DOJ, CITY OF BALTIMORE REACH AGREEMENT TO PREVENT DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION

FROM:  U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT 

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Justice Department Reaches Agreement with the City of Baltimore to Prevent Disability Discrimination

City of Baltimore to Pay $65,000 in Damages and Adopt New Policies and Procedures

The Justice Department today announced that it has reached an agreement with the city of Baltimore, Maryland, to end hiring practices that discriminate against people with disabilities.  The agreement, filed as a consent decree along with a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, resolves allegations by the department that the city engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).  Title I of the ADA prohibits employers from discriminating against individuals on the basis of disability in various aspects of employment, including hiring.

The department alleges that the city required job applicants, including an individual complainant, to submit to a medical examination and answer disability-related inquiries before the city made conditional offers of employment.  Under the ADA, employers may not require applicants to submit to medical exams or answer disability-related inquiries before making conditional offers of employment.  The department also alleges that the city refused to hire the complainant for a fire dispatcher position because of her disability, even though she was already working successfully as a dispatcher elsewhere and required no accommodations.

The consent decree must be approved by the court, and requires the city to:                        
·                      pay $65,000 to the complainant in compensatory damages;
·                      adopt new policies and procedures regarding the administration of pre-employment medical examinations and inquiries;
·                      provide training on the ADA to all employees who participate in making personnel decisions related to pre-employment medical examinations and inquiries;
·                      ensure that the city’s contract with any medical examiner provides that the examiner is required to comply with the ADA in conducting medical examinations and certify that it  has reviewed ADA training materials;
·                      provide periodic reports to the department on compliance; and
·                      designate an employee to address ADA compliance matters.
“The Justice Department will not tolerate discriminatory, outdated stereotypes that prevent individuals with disabilities from being hired for positions for which they are qualified,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Molly Moran for the Civil Rights Division.

NSA LEADER WARNS OF CYBER ATTACKS AT CYBER SYMPOSIUM

FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE,

Nation Must Defend Cyber Infrastructure, Alexander Says

By Claudette Roulo
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, June 28, 2013 - The United States must have a transparent debate on how it will protect itself in cyberspace, the director of the National Security Agency said yesterday.


"It is a debate that is going to have all the key elements of the executive branch -- that's DHS, FBI, DOD, Cyber Command, NSA, and other partners -- with our allies and with industry," Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander told an audience at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association International Cyber Symposium in Baltimore.

Everyone involved must figure out how to work together as the cyber threat grows, said Alexander, who also commands U.S. Cyber Command.

In August, the Saudi Aramco oil company was hit with a destructive attack that destroyed the data on more than 30,000 systems, he said. In September, distributed denial of service attacks began on the U.S. financial sector, and a few hundred disruptive attacks have occurred since.

In March, destructive cyberattacks took place against South Korea, the general said.

"If you look at the statistics and what's going on, we're seeing an increase in the disruptive and destructive attacks. And I am concerned that those will continue," he said. "As a nation, we must be ready."

Over the past few years, there has been a convergence of analog and digital data streams, Alexander said. Now, everything is on one network -- information sent by terrorists, soldiers and school teachers travels through the same digital pipelines.

The cyber world is experiencing an exponential rate of change, he said. "It's wonderful," he added. "These capabilities, I think, are going to help us solve cancer. This is a wonderful opportunity."

But, he said, cyberspace also has vulnerabilities. "We're being attacked," Alexander said. "And we've got to figure out how to fix that."

The key to the nation's future in cyber is a defensible architecture, he said, embodied for the Defense Department by the Joint Information Environment. In that environment, mobile devices will securely connect with fixed infrastructure across the services in a way that allows the department to audit and take care of its data much better than it could do in the legacy systems, Alexander said.

The need to create one joint integrated cyber force is "a great reason for having NSA and Cyber Command collocated," Alexander said. Both are based on Fort Meade, Md.

"We can leverage the exceptional talent that the people at NSA have to help build that force," he added, "and that's superb."