ENHANCING TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY AT NSF

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

New Steps to Enhance Transparency and Accountability at the National Science Foundation

Important Notice No. 137

January 13, 2015

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO PRESIDENTS OF UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES AND HEADS OF OTHER NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION GRANTEE ORGANIZATIONS

Subject: New Steps to Enhance Transparency and Accountability at the National Science Foundation

Over the last year, the National Science Foundation has taken new steps to enhance transparency and accountability. This notice focuses on efforts to clarify NSF's award abstracts, which serve a different purpose than the project summary that is submitted as part of a proposal.

Effective December 26, 2014, NSF's updated Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) (NSF 15-1) includes the following statement about award abstracts: "Should a proposal be recommended for award, the PI (Principal Investigator) may be contacted by the NSF Program Officer for assistance in preparation of the public award abstract and its title. An NSF award abstract, with its title, is an NSF document that describes the project and justifies the expenditure of Federal funds."

While our update to the PAPPG clarifies the possible role of the PI in helping NSF prepare award abstracts, NSF would like to share the Foundation's guidelines about NSF award abstracts with the science, engineering and education communities to help improve communication about the nature of the award to the public.

The NSF public award abstract consists of both a nontechnical and technical component. The nontechnical component of the NSF award abstract must:

explain the project's significance and importance; and
serve as a public justification for NSF funding by articulating how the project serves the national interest, as stated by NSF's mission: to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; or to secure the national defense.
By sharing these guidelines, NSF is clarifying the nature of requested assistance from PIs in this valuable effort in helping the agency adhere to its newly established guidelines. This collaborative effort also helps foster stronger public communication about the value of federal investments in fundamental research.

France A. Córdova
/s/
Director

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION SAYS DATA BROKERS NEED TO BE MORE TRANSPARENT

FROM:  U.S. FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION 

FTC Recommends Congress Require the Data Broker Industry to be More Transparent and Give Consumers Greater Control Over Their Personal Information

Agency Report Shows Data Brokers Collect and Store Billions of Data Elements Covering Nearly Every U.S. Consumer

In a report issued today on the data broker industry, the Federal Trade Commission finds that data brokers operate with a fundamental lack of transparency. The Commission recommends that Congress consider enacting legislation to make data broker practices more visible to consumers and to give consumers greater control over the immense amounts of personal information about them collected and shared by data brokers.

The report, “Data Brokers: A Call for Transparency and Accountability” is the result of a study of nine data brokers, representing a cross-section of the industry, undertaken by the FTC to shed light on the data broker industry. Data brokers obtain and share vast amounts of consumer information, typically behind the scenes, without consumer knowledge. Data brokers sell this information for marketing campaigns and fraud prevention, among other purposes. Although consumers benefit from data broker practices which, for example, help enable consumers to find and enjoy the products and services they prefer, data broker practices also raise privacy concerns.

“The extent of consumer profiling today means that data brokers often know as much – or even more – about us than our family and friends, including our online and in-store purchases, our political and religious affiliations, our income and socioeconomic status, and more,” said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. “It’s time to bring transparency and accountability to bear on this industry on behalf of consumers, many of whom are unaware that data brokers even exist.”

The report finds that data brokers collect and store billions of data elements covering nearly every U.S. consumer. Just one of the data brokers studied holds information on more than 1.4 billion consumer transactions and 700 billion data elements and another adds more than 3 billion new data points to its database each month.

Among the report’s findings:

Data brokers collect consumer data from extensive online and offline sources, largely without consumers’ knowledge, ranging from consumer purchase data, social media activity, warranty registrations, magazine subscriptions, religious and political affiliations, and other details of consumers’ everyday lives.
Consumer data often passes through multiple layers of data brokers sharing data with each other. In fact, seven of the nine data brokers in the Commission study had shared information with another data broker in the study.

Data brokers combine online and offline data to market to consumers online.
Data brokers combine and analyze data about consumers to make inferences about them, including potentially sensitive inferences such as those related to ethnicity, income, religion, political leanings, age, and health conditions. Potentially sensitive categories from the study are “Urban Scramble” and “Mobile Mixers,” both of which include a high concentration of Latinos and African-Americans with low incomes. The category “Rural Everlasting” includes single men and women over age 66 with “low educational attainment and low net worths.” Other potentially sensitive categories include health-related topics or conditions, such as pregnancy, diabetes, and high cholesterol.

