​From "Construction Will Begin This Summer to Make White House Fence Taller"
Washington Post (05/24/19) Hedgpeth, Dana

The White House perimeter fence is up for a replacement with a structure that will be about 13 feet tall, an increase of about five feet.
The changes are intended to keep out intruders after the arrests of several people who have tried to scale the fence in recent years.
The Secret Service and the National Park Service, which maintains the White House grounds, received final approval in 2017 from the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and National Capital Planning Commission to move forward with building what officials called a “tougher, taller and stronger” fence.
Other changes will include wider and stronger fence pickets, as well as sharper points at the top — described in a National Capital Planning Commission report as “pencil point anti-climb measures intended to deter climbers from grasping the top bar.”
Thomas Luebke, secretary of the fine arts commission, said the White House is not alone in having increased security measures, citing the Escorial near Madrid and the fence around Buckingham Palace. “It’s part of the physical impact to the city that’s inevitable with increased security,” he said. “We’ve seen this over the last 18 years in public buildings and public space, and this is just one more part.”

From "N.Y. State Orders School District to Halt Plans to Use Facial Recognition"
The Hill (05/30/19) Rodrigo, Chris Mills

The New York State Education Department on Thursday ordered the Lockport City School District to suspend its planned deployment of facial-recognition tech slated for next week. The department said the system had not been approved for testing, "until we receive information that assures us that student information will be properly protected."
 
The technology is meant to be used to identify if guns or flagged persons enter school grounds. A New York Education Department spokesperson said the agency is in the process of reviewing Lockport's facial recognition system and has not found sufficient protections for students' privacy or data.
 
The program has drawn backlash from critics who point to studies which find inaccuracies in facial recognition technology, especially for women and people of color.

The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) last year sent a letter to the New York State Education Department that asked officials to halt the project.
 
State Assembly Member Monica Wallace (D) has introduced a bill that would effectively force Lockport to stop using the system.
 
Throughout the nation, there has been pushback against facial recognition software. A bipartisan group of lawmakers in Washington last week came out against the widespread deployment of facial recognition technology, signaling that they plan to draft legislation that would curb or halt its implementation.
 
Earlier this month, San Francisco became the first city to ban the technology entirely.

From "Security Blog Reports That First American Left Hundreds of Millions of Records Exposed"
Washington Post (05/24/19) Timberg, Craig; Merle, Renae

According to security blog Krebson Security, mortgage settlement and title insurance company First American Financial Corporation left hundreds of millions of customer records accessible on the web, including personal information. Krebs reported no evidence that the vulnerability had been exploited by hackers, but the security lapse put 885 million records at risk from an unknown numbers of customers. Based on a tip from a real estate developer who found the vulnerability, Krebs wrote that anybody with access to a web portal for the company could have gained access to documents from other customers by altering digits in the web address. Krebs said First American has confirmed there was a "design defect," and has shut down external access to the application.

To read the full story click this link. Web Link

​From "Stabbing of 17 Children Shocks Japan, Where Parents Trust Streets Are Safe"
New York Times (05/28/19) Rich, Motoko; Ueno, Hisako; Inoue, Maikiko

A man wielding two long-blade knives stabbed 17 schoolgirls and two adults on Tuesday at a bus stop in a suburb southwest of Tokyo, according to the police. It was a shocking event for a country where violent crime is rare and the kinds of mass shootings that have devastated schools across the United States have never occurred because of strict gun-control laws.

Officials at Caritas, the Roman Catholic school in Kawasaki that the children attended, said they had received no warning and did not know the attacker, who was identified by NHK, the public broadcaster, as Ryuichi Iwasaki, 51. Teiko Naito, the elementary school principal at Caritas, a private institution with students in kindergarten through 12th grade, said that parents just wanted to be able to send their children to school and know they would be safe. “But today, after such a tragic incident, I am extremely saddened and feel such pain,” she said. Parents returned to the school Tuesday evening for a briefing with administrators to hear about plans for counseling for students and upgraded security measures.

​Although violent crimes, particularly mass killings, are rare in Japan, they tend to involve knives, rather than guns, when they do occur. In Kawasaki, residents were stunned by the stabbings in this community of commuters, who have the option of two train lines that can take them either to central Tokyo or to Yokohama, Japan’s second-largest city.

To view the full story click this link. ​Web Link