Politics and Law

Almost 20 years ago exactly, on June 4, 1989, the Chinese military opened fire on prodemocracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, resulting in the loss of hundreds--if not thousands--of innocent lives. Most of the slain were students. However, the Chinese government would like the younger generations in China and the rest of the world to know very little about that.

The most iconic image from the Tiananmen Square protest and subsequent massacre.

(Credit: Wikipedia)

Many media reports say that in the recent days leading up to the anniversary, China has been blocking Web sites like Twitter, Yahoo's Flickr, YouTube, Microsoft Hotmail, Live.com, Wordpress, Blogger, and many other social-networking sites and news outlets in an effort to keep the event an internal issue. Several of my friends in China have confirmed the inaccessibility of these sites. China currently has the most Internet users in the world.

According to the San Fransisco Chronicle, Microsoft's new search engine Bing is also blocked. In response to this, Kevin Kutz, a Microsoft spokesman, said his company "is committed to helping advance the free flow of information, and is committed to encouraging transparency, due process and rule of law when it comes to Internet governance."

The Associated Press reported that other Chinese blogs and file-sharing sites are also disabled. VeryCD, a popular Chinese video-sharing portal, has put a note on its site saying it will be offline until Saturday for "maintenance reasons." The popular miniblogging site Fanfou has done the same thing.

Foreign journalists are currently barred from entering Tiananmen Square and have not been given any specific reason as to why.

On June 4, 1989, student protesters gathered at Tiananmen Square in the capital city of China and called for a democratic system and clean government. Troops moved in with tanks and were ordered to open fire at the crowd. Unofficial figures indicate that somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 people were killed.

Since then, the Chinese government has carefully guarded information on the event--and even refused an independent investigation into the matter--which is believed by many to be one of the bloodiest examples of human rights suppression in the 20th century.

Updated 4:05 p.m., with comment from Yahoo.

A Department of Justice probe into hiring practices among high-tech firms appears to have stretched out to include some of the best-known names in the industry.

The Washington Post first reported the story on Tuesday evening, listing Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Genentech as among the companies that were being looked at. Microsoft and Intel are also believed to have received requests for information, according to sources as well as to a New York Times report.

to The issue is believed to center on whether certain companies agreed not to hire from one another.

Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Intel all declined comment. Late on Wednesday, Yahoo confirmed it had received an inquiry from the government "a while ago."

"We have been contacted (by the DOJ), and we are cooperating," A Yahoo representative said.

Word of the probe took some in the tech industry by surprise, given several prominent cases of tech firms suing one another over worker poaching. Two of the companies said to be involved in the probe--Microsoft and Google--waged a fierce, multistate court battle after Microsoft executive Kai-Fu Lee was hired by Google. (The two sides eventually settled.)

More recently, Apple and IBM duked it out after Apple hired IBM executive Mark Papermaster. He eventually took up work at Apple, but only after a lawsuit and eventual settlement. IBM also sued over a recent Dell hire, David Johnson.

CNET News' Tom Krazit contributed to this report.

The former head of Google's public policy team will soon reportedly be working for the public.

Andrew McLaughlin, currently listed as Google's director of global public policy, will leave Google to accept a position within the Obama administration reporting to the nation's new chief technology officer, Aneesh Chopra, according to a report in The New York Times. McLaughlin's new title will be deputy chief technology officer, and he would become the third high-profile Google executive to join the government since Obama was inaugurated in January.

Google confirmed that McLaughlin plans to leave, but is still with the company. The White House could not be reached for comment.

McLaughlin oversaw Google's interests regarding governments around the world, for example, devoting ample time in 2006 to managing pressure over Google's policies in China. He'll join former colleagues Katie Stanton and Sonal Shah in the new administration, which has been advised on technology matters by Google CEO Eric Schmidt since Obama was on the campaign trail.

Speculation has grown in recent months that the new administration would be taking a closer look at Google, which dominates the market for Internet search and advertising. Google and the Federal Trade Commission are apparently discussing Schmidt's role as a member of the board of directors of both Google and Apple, and the Department of Justice is reportedly taking a look at Google's recent settlement with book publishers.

The U.S. president has announced a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy for the federal government, saying Internet-based threats have risen "dramatically" and the country "must act to reduce our vulnerabilities."

A 76-page White House document calls for a new way of looking at Internet and computer security, saying that private-public partnerships are necessary, collaboration with international organizations will be vital, and privacy and civil liberties must be respected in the process.

