Tag Archives: Congress

White House calls on Congress after Virginia TV shooting

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest answers questions from reporters at Wednesday's daily press briefing. (Jenny Leonard / Medill NSJI)

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest answers questions from reporters at Wednesday’s daily press briefing. (Jenny Leonard / Medill NSJI)

WASHINGTON — In the wake of a fatal shooting during a live television broadcast in Virginia, the White House called on Congress Wednesday to pass tougher laws combatting gun violence.

“While there is no piece of legislation that will end all violence,” Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, “there are some common sense things that only Congress can do that we know would have attainable impacts at reducing gun violence.”

Two members of WDBJ 7, in Roanoke, Virginia, were killed in the early-morning attack: reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward. The interview subject, Vicki Gardner, was shot but not killed and taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.

The suspected shooter, Vester Lee Flanagan II, was a former employee at the station, who went by the on-air name of Bryce Williams. Flanagan died later at Inova Fairfax Hospital from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

“This is another example of gun violence that is becoming all too common in communities large and small all across the United States,” White House spokesman Earnest said.

Closing the gun show loophole is the most frequently cited “common sense” action that Congress could take, Earnest said. The loophole allows some individuals to purchase firearms at gun shows without going through a background check.

This legislative action, he said, would not alter the United States Constitution in any way, nor would it infringe on the rights of law-abiding citizens who are exercising their Second Amendment rights.

“The laws about gun safety in a sparsely populated rural community, I think justifiably, can be different than in a dense urban community like the District of Columbia,” Earnest said.

The most recent legislation seeking tougher gun laws, sponsored by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., failed to pass a Senate vote in 2013.

According to a 23-page fax that Flanagan sent to ABC News on Wednesday morning, he “put down a deposit for a gun on 6/19/15,” and cited racial discrimination, sexual harassment and bullying as his motivations for the shooting.

“The thoughts and prayers of everybody here at the White House are with the families of those who were injured or killed in that terrible incident,” Earnest said.

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Congress pushes for rules on explosive fertilizer

Corrections and clarifications: A prior version of this story incorrectly reported domestic ammonium nitrate production tonnage as domestic farm consumption totals. This story has also been updated throughout to clarify that Rep. Bennie Thompson is pushing for revisions to the proposed rules, not publication of the current draft.

WASHINGTON — Congress is pressing the Department of Homeland Security to take action on its mandate to make sure that ammonium nitrate, the key ingredient in the 1995 Oklahoma City bomb, stays out of the hands of terrorists, but new rules may still be a long way off.

“The misappropriation of ammonium nitrate remains a homeland security threat – however in the eight years since Congress directed the Department of Homeland Security to regulate its sale, the marketplace has changed considerably,” said Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee and author of the original bill mandating ammonium nitrate regulation. Despite the delay, Thompson is urging the department to rewrite its proposed rules for the chemical widely used in fertilizer.

“I urge DHS to work with stakeholders to update its proposed ammonium nitrate regulations to take this change in marketplace into account. This will help ensure that the program that DHS stands up will be effective.”

In 2007, lawmakers worried about criminal or terrorist use of the chemical passed legislation instructing the Department of Homeland Security to set up a program to regulate the purchase ammonium nitrate. Four years later the department created the Ammonium Nitrate Security Program.

“Certain purchasers and sellers of ammonium nitrate would be required to apply to DHS for an Ammonium Nitrate Registered User Number, and the department would screen each applicant against the Terrorist Screening Database,” said DHS spokesman S.Y. Lee in explaining the program. “Following the screening process, approved individuals would be issued an AN Registered User Number, which would allow them to engage in the sale, purchase, or transfer of ammonium nitrate.”

The department spent months collecting comments from the public and stakeholders regarding how the program could affect different industries, ending on Dec. 1, 2011.

According to DHS, those public comments are still being reviewed. The next step would be issuing final regulations, but Thompson says the time lapse means more input from the marketplace is needed.

From al-Qaida to ISIS, terrorism groups around the world have come to depend on the chemical for the manufacturing of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. The problem became so severe in Afghanistan that the Pakistani government worked with the U.S. to stem the flow of ammonium nitrate across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Some states, impatient with DHS, passed their own ammonium nitrate regulations, but experts are concerned that criminals or terrorists wanting to purchase the substance will just cross state lines to find those states without regulations.

