving up her war on cyberthugs.
Her next target is data breaches. She said the public has a right to know when their data has been compromised in an attack, and that includes when Google takes high-resolution photos of homes for its street-view mapping system.
“People are entitled to know to protect themselves,” she told a legal conference last week.
“We all know that we are all tracked, our devices become more sophisticated, facial recognition is becoming a major focus … our homes are on Google, sometimes with so much clarity that you worry that about them being a place that someone is going to burglarize,” she warned.
Her comment struck a chord with one audience member. A federal law enforcement officer said his personal information and address were stolen in the recent Office of Personnel Management data breach and he is worried that potential terrorists will use Google Street View to find his house and threaten his family.
While legislation and federal programs can work to limit cyberattacks, Feinstein raised the possibility of a mind-boggling technological revamp to the Internet.
“Some have suggested a 2.0 system to replace the current Internet,” she said. She recently discussed it with Cisco Systems’s head of technology and during a classified session with the government’s national laboratories.
At Cisco, which builds networking equipment, they believe “that it would be possible to create a 2.0 Internet. They describe this as a moon shot,” she said
And the labs were encouraging, she added. “It may well be a way to move forward.”
Palin: Fox told her husband, not her, she was fired
This is awkward. Sarah Palin says Fox News never told her she was fired when the cable network dropped her last summer.
“I got canned by Fox. At least I think I got canned,” she writes in her new book, “Sweet Freedom, A Devotional.”
“I’ve to this day never actually been told, ‘You’re outta there,’ but my bosses left a message with my husband to make sure I knew they wouldn’t be renewing my contract.”
She didn’t get mad, though her daughter Piper had earlier said that Fox was her “pet peeve.” In an advance copy provided to the Washington Examiner, Palin says, “Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. That’s the media business.”
“Sweet Freedom” is a fun read and may be the most political devotional. The former Alaska governor mixes Biblical messages with her philosophy and experiences, such as how the media treated her 2008 vice presidential campaign.
Take guns. In one devotional quoting Exodus and titled “Old Testament and the Second Amendment,” she writes that the Bible encourages self defense and urges membership in gun rights groups. And in another passage quoting Isaiah, Palin pens, “Consider getting a carry permit for protection, and maybe take a friend to a range to enjoy some safe shooting. Self-defense is a God-given right.”
Mark Levin loans college his first-edition Federalist Papers
Mark Levin is talk radio’s constitutionalist who frequently refers to the Federalist Papers to rail against big government.
When he quotes the 228-year-old collection of 85 articles and essays written to promote the Constitution, he never gets it wrong.
And now we know why. Levin has one of 500 first-edition copies commissioned by Alexander Hamilton in 1787, and he is loaning it to Hillsdale College for two years.
“It sits on my desk next to my computer, where I write my books and prepare for my radio show, as it gives me inspiration,” the New York Times best-selling author told the Examiner.
“And I decided it needed to be on public display, where it could be shared with everyone else. I want it to be displayed at different places around the country over the next many years. But no better place to start than Hillsdale’s Constitution Center.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