Sound familiar? The year was 2003, and the president was George W. Bush, who wrote the introduction to what he called a "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace."

On Friday, President Obama announced his 76-page "Cyberspace Policy Review"--with precisely the same number of pages as his predecessor's--at an event at the White House.

While the Bush document discusses centralizing cybersecurity responsibilities in the Department of Homeland Security and the Obama document shifts them to the White House, the two reports are remarkably similar. Perhaps this should be no surprise: Obama selected Melissa Hathaway, who worked for the director of national intelligence in the Bush administration and was director of an Bush-era "Cyber Task Force," to conduct the review.

To test your political acumen, we've taken excerpts from both and placed them side by side in the following chart. Can you tell which quotations come from which administration? (An answer key is at the end.)

Answer key: All of the excerpts from the left column are taken from Bush's National Strategy document from February 2003. The right column represents excerpts from Obama's Cyberspace Policy Review document from May 2009.

President Obama on Friday said the U.S. government is "not as prepared" as it should be to respond to disruptions caused by computer or Internet attacks and announced that a new cybersecurity coordinator position would be created inside the White House staff.

The still-to-be-named coordinator will oversee a new bureaucracy tasked with digital infrastructure protection, which had previously been handled by the Department of Homeland Security. "We will ensure that these networks are secure, trustworthy and resilient," Obama said. "We will deter, prevent, detect, and defend against attacks and recover quickly from any disruptions or damage."

Obama's announcement, which was expected, came as the president released the outcome of a 60-day review that sought to rethink how the federal government should address cybersecurity. Business groups had sought to raise cybersecurity's profile in the administration but remained wary about regulatory mandates from Washington; security hawks would prefer the new bureaucracy to have more authority over the private sector.

The final report represents a political compromise. It suggests "intrusion detection and prevention systems" and "warning of cyber intrusions and attacks," while stressing that collaboration with privacy groups and industry is vital. New laws compelling companies to share more information with the federal government about intrusions may be necessary, it says, but only "as a last resort."

During his remarks in the White House's East Room on Friday, Obama also seemed to seek a balance between warning of the dangers of terrorists or other miscreants using the Internet and saying the government will not go too far. "Our pursuit of cybersecurity will not -- I repeat, will not include -- monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic," he said.

The report also goes out of its way to recognize the civil liberties concerns that could arise by a greater focus on private networks: the word "privacy" appears no fewer than 69 times in the document.

In a cybersecurity "crisis," the plan is for the coordinator to become the "White House action officer for cyber incident response." That's a similar role to the White House officials who help to monitor terrorist attacks or natural disasters. (The new coordinator's fiefdom will be shared between the National Economic Council and the National Security Council.)

While there has been some private grumbling that the new coordinator will not report directly to the president -- a prized symbol of access in Washington circles -- reaction to the administration's announcement was generally positive.

Senators John Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), members of the Commerce and Intelligence committees, said in a statement that "no other president in American history has elevated this issue to that level and we thank (Obama) for his leadership." The Center for Democracy and Technology said it "is evident that the report's authors listened to the concerns of privacy and civil liberties groups."

Cybersecurity headaches
The origin of many of the feds' cybersecurity headaches can be traced back to the process that led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security nearly seven years ago. Politicians in Washington, D.C. decided to glue together a medley of federal agencies to create a massive bureaucracy that would, as one of its new goals, provide a better focus on cybersecurity.

"The department will gather and focus all our efforts to face the challenge of cyberterrorism," President Bush said when signing the 500-or-so-page bill into law in November 2002. "This department will be charged with encouraging research on new technologies that can detect these threats in time to prevent an attack."

Some tasks might benefit from centralization in one of the world's largest bureaucracies. But it soon became evident that cybersecurity was not one of them. By 2005, government auditors concluded that the department failed to live up to its cybersecurity responsibilities and may be "unprepared" for emergencies; as recently as last fall, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said his agency needed to develop a plan to respond to a "cybercrisis."

That led some outside groups to argue that cybersecurity efforts should be taken over by the National Security Agency, which already is responsible for protecting government computers through its "information assurance" arm, or perhaps the White House staff.

Lending an unusual spice to what would normally be a quiet, internecine power struggle was March's resignation of Rod Beckström, director of Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity Center. In his farewell letter, Beckström blasted what he said was an NSA power grab, saying the secretive military agency "effectively controls DHS cyber efforts through detailees, technology insertions."