Many of the purposes for which data brokers collect and use data pose risks to consumers, such as unanticipated uses of the data. For example, a category like “Biker Enthusiasts” could be used to offer discounts on motorcycles to a consumer, but could also be used by an insurance provider as a sign of risky behavior.

Some data brokers unnecessarily store data about consumers indefinitely, which may create security risks.

To the extent data brokers currently offer consumers choices about their data, the choices are largely invisible and incomplete.

To help rectify a lack of transparency about data broker industry practices, the Commission encourages Congress to consider enacting legislation that would enable consumers to learn of the existence and activities of data brokers and provide consumers with reasonable access to information about them held by these entities.

For data brokers that provide marketing products, Congress should consider legislation to:

Centralized Portal. Require the creation of a centralized mechanism, such as an Internet portal, where data brokers can identify themselves, describe their information collection and use practices, and provide links to access tools and opt- outs;

Access. Require data brokers to give consumers access to their data, including any sensitive data, at a reasonable level of detail;

Opt-Outs. Require opt-out tools, that is, a way for consumers to suppress the use of their data;

Inferences. Require data brokers to tell consumers that they derive certain inferences from from raw data;

Data Sources. Require data brokers to disclose the names and/or categories of their data sources, to enable consumers to correct wrong information with an original source;

Notice and Choice. Require consumer-facing entities – such as retailers – to provide prominent notice to consumers when they share information with data brokers, along with the ability to opt-out of such sharing; and Sensitive Data. Further protect sensitive information, including health information, by requiring retailers and other consumer-facing entities to obtain affirmative express consent from consumers before such information is collected and shared with data brokers.

For brokers that provide “risk mitigation” products, legislation should:

When a company uses a data broker’s risk mitigation product to limit a consumers’ ability to complete a transaction, require the consumer-facing company to tell consumers which data broker’s information the company relied on;
Require the data broker to allow consumer access to the information used and the ability to correct it, as appropriate.

For brokers that provide “people search” products, legislation should:

Require data brokers to allow consumers to access their own information, opt-out of having the information included in a people search product, disclose the original sources of the information so consumers can correct it, and disclose any limitations of an opt-out feature.    
           
The nine data brokers in the study are Acxiom, CoreLogic, Datalogix, eBureau, ID Analytics, Intelius, PeekYou, Rapleaf and Recorded Future. In December 2012, the Commission voted to issue orders requiring these data brokers to produce the information that was used in the study.

The Commission vote approving the issuance of the report was 4-0, with Commissioner McSweeny not participating.

U.S. EXPLANATION FOR UN VOTE ON SYRIA

 FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT

Explanation of Vote by Ambassador Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, On the Security Council Vote on Syria

Samantha Power

U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations 

New York, NY, United States

May 22, 2014

AS DELIVERED

Thank you. Today is about accountability for crimes so extensive, so deadly, that they have few equals in modern history. Today is about accountability for Syria. But it is also about accountability for this Security Council.

It is this Council’s responsibility to stop atrocities if we can and – at a minimum – to ensure that the perpetrators of atrocities are held accountable. It was toward that minimum that we sought to make progress today. My government applauds the vast majority of members of this Council who voted to support – and the some 64 countries who joined us in co-sponsoring – this effort to refer these atrocities to the International Criminal Court.

Sadly, because of the decision by the Russian Federation to back the Syrian regime no matter what it does, the Syrian people will not see justice today. They will see crime, but not punishment.

On April 15th, the members of this Council were briefed on a report that included 55,000 gruesome photos of the emaciated and tortured bodies of dead Syrians, who world-renowned international lawyers concluded had been methodically eliminated by a government killing machine. The pictures were reportedly provided by an individual – alias “Caesar” – who worked for 13 years as part of the Syrian military police. When the fighting began, he says that he was instructed to record the images of people starved, beaten, tortured, and executed by Syria’s security forces.

