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  2. September 2017

September 2017

Department of Homeland Security tells 21 states about Russian hacking during 2016 election

The Department of Homeland Security contacted election officials in 21 states to notify them that they had been targeted by Russian government hackers during the 2016 election campaign.

In June 2017, DHS officials said that people connected to the Russian government tried to hack voter registration files or public election sites in 21 states, but this was the first time that government officials contacted individual state election officials to let them know their systems had been targeted. Officials said DHS told officials in all 50 states whether their systems had been attacked or not. In only a handful of states, including Illinois, did hackers actually penetrate computer systems, according to US officials, and there is no evidence that hackers tampered with any voting machines. State elections officials in Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington were told they were targeted.

The purchase of Internet subscriptions in Native American households

With the growing use of the Internet for information, education, job hunting, and other activities, its economic value increases. The incidence of in-home Internet subscriptions, however, varies across households, and Native American households are less likely than other American households to subscribe to Internet services. The lack of universality has, potentially, enormous consequences for households not subscribing to the Internet. Using descriptive statistics and logistic regressions we find that the growth of U.S. Internet subscriptions may have peaked and exhibited a small decline between 2012 and 2015; technology adoption has reached the third stage of the S-curve. Internet adoption in Native American households, however, may not have fully reached into the third stage. While rural-urban location is a small factor for non-Native American households, it remains a major factor for Native American households.

Crying Wolf on Waste, Fraud, and Abuse for Low-Income Americans

While the Lifeline program was a crucial step toward providing low-income Americans with internet access, it’s also become the target of uproarious criticism. The reason? A Government Accountability Office (GAO) study recently reported waste and fraud in Lifeline, and the immense backlash even prompted two Congressional hearings on the matter, both of which largely served as opportunities for senators to publicly tear into the program for alleged “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Thing is, these claims are based on outdated data, given that the Federal Communications Commission has implemented several significant and targeted reforms to root out fraud in the time since the agency collected its data. Weakening the Lifeline program poises the vicious cycle of wealth and opportunity disparity to be passed onto the next generation—and potentially beyond. We shouldn’t allow that to happen.

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