The week before Beckström's resignation, Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair suggested to a House committee that the NSA was ready for the job, saying "there are some wizards out there at Fort Meade." But a few weeks later, after a congressional hearing that was hardly enthusiastic about the idea, NSA director Keith Alexander denied his agency had any interest in the job.

In February, Obama ordered a 60-day review of the federal government's cybersecurity efforts, and appointed Hathaway -- who had worked for the director of national intelligence in the Bush administration -- to lead it.

In addition, The New York Times reported on Friday that the Pentagon is preparing a new military command for cyberspace that would operate in parallel with the civilian effort that Obama is expected to announce. He is "expected to sign a classified order in coming weeks that will create the military cybercommand" and recognize "that the United States already has a growing number of computer weapons in its arsenal and must prepare strategies for their use," the newspaper said.

During Friday's remarks, Obama noted that his campaign had been the subject of a cyber intrusion in which hackers accessed policy papers and travel plans but not fundraising data.

This was originally published at CBSNews.com.

President Obama on Friday confirmed that his presidential campaign suffered a cyber intrusion in which hackers gained access to a range of files.

Barack Obama says of cyberattacks: "It has happened to me."

(Credit: CBS)

In a speech in which he unveiled a plan for a comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy, the president said he understands what it is like to be a victim of a cyberattack because "it has happened to me and the people around me."

Between the months of August and October, Obama said, hackers accessed files including policy papers and travel plans. Files pertaining to fundraising information were left untouched, he assured his supporters in a joking manner.

Obama noted that his campaign's vulnerabilities reflected those of the rest of the world in the digital era.

"It's no secret my presidential campaign harnessed the Internet" to communicate with a wide swath of supporters, he said. However, the hacking was "a powerful reminder...one of your greatest strengths, our ability to communicate...could also be one of your greatest vulnerabilities."

The campaign worked with federal agents and hired security consultants to address the breach, Obama said. Newsweek reported in November that federal agents were investigating cyberbreaches of both the Obama and McCain campaigns.

President Obama on Friday is expected to unveil his administration's plans to deal with cybersecurity threats to federal agencies and the private sector, including the creation of a White House "cyber czar."

It's not yet clear who that person will be, or even whether Obama will name someone during his announcement. As part of a political compromise, the new position is expected to be folded into both the National Security Council and National Economic Council.

The announcement, which is scheduled to take place at 10:55 a.m. ET in the White House's East Room, caps years of criticism of the Department of Homeland Security's efforts and months of speculation about what form the replacement cybersecurity bureaucracy will take.

"It provides the president with recommendations for a White House organizational structure that can effectively address cyberspace-related issues," Melissa Hathaway, acting cyberspace director for the White House's National Security and Homeland Security councils, said recently.

No bureaucratic mandate will satisfy everyone: Security hawks would like the "czar" to have authority -- which may mean new laws -- to direct both federal agencies and private businesses on cybersecurity matters. Business representatives, on the other hand, like the potential for increased high-level attention but remain wary of mandates from Washington.

In February, Obama ordered a 60-day review of the federal government's cybersecurity efforts, and appointed Hathaway -- who had worked for the director of national intelligence in the Bush administration -- to lead it. Two months later, Hathaway announced the report had been submitted to the president along with recommendations; it's expected to be made public on Friday.

Earlier this week, the White House offered a hint about how the restructuring would proceed, and indicated that the "czar" would not report directly to the president. Obama's statement on Tuesday said the national security and homeland security staff would be integrated and new positions inside the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council would "deal with new and emerging 21st Century challenges associated with cybersecurity."

In addition, The New York Times reported on Friday that the Pentagon is preparing a new military command for cyberspace that would operate in parallel with the civilian effort that Obama is expected to announce. He is "expected to sign a classified order in coming weeks that will create the military cybercommand" and recognize "that the United States already has a growing number of computer weapons in its arsenal and must prepare strategies for their use," the newspaper said.

Bureaucratic roadblocks
The origin of many of the Feds' cybersecurity headaches can be traced back to the process that led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security nearly seven years ago. Politicians in Washington, D.C. decided to decided to glue together a medley of federal agencies to create a massive bureaucracy that would, as one of its new goals, provide a better focus on cybersecurity.