These photos shock and horrify, even after some of us wondered if there was anything the regime could do that would still shock. Syrian soldiers already had compelled doctors not to care for the wounded, dragged patients out of hospital beds, laid siege to whole neighborhoods, cut off access to desperately-needed supplies, and carried out chemical weapons attacks and barrel bomb attacks with the full confidence that meaningful action by this Council would be obstructed.

A judicial process does more than hold perpetrators accountable. It also allows victims to speak. The vetoes today have prevented the victims of atrocities from testifying at The Hague for now. But nonetheless it is important for us here today to hear the kind of testimony we might have heard if Russia and China had not raised their hands to oppose accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Because of the vetoes just cast, one of Assad’s victims, Qusai Zakariya, will not soon be called to testify before the International Criminal Court. But Qusai’s story of life in Moadamiya during the siege, as hard as it is to hear, must be heard. Qusai Zakariya is here with us today, and I’d like to ask him to stand.

Today I will tell Qusai’s story, as he told it to us. Qusai’s home, Moadamiya, just outside of Damascus, was one of the Assad regime's prime targets. During the August 2013 chemical weapons attacks, Quasi ran out to the street and tried to help his neighbors. He quickly lost his ability to breathe. His eyes afire, Qusai’s heart stopped and he was left for dead until a friend stumbled upon him and realized he had again begun breathing. Qusai recounts his bewilderment as he watched neighbors suffocate, friends panic, and families perish. He remembers the face of a 13 year old boy just a few feet from his home. He describes the boy as “so innocent.” He recalls, “He had done nothing.” Yet the expression on this 13 year old’s face was the most terrifying thing Qusai has ever seen, as white foam streamed from his mouth and death crept in.

If Qusai could testify, he might tell the story of his neighbor, Abu Mohammed, a waiter in Damascus while his wife and daughter lived in Moadamiya. Abu Mohammed’s daughter was 7 years old. She had a heart condition that required medication not available in besieged Moadamiya. So Abu Mohammed did what any father would do and attempted to bring her medicine from Damascus. He was captured by Assad’s mercenaries, tortured with acid, and ultimately killed. His body was thrown on Highway 40. And without medicine to treat her heart condition, Abu Mohammed’s 7 year old daughter died.

Qusai might also tell the story of Rana, an 18 month old baby girl. Rana’s dad ran a grocery store before the siege. After the siege, he watched as his daughter Rana died from malnutrition because she couldn’t get milk that used to sit on his store’s shelves.

Qusai has said that when he walks around the United States, he notices people in restaurants, getting on with day to day life. He notices the small leftovers we leave on our plates. And he remembers watching his neighbors desperation to get a small piece of rotten bread in Moadamiya.

Qusai’s account of his experiences in Moadamiya deserves to be heard. It deserves to be examined by an independent court. And if crimes are proven, those responsible deserve to be held accountable. The vetoes cast today prevent that from happening. Strikingly, the vetoes cast today also protect monstrous terrorist organizations operating in Syria. Those who would behead civilians and attack religious minorities will not soon be held accountable at the ICC either. For Russia and China’s vetoes today protect not only Assad and his henchmen, but also the radical Islamic terrorists who are pursuing a fundamentalist assault on the Syrian people that knows no decency or humanity. These vetoes have aided impunity not just for Assad, but for terrorist groups as well.

In the past, when extraordinary crimes have been carried out, the International Criminal Court has been able to act. Why is it that the people of Uganda, Darfur, Libya, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, and Kenya deserve international, impartial justice, but the Syrian people do not? Why should the International Criminal Court pursue accountability for atrocities in Africa but none in Syria where the worst horrors of our time are being perpetrated? For those who have asked the Security Council this very reasonable question, today you have your answer: the Russian and Chinese vetoes.

Our grandchildren will ask us years from now how we could have failed to bring justice to people living in hell on earth. The history books may well depict photos taken by “Caesar” of emaciated, acid-scarred corpses juxtaposed next to a photo of the two members of this Council who prevented justice for victims like Qusai who long to see the end of such horrors.

