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	Money and Politics by Common Cause & agencies USA   Oct 2013   Put an end to Republican hostage-taking once and for all. (The Nation)   The shutdown of the government is a crisis for Americans, who rely not just on the services provided by the affected agencies but on the efficiency of their delivery. When 800,000 federal employees are furloughed, it is not just the immediate damage that is of consequence; over time, the whole system begins to fray and weaken. While those furloughed employees will eventually be paid, the abrupt cutoff in pay has a ripple effect in the broader community. At a time when America’s economic recovery is at best uneven, the financial uncertainties brought about by the shutdown have idled not just large federal contractors but small businesses on Main Street.   Another crisis is playing out as well, one that must be understood and addressed if this country is to avoid the kind of blackmail that might satisfy Ted Cruz and the Tea Party firebrands in the House, but that most Americans will understand as a threat to democracy.   The shutdown (and the threat to allow a debt default) seeks to undo the results of the 2012 election by giving a minority within the losing party the power to decide whether government will operate or not. The founders of the American experiment established a separation of powers, but that is not the cause of today’s crisis. In 2012, Barack Obama won the presidency by 5 million votes. He won 51 percent of the overall vote, and he won the Electoral College 332 to 206. But the Democratic victory did not end there. The Democrats were expected to lose Senate seats, but they actually gained, and the overall turnout in those races gave them a 10 million–vote advantage.   In House races, Democrats secured an overall margin of 1.7 million votes; the chamber is under Republican control not because of the desires of American voters, but because of a combination of gerrymandering, big money and winner-take-all voting structures.   So House Republicans are “governing” by other means. Worse yet, the House leadership is compelled to take the most extreme position because the vast majority of GOP districts have been so gerrymandered that even reasonable Republicans are more fearful of a Tea Party primary challenge than of a November challenge in which the whole electorate might hold them to account.   In the short term, Obama and the Democrats must focus on avoiding any concessions that would allow a minority within a minority to force cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But the crisis has created an opening for a discussion of gerrymandering and other structural challenges to democracy. The president has spoken before about the prospect that the Constitution will have to be amended to restore the rights of citizens to control the flow of big money in politics. This is vital. Just as vital is his support for renewal of the Voting Rights Act. But now he has to speak to the American people about the role that gerrymandering plays not just in limiting competition, but in empowering extremists who reject negotiation, compromise and the public good.   The American people are frustrated with Congress and are looking for ways to address this crisis. Groups like Common Cause and FairVote, which have campaigned on behalf of democratic reform for years, are at the ready with smart proposals—from nonpartisan redistricting commissions to proportional representation to creation of multi-member districts. Obama should use his bully pulpit not just to end the immediate crisis but to call for a national dialogue about the tattered state of our democracy. And he should call for reforms to ensure that Americans will never again be forced to live from crisis to crisis.   http://www.thenation.com/article/176576/what-obama-has-do-end-gop-shutdown http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/sep/26/stranglehold-our-politics/ http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/oct/09/back-door-secession/   Oct 2013 (Common Cause)   Robert Reich: - The three distortions of our democracy that allowed a minority of Republicans to hold a nation hostage.   House Republicans sang "Amazing Grace" at a closed-door meeting this morning after deciding they’ll stick to their plan to alter the Affordable Care Act and risk a government default, according to Darrell Issa, a Tea Partier from California. But if they were once lost and blind, they’re giving no hint of being found and seeing what a mess they’ve created. Even when this crisis is over, further crises lie ahead unless we correct three distortions of our democracy that have allowed a minority of extremist Republicans to hold the nation hostage:   (1) Gerrymandered congressional districts have shielded the extremists from accountability to the broader public. Gerrymandering isn’t new but in recent years right-wing state legislatures have extended and perfected it. The best solution: redistricting by nonpartisan committee. Voters supported this in California; evidence suggests many voters in “red” states would now be supportive as well.   (2) Unlimited and often secret money from a handful of right-wing billionaires has bankrolled the extremists. Big money in politics isn’t new, either, but the Supreme Court’s disgraceful 2010 decision in “Citizen’s United vs. Federal Election Commission” opened the floodgates, and the recently-argued “McCutcheon vs. Federal Election Commission” (challenging the personal donation limits that became law in 1974) could open them wider. “Citizen’s United” must be reversed, if necessary by a constitutional amendment. And at least one of the five Republicans on the Court must be replaced by someone dedicated to preserving our democracy. In the meantime, there must be full disclosure of all contributors.   (3) Raging inequality -- with the typical family getting poorer and almost all economic gains going to a small group at the top –- has made the white working class susceptible to the extremists, financed by those seeking to entrench their privilege and power. As Justice Louis Brandeis said over a century ago when America faced a similar scourge, “We can have a democracy or we can have huge wealth in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” To understand how we can reverse this trend, see “Inequality for All” and check the website www.inequalityforall.com.   Money and Politics. (Common Cause)   Some of the nation"s largest and richest companies, including Wal-Mart, Koch Industries and AT&T, have joined forces to invest millions of dollars each year to promote the careers of thousands of state legislators and secure passage of legislation that puts corporate interests ahead of the interests of ordinary Americans.   The American Legislative Exchange Council, also known as ALEC, counts among its members some 2,000 state legislators and corporate executives. They sit side-by-side and collaborate to draft "model" bills that reach into areas of American life ranging from voting rights to environmental protection. They work in concert to get those bills passed in statehouses across the country. Visit the related web page
	Universities face a rising barrage of Cyberattacks by Richard Pérez-Peña New York Times USA   July 2013   America’s research universities, among the most open and robust centers of information exchange in the world, are increasingly coming under cyberattack, most of it thought to be from China, with millions of hacking attempts weekly. Campuses are being forced to tighten security, constrict their culture of openness and try to determine what has been stolen.   Bill Mellon of the University of Wisconsin said the school has seen as many as 100,000 hacking attempts a day from China.   University officials concede that some of the hacking attempts have succeeded. But they have declined to reveal specifics, other than those involving the theft of personal data like Social Security numbers. They acknowledge that they often do not learn of break-ins until much later, if ever, and that even after discovering the breaches they may not be able to tell what was taken.   Universities and their professors are awarded thousands of patents each year, some with vast potential value, in fields as disparate as prescription drugs, computer chips, fuel cells, aircraft and medical devices.   “The attacks are increasing exponentially, and so is the sophistication, and I think it’s outpaced our ability to respond,” said Rodney J. Petersen, who heads the cybersecurity program at Educause, a nonprofit alliance of schools and technology companies. “So everyone’s investing a lot more resources in detecting this, so we learn of even more incidents we wouldn’t have known about before.”   Tracy B. Mitrano, the director of information technology policy at Cornell University, said that detection was “probably our greatest area of concern, that the hackers’ ability to detect vulnerabilities and penetrate them without being detected has increased sharply.”   Like many of her counterparts, she said that while the largest number of attacks appeared to have originated in China, hackers have become adept at bouncing their work around the world. Officials do not know whether the hackers are private or governmental. A request for comment from the Chinese Embassy in Washington was not immediately answered.   Analysts can track where communications come from — a region, a service provider, sometimes even a user’s specific Internet address. But hackers often route their penetration attempts through multiple computers, even multiple countries, and the targeted organizations rarely go to the effort and expense — often fruitless — of trying to trace the origins. American government officials, security experts and university and corporate officials nonetheless say that China is clearly the leading source of efforts to steal information, but attributing individual attacks to specific people, groups or places is rare.   The increased threat of hacking has forced many universities to rethink the basic structure of their computer networks and their open style, though officials say they are resisting the temptation to create a fortress with high digital walls.   “A university environment is very different from a corporation or a government agency, because of the kind of openness and free flow of information you’re trying to promote,” said David J. Shaw, the chief information security officer at Purdue University. “The researchers want to collaborate with others, inside and outside the university, and to share their discoveries.”   