"The department will gather and focus all our efforts to face the challenge of cyberterrorism," President Bush said when signing the 500-or-so-page bill into law in November 2002. "This department will be charged with encouraging research on new technologies that can detect these threats in time to prevent an attack."

Some tasks might benefit from centralization in one of the world's largest bureaucracies. But it soon became evident that cybersecurity was not one of them. By 2005, government auditors concluded that the department failed to live up to its cybersecurity responsibilities and may be "unprepared" for emergencies; as recently as last fall, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said his agency needed to develop a plan to respond to a "cybercrisis."

That led some outside groups to argue that cybersecurity efforts should be taken over by the National Security Agency, which already is responsible for protecting government computers through its "information assurance" arm, or perhaps the White House staff.

Lending an unusual spice to what would normally be a internecine power struggle conducted in secret was March's resignation of Rod Beckström, director of Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity Center. In his farewell letter, Beckström blasted what he said was an NSA power grab, saying the secretive military agency "effectively controls DHS cyber efforts through detailees, technology insertions."

The week before Beckström's resignation, Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair suggested to a House committee that the NSA was ready for the job, saying "there are some wizards out there at Fort Meade." But a few weeks later, after a congressional hearing that was hardly enthusiastic about the idea, NSA director Keith Alexander denied his agency had any interest in the job.

If any of this sounds familiar, it should. About a year after President George W. Bush took office, his administration announced a highly-anticipated, 76-page document called the "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace" (PDF). Few of its bullet points calling for immediate "response" have been enacted; even fewer people remember what they were.

In the first case of its type, a federal judge in California has ruled that police can forcibly take DNA samples, including drawing blood with a needle, from Americans who have been arrested but not convicted of a crime.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Gregory Hollows ruled on Thursday that a federal law allowing DNA samples upon arrest for a felony was constitutional and did not violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of "unreasonable searches and seizures."

Hollows, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, said the procedure was no more invasive or worrisome than fingerprinting or a photograph. "The court agrees that DNA sampling is analogous to taking fingerprints as part of the routine booking process upon arrest," he wrote, calling it "a law enforcement tool that is a technological progression from photographs and fingerprints."

Lawrence Brown, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, says he's "gratified" by the ruling

(Credit: U.S. Department of Justice)

"The invasiveness of DNA testing is minimal," Hollows wrote (PDF). "The DNA can be taken by an oral swab, and even blood tests have been held to be a minimal intrusion."

"We are very gratified with the ruling," Lawrence Brown, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, said in a statement. It also said that the U.S. Department of Justice "exercised its authority under the statute earlier this year and issued direction to various federal agencies to begin collecting the DNA of individuals who are arrested or facing charges, as has historically been the case with the collection of fingerprints."

A bill that President Bush signed in January 2006 said any federal police agency could "collect DNA samples from individuals who are arrested." Anyone who fails to cooperate is, under federal law, guilty of an additional crime.

In addition, federal law and subsequent regulations from the Department of Justice authorize any means "reasonably necessary to detain, restrain, and collect a DNA sample from an individual who refuses to cooperate in the collection of the sample." The cheek swab or blood tests can be outsourced to "private entities."

While other courts have ruled on the constitutionality of DNA sampling after conviction, this is the first case to deal with defendants who have only been accused of a crime. (The 9th Circuit, in U.S. v. Kincade (PDF), ruled that mandatory DNA testing of violent convicted felons on supervised release was constitutional; a dissent by Judge Alex Kozinski said that same logic could lead to mandatory testing of every American citizen: "The more DNA samples are included in the database, the better off we are: More guilty parties will be found, more innocents will be cleared and more unknown crime victims will be identified...")

The defendant in the current case in California, Jerry Albert Pool, is accused of possessing child pornography in the form of illegal images of minors on his computer, a felony. He has no prior criminal record and has pleaded not guilty.

Hollows ruled that in the case of felony charges lodged against a defendant by a judge or a grand jury--resulting in a formal finding of probable cause--mandatory DNA sampling was reasonable. He noted that he took no position on whether or not DNA sampling for misdemeanor offenses was reasonable and constitutional.

The list of possible federal felony charges includes ones you might expect, including counterfeiting and kidnapping. But it also includes some forms of peer-to-peer piracy, circumventing e-book protection, or using innocent words like "Barbie" on a sexually-explicit Web site.