“The administration needs to finalize this rule right away,” said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., who has worked to keep ammonium nitrate out of the hands of insurgents in Afghanistan. “A final rule will make it clear that this is a serious challenge and will lay down rules of the road for stakeholders for handling this material appropriately.”

Lee said the process is moving at its current pace because “we seek to strike a balance that both ensures public safety and minimizes the potential economic impact that can arise from additional regulation.”

Luke Popovich, with the National Mining Association, said that the proposed rules would place unnecessary burden on the mining industry. He wants mining facilities to be exempt from the program since the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives already regulates those facilities.

Meanwhile, the fertilizer industry continues to push for speedy regulation.

“We supported this in Congress when it was initially brought up because we as an industry really felt like it balanced the need for security with the problem we were having with a patchwork of state regulation,” said institute spokeswoman Kathy Mathers.

Ammonium nitrate is not a controlled substance, though it is not prepared for consumer use, explained Mathers. In 2011, 2.8 million tons of ammonium nitrate were produced for the U.S. explosives industry, according to the Institute for the Makers of Explosives; in that same year, the agriculture industry produced about 2.4 million tons, according to the Fertilizer Institute.

“If you wanted to go and purchase it, you would go to a fertilizer dealer and that dealer is a retailer. You could call a farm supply center,” said Mathers. “What they could do, and this is what McVeigh did prior to the Oklahoma City bombing, they posed as farmers and went to a farm supply center with a U-Haul truck and bought ammonium nitrate.”

Since then the Fertilizer Institute and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms have run an awareness program to help retailers identify suspicious activity, said Mathers.

“It is up to the good sense of the seller not an ID process. That is why we support the regulation,” said Mathers. “The potential for human error is always there, versus having a regulation in place that sets a standard.”

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Lew and Foxx urge Congress to fund infrastructure

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx called on Congress Monday to address the Highway Trust Fund shortfall before money runs out in little over a month’s time.

“It’s time for the country to take some bolda steps forward,” said Foxx, during a panel discussion at Bloomberg Government.

The federal government currently raises money for highway construction and transit programs through the Highway Trust Fund, which collects money from gasoline and diesel fuel taxes and is set to run out of money on May 31.

The gasoline tax and the diesel tax have been stuck at 18.4 cents per gallon and 24.4 cent per gallon, separately, since 1993.

“Businesses are wasting resources because our infrastructure is falling behind,” said Lew, who pointed out the U.S. was ranked 12th in global competitiveness by the World Economic Forum due to insufficient infrastructure investment.

“Look at the things we need to build a stronger future, infrastructure is right at the top of these,” Lew said.

The Transportation Department has unveiled a six-year Grow America Act plan that would spur infrastructure investment by raising the repatriation tax, but Republicans in Congress have not widely embraced the initiative.

“The best way to fund infrastructure for the long term is to tie it to something that is broadly popular,” said Lew. “That’s why we tie it to business tax reform.”

American multinational firms often keep overseas earnings abroad because they would otherwise have to pay as much as 40% in U.S taxes, according to KPMG, the accounting and tax firm.

In the administration’s proposal, firms would pay about 14% in repatriation, with proceeds from the tax going to fund domestic infrastructure projects.

“Democrats and Republicans in Congress want to have a long-term bill,” said lobbyist Cliff Madison, president of Government Relations, Inc. “However, they haven’t agreed on the sources for funding, whether it is going to be an increase on the gas tax or the repatriation of U.S. money from overseas.”

Foxx also said he is willing to listen to other solutions from Congress.

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Colorado VA hospital’s completion contingent on congressional intervention after budget is blown

A Veteran’s Administration hospital being built in the city of Aurora, Colorado is predicted to go $1 billion over budget, according to a March 18 report from 9News.com, the website of Colorado’s KUSA broadcast station. Since covering the extra cost requires congressional approval, the local medical center’s future depends on federal approval. Check out the story by KUSA’s Melissa Blasius and Brandon Rittiman (an exciting intersection of federal VA funding and local veteran’s affairs and health care infrastructure) here.

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Social network apps criticized for downloading data

WASHINGTON — Several social media companies came under fire last week after the discovery that they were downloading users’ full address books – without their knowledge or consent.