Today is therefore about accountability, not just for the victims of Assad’s regime, not just for Qusai and his neighbors in Moadamiya, but for the members of this Security Council. Month after month, and year after year, we have each spoken about the importance of justice and the need for accountability in Syria. Victims and survivors have begged for action and cried for justice. The international community has supported ad hoc efforts to collect evidence, to record testimony. We’ve launched commissions of inquiry to find facts, and we’ve held meeting after meeting. But we have not, before today, brought forward a resolution to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court. We have not done so because we were afraid that it would be vetoed.

But the victims of the Assad regimes’ industrial killing machine and the victims of terrorist attacks deserve more than to have more dead counted. They deserve to have each of us, the members of this Security Council, counted and held to account. They deserve to have history record those who stood with them, and those who were willing to raise their hands to deny them a chance at justice. While there may be no ICC accountability today for the horrific crimes being carried out against the Syrian people, there should be accountability for those members of this Council that have prevented accountability.

Now, the representatives from Syria, and perhaps Russia, may suggest that the resolution voted on today was biased. And I agree – it was biased in the direction of establishing facts; tilted, as well, in the direction of peace – the peace that comes from holding individuals – not whole groups, not “Allawites,” not “Sunni,” not “Kurds,” but individuals – accountable.

The outcome of today’s vote, disappointing as it is, will not end our pursuit of justice. My government will continue to work with so many other governments and organizations to encourage and facilitate the further gathering of evidence. There is no limit to our determination to see that the victims of atrocities in Syria, and their loved ones, receive answers in accordance with the majesty of law. In this quest, we will be guided by a fundamental principle of civilization, a principle that has truly stood the test of time. And I quote: “Those who are not wronged, no less than those who are wronged, must exert themselves to punish the wrongdoers,” end quote. So said Solon, the Athenian sage, more than 2500 years ago; and so affirmed the overwhelming majority of this Council today.

Thank you.

GSA, DOD REPORT ON ACQUISITION AND CYBERSECURITY ALIGNMENT

FROM:  GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION 
GSA and DoD Announce Acquisition Cybersecurity and Resilience Recommendations

Washington, DC --- The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Administrator Dan Tangherlini, and the Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, today announced six planned reforms to improve the cybersecurity and resilience of the Federal Acquisition System.

The jointly issued Department of Defense (DoD) and GSA report,  Improving Cybersecurity and Resilience through Acquisition, was submitted to the President in accordance with Section 8(e) of Executive Order (EO) 13636.

Recommended Reforms

The report provides a path forward to aligning Federal cybersecurity risk management and acquisition processes.  It provides strategic recommendations for addressing relevant issues, suggests how challenges might be resolved, and identifies important considerations for the implementation of the recommendations.
The six recommended reforms are the following:

Institute baseline cybersecurity requirements as a condition of contract award for appropriate acquisitions
Include cybersecurity in acquisition trainings
Develop common cybersecurity definitions for federal acquisitions
Institute a federal acquisition cyber risk management strategy
Include a requirement to purchase from original equipment manufacturers, their authorized resellers, or other trusted sources
Increase government accountability for cyber risk management
The report is one component of the government-wide implementation of EO 13636 and Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 21, and was prepared by a working group comprised of subject matter experts selected from across the Federal government.

The working group benefitted from a high level of engagement from public and private sector stakeholders, and the report provides realistic recommendations that will improve the cybersecurity and resilience of the nation when implemented.

DoD and GSA are committed to implementing the recommendations through integration with the numerous ongoing related activities like supply chain threat assessments and anti-counterfeiting.

The agencies will use a structured approach, with continued dedication to stakeholder engagement, and develop a repeatable process to address cyber risks in the development, acquisition, sustainment, and disposal lifecycles for all Federal procurements.  The implementation will also harmonize the recommendations with existing risk management processes under Federal Information Security Management Act and OMB guidance.


GSA Administrator Dan Tangherlini weighs in:
“The ultimate goal of the recommendations is to strengthen the federal government’s cybersecurity by improving management of the people, processes, and technology affected by the Federal Acquisition System. GSA and the Department of Defense will use continue to engage stakeholders to develop a repeatable process to address cyber risks in the development, acquisition, sustainment, and disposal lifecycles for all Federal procurements.”

A request for public comment on the draft implementation plan will be published in the Federal Register next month.