"In utilizing the totality of the circumstances, the decision to impose the DNA testing requirement on pre-trial detainees or releasees seems clearly warranted, if not compelling," Hollows wrote. "An arrestee's identity obviously becomes a matter of legitimate state interest...While fears of a 'Big Brother' style government harassing or persecuting individuals based on genetic characteristics is always theoretically possible, that is not the purpose of the amendments before the court, nor is it at all likely."

As more government officials choose to publicly answer questions submitted by Internet users, they're encountering a new phenomenon: marijuana activists intent on forcing answers to the would-you-legalize-pot question.

In March, President Obama's first virtual town hall took a detour when questions about legalizing marijuana were voted to the top of the "financial stability," "jobs," "budget," and (of course) "green jobs" polls on WhiteHouse.gov

On Wednesday, it was California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, who was put on the spot. Digg.com users propelled a legalize-marijuana question to the No. 2 position (behind one asking about what he was thinking when photographed grimacing at President George W. Bush).

Earlier this month, Schwarzenegger said "it's time for debate" about legalizing marijuana. Read on for an excerpt from the CNN interview.

Q: What is your stance on the legalization, cultivation, and regulation of marijuana in the state of California?

A: I like the law that we have in place. And I don't believe in legalizing marijuana, but I'm always open for the debate because there are people that feel differently. And I said I'm always interested in debating any of these issues because there's always different ways of looking at it. And I think it would be interesting to see the information that is available, if there's any information available, of how well countries are doing that have legalized marijuana. But I don't think that information is available, and I'd want us to see that.

But I believe in the law, the way the law is right now, and I think it's worked very well for the state of California. And I think it would be a mistake to just go and legalize something that we don't believe in just because it would produce an extra billion dollars in revenues. And I think we just have to learn how to live within our means rather than trying to do things we really don't want to do.

Q: New polls actually show that more than half of Californians support legalizing marijuana. So would that sway your stance on it whatsoever in this open debate that you're calling for? Would it sway your opinion?

A: Well, it could very well go on an initiative one day, where they ask the voters directly, that could very well be. And if the voters make that decision, that's fine. But I think it is very important for us to make certain decisions not just because they would bring in some extra money, and I think this is why people have been talking about that in California, to go in that direction, and to start debating that issue. Because it would produce, as they say, $1.3 billion, $1.4 billion extra revenues.

Thanks to a 1996 ballot measure, medical marijuana is already legal under California law, though local officials have substantial discretion. Although that conflicts with federal law, the Obama administration has chosen not to target California medical marijuana dispensaries.

State legislator Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco Democrat, introduced a bill in February to legalize recreational marijuana. Bill AB 390 would license "commercial cultivators of marijuana" and establish a complicated web of regulations and tax rules they and retailers must follow.

It could raise over $1.2 billion a year in new tax revenues, assuming a $50-an-ounce tax, according to an analysis by California NORML, an organization working to reform the state's marijuana laws.

A Field poll released on April 30 found that 56 percent of the state's registered voters support legalizing marijuana and taxing its sale.

Acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps released a report on broadband strategy for rural America on Wednesday.

The report was mandated as part of the 2008 Farm Bill. In that bill Congress asked the Federal Communications Commission to work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to submit "a report describing a comprehensive rural broadband strategy."

The emphasis on forming a rural broadband strategy came several months before President Obama took office. Obama also sees broadband as a priority and included funding for broadband development as part of the stimulus package passed by Congress earlier this year.

In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Congress appropriated $7.2 billion for broadband grants, loans, and loan guarantees to be administered by the USDA's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). As part of this bill, the FCC is also required to file a report with Congress in February 2010 describing a national broadband policy.

Copps called this report on rural broadband strategy a starting point for developing a national broadband policy. And even with the $7.2 billion of money from the stimulus package, Copps said that more money will be needed to ensure that every American has access to broadband.

Copps identified several issues in this report that must be overcome to get broadband deployed in rural areas. These issues include technological challenges, lack of data about where broadband is available and who is accessing it, and high network costs. Despite these challenges, Copps said that the U.S. government must pour resources into solving these problems just as it did when building the U.S. Postal Service, the railroads, the nationwide electrical grid, the interstate highway system, and even the Internet backbone.

"From the country's earliest days, building the nation's infrastructure has required federal resources and leadership, and this federal role continues," he said in the report. "At their inceptions, some of these projects were controversial. Many considered them too expensive; others doubted their efficacy. Today, few would question their value, but each of these undertakings depended on a strong and coordinated national vision."