Some universities no longer allow their professors to take laptops to certain countries, and that should be a standard practice, said James A. Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy group in Washington. “There are some countries, including China, where the minute you connect to a network, everything will be copied, or something will be planted on your computer in hopes that you’ll take that computer back home and connect to your home network, and then they’re in there,” he said. “Academics aren’t used to thinking that way.”   Bill Mellon of the University of Wisconsin said that when he set out to overhaul computer security recently, he was stunned by the sheer volume of hacking attempts.   “We get 90,000 to 100,000 attempts per day, from China alone, to penetrate our system,” said Mr. Mellon, the associate dean for research policy. “There are also a lot from Russia, and recently a lot from Vietnam, but it’s primarily China.”   Other universities report a similar number of attacks and say the figure is doubling every few years. What worries them most is the growing sophistication of the assault.   For corporations, cyberattacks have become a major concern, as they find evidence of persistent hacking by well-organized groups around the world — often suspected of being state-sponsored — that are looking to steal information that has commercial, political or national security value. The New York Times disclosed in January that hackers with possible links to the Chinese military had penetrated its computer systems, apparently looking for the sources of material embarrassing to China’s leaders.   This kind of industrial espionage has become a sticking point in United States-China relations, with the Obama administration complaining of organized cybertheft of trade secrets, and Chinese officials pointing to revelations of American spying.   Like major corporations, universities develop intellectual property that can turn into valuable products like prescription drugs or computer chips. But university systems are harder to secure, with thousands of students and staff members logging in with their own computers.   Mr. Shaw, of Purdue, said that he and many of his counterparts had accepted that the external shells of their systems must remain somewhat porous. The most sensitive data can be housed in the equivalent of smaller vaults that are harder to access and harder to move within, use data encryption, and sometimes are not even connected to the larger campus network, particularly when the work involves dangerous pathogens or research that could turn into weapons systems.   “It’s sort of the opposite of the corporate structure,” which is often tougher to enter but easier to navigate, said Paul Rivers, manager of system and network security at the University of California, Berkeley. “We treat the overall Berkeley network as just as hostile as the Internet outside.”   Berkeley’s cybersecurity budget, already in the millions of dollars, has doubled since last year, responding to what Larry Conrad, the associate vice chancellor and chief information officer, said were “millions of attempted break-ins every single week.”   Mr. Shaw, said his university was spending more than $1 million to upgrade computer security in just one program, which works with infectious diseases.   Along with increased spending has come an array of policy changes, often after consultation with the F.B.I. Every research university contacted said it was in frequent contact with the bureau, which has programs specifically to advise universities on safeguarding data. The F.B.I. did not respond to requests to discuss those efforts.   Not all of the potential threats are digital. In April, a researcher from China who was working at the University of Wisconsin’s medical school was arrested and charged with trying to steal a cancer-fighting compound and related data.   Last year, Mr. Mellon said, Wisconsin began telling faculty members not to take their laptops and cellphones abroad, for fear of hacking. Most universities have not gone that far, but many say they have become more vigilant about urging professors to follow federal rules that prohibit taking some kinds of sensitive data out of the country, or have imposed their own restrictions, tighter than the government’s. Still others require that employees returning from abroad have their computers scrubbed by professionals.   That kind of precaution has been standard for some corporations and government agencies for a few years, but it is newer to academia.   Information officers say they have also learned the hard way that when a software publisher like Oracle or Microsoft announces that it has discovered a security vulnerability and has developed a “patch” to correct it, systems need to apply the patch right away. As soon as such a hole is disclosed, hacker groups begin designing programs to take advantage of it, hoping to release new attacks before people and organizations get around to installing the patch.   “The time between when a vulnerability is announced and when we see attempts to exploit it has become extremely small,” said Mr. Conrad, of Berkeley. “It’s days. Sometimes hours.”
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