Programmer Arun Thampi discovered last week that Path, a social journal application, downloaded his entire iPhone address book, including names, phone numbers and email addresses, without his consent. Path executives responded by explaining that the data were used as part of a method to find other users on the network. They have since promised to delete the data and improve the transparency of their app.

Path, however, is far from the only social media app that downloads information without permission, according to a Los Angeles Times interview with Path CEO Dave Morin. Morin said downloading information this way “is currently the industry best practice and the App Store guidelines do not specifically discuss contact information.”

Twitter, a much more prominent social media network than Path, uses similar data collecting practices. According to the Times, Twitter executives confirmed that the “find friends” feature on the Twitter mobile app allows the company to download users’ entire address books, including email addresses and phone numbers, and  store them for up to 18 months.

On the Twitter mobile app, the “find friends” feature allows a user to “scan your contacts for people you already know on Twitter,” but does not inform users that their address book information is being downloaded.

In a statement, Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner said new updates on the app would add transparency to the downloading process by “updating the language associated with Find Friends — to be more explicit. In place of ‘Scan your contacts,’ we will use “Upload your contacts” and “Import your contacts.”

The Path news also  brought scrutiny of Apple for its policy regarding apps that download user information. According to The Washington Post, the Android version of Path warned users about the information collection, while the Apple version did not.

The New York Times reported that according to Lookout, a mobile security company, more than 10 percent of free apps in the iTunes store had access to user contacts.

“What separates malicious use from legitimate use is the element of surprise. If a user is surprised, that’s a problem,” Kevin Mahaffey, Lookout’s chief technology officer, told The New York Times.

In response to these issues, Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., both members of the House Energy and Commerce committee, sent a letter to Apple questioning the implications of the company’s privacy standards.

The letter said the discovery of Path receiving information “raises questions about whether Apple’s iOS app developer policies and practices may fall short when it comes to protecting the information of iPhone users and their contacts,” according to Reuters.

An Apple spokesman responded by suggesting that apps that collect user data without permission violate Apple guidelines, according to Reuters.

“We’re working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release,” the spokesman told Reuters.

 

 

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Watchdog group releases recommendations to protect user privacy in upcoming cybersecurity legislation

By Safiya Merchant

WASHINGTON — As government officials criticize Google’s recent decision to revise its privacy policy to monitor and record user activity, watchdog organization The Constitution Project released a report claiming the government must also protect the public’s privacy when heightening online security measures.

The report, released Jan. 27, outlines recommendations  to protect privacy in drafting cypbersecurity legislation.

“As proposals have arisen that would enable the federal government to move toward monitoring all information transferred over private networks, individuals face the risk of being subjected to the equivalent of a perpetual ‘wiretap’ on their tprivate communications and web browsing behavior,” the report stated.

he report also noted aspects of the current federal cybersecurity initiative that could threaten personal information of computer users.

According to the study, the government’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative includes components called Einstein, whose purpose is to erase “harmful activity” from federal computer systems.

Because the Einstein programs monitor information transmitted to and from the federal computer system, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has stated the Einstein technologies do not breach the civil liberties of federal employees or the public, the report said.

The Justice Department argued that federal employees “do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their communications” but even if they do have expectations of privacy, they have consented to this search, the report states.

But the Constitution Project said Einstein could violate Fourth Amendment rights.

If individuals consent to the monitoring of their computer communications for federal security purposes, the report stated, that does not necessarily mean they “consented to having that information stored for human review or transferred to federal or local law enforcement.”

The Constitution Project recommends any legislation establish oversight procedures, create privacy safeguards and minimize the amount of access to or use of computer user information.

“A lot of these bills contemplate information-sharing programs, where private companies would share cybersecurity information with the federal government,” said Sharon Bradford Franklin, senior counsel of The Constitution Project, in an interview with The Federal Drive with Tom Temin. “We want to make sure personally identifiable information is sanitized out of that sharing unless that is absolutely necessary for the cybersecurity purpose.”

Some specific recommendations the report proposes include requiring federal agencies to create Privacy Impact Assessments if they plan to make or expand cybersecurity initiatives; limiting the amount of personally identifiable information that can be shared between the government and the private sector; and prohibiting private industries with access to Einstein from keeping or reviewing user information/communications for projects other than those of the Einstein program.

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