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Durbin Meets With Rural Health Care Providers

9 months 1 week ago
WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) today met with Illinois members of the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) to speak about the challenges of providing health care in rural communities. During their meeting, Durbin and the health care leaders discussed the importance of preserving Medicaid funding from Republican proposals to cut health insurance benefits and coverage from millions of Americans. They also discussed workforce initiatives to recruit and retain health care providers to serve in rural areas. To help address the shortage of health care professionals, Durbin secured $1 billion in the American Rescue Plan for scholarship and loan repayment awards through the National Health Service Corps and Nurse Corps to build a more diverse pipeline of clinicians and recruit more health providers to serve in shortage areas. Durbin also spoke about his Rural Hospital Closure Relief Act , which he introduced earlier this week. The bipartisan legislation

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Maryville Opens New Baseball Facility

9 months 1 week ago
From West Newsmagazine:  Maryville University has opened its state-of-the-art baseball facility. The newly constructed facility, built on-site, features new home and visitor dugouts, an indoor hitting facility with team meeting space, updated spectator seating, and bold branding that highlights Saints pride and the home-field advantage. The upgrades are part of Maryville’s broader vision to provide […]
Kacey Crawley

Secret U.K. spy order imperils press freedom

9 months 1 week ago

New revelations by The Washington Post about a secret spying order in the U.K. should ring alarm bells for journalists everywhere.

On Friday, the Post reported that the U.K. government obtained a secret order requiring Apple to create a “back door” that allows security officials to retrieve all content uploaded to the cloud by any Apple user worldwide. The order doesn’t just require Apple to turn over data from a specific account for a specific criminal case; rather, it “requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material.”

The target of the order is reportedly Apple’s Advanced Data Protection setting, which uses end-to-end encryption to protect certain data stored in a user’s iCloud account, including notes, photos, and iMessage backups.

If you’re a journalist who follows digital security tips from Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), Advanced Data Protection should sound familiar. FPF and other experts frequently recommend that journalists enable it to protect against data breaches, hacking, and government orders demanding journalists’ data. Because Advanced Data Protection end-to-end encrypts more data stored in iCloud, Apple simply doesn’t have access to it and cannot turn it over when governments come knocking or criminals break down the doors.

Why would journalists in the U.K. need to worry about legal orders for their iCloud data? Perhaps because of the U.K.’s excessively harsh secrecy laws that have been used to target the press. Politicians are constantly trying to expand those laws in ways that would criminalize whistleblowing and journalism. Not to mention the fact that the U.K. has illegally spied on journalists to try to uncover their confidential sources in the recent past.

And it’s not just U.K. journalists who need to be concerned. As others have pointed out, once the U.K. claims this power, it will be a hop, skip, and a jump to other countries — including authoritarian ones or ones on their way there — demanding similar powers. It’s not hard to imagine what Russia, China, or the Trump administration would do with a built-in back door that allows them to spy on the encrypted iCloud backups of journalists, dissidents, and government critics.

The U.K. could also use these powers to target journalists in other countries. According to news reports, the U.K. government could issue demands for the data of any iCloud user, not just U.K. citizens, and Apple would be legally prohibited from telling the targeted user about the order.

In theory, then, the U.K. could compel Apple to turn over the iCloud data of journalists living and working in other countries with stronger protections for freedom of the press. The journalists may not know their data has been demanded, so they wouldn’t be able to fight back in court.

It’s not hard to imagine what Russia, China, or the Trump administration would do with a built-in back door that allows them to spy on the encrypted iCloud backups of journalists

That will leave journalists in the U.K. and around the world much less able to protect their confidential data, including the identities of confidential sources. That’s a huge problem for the public’s right to know. Sources who need anonymity won’t be as likely to come forward if they know that governments can glean their identities by spying on journalists.

Case in point: This very news story. We only know about the secret U.K. surveillance order because unnamed sources spoke to journalist Joseph Menn at The Washington Post. U.K. law makes it a crime to reveal it.

If the U.K. government could go digging through Menn’s encrypted iCloud data (or other encrypted services, should the U.K. expand its back door demands) to try to find out his sources’ identities so it can criminally prosecute them, those people will be much less likely to blow the whistle.

Legal demands for data aren’t the only concern for journalists as a result of the U.K.’s order. Bad actors may also try to take advantage of any back door built for the U.K. government by targeting it for hacking. That’s exactly what China did to the legal back door built into the U.S. telecommunications system, which inspired the FBI to encourage Americans to (surprise!) use encryption. The result is a loss of security for journalists and everyone else who relies on Advanced Data Protection.

But foreign governments and hackers may not even need to come in the back door as a result of the U.K. order. Apple is reportedly likely to stop offering Advanced Data Protection in the U.K. rather than comply with the order and break its promise to users that their iCloud data is secure. That’s the right move, and it’s admirable that Apple is refusing to lie to its U.K. users. But it also means that the U.K. government may just have ensured that its own citizens don’t have access to the most secure way to store their iCloud data.

All of this to say, the U.K. is in cloud cuckoo land if it really believes this order will make its citizens safer. The U.K.’s demand that Apple break iCloud encryption by adding a back door is a gift to hackers and dictators around the world, at the expense of U.K. citizens and journalists everywhere.

Caitlin Vogus

Downtown Developer Buys Washington Avenue Apartments

9 months 1 week ago
From St. Louis Business Journal:  St. Louis real estate firm Oliver Properties has expanded its downtown holdings by acquiring another apartment building along Washington Avenue. Oliver Properties has added the Bee Hat Lofts, 612 N. 11th St., located at the intersection of 11th Street and Washington Avenue, to its residential portfolio. Oliver Properties, which owns […]
Kacey Crawley

Emerson’s Former Ferguson Campus Up for Sale

9 months 1 week ago
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch:  The former longtime headquarters of industrial technology company Emerson has hit the market. The 217-acre campus, off West Florissant and Lucas and Hunt Road in Ferguson, features 11 buildings spanning nearly a million square feet of space. The property boasts four tennis courts, two softball fields, a helipad, playground and proximity […]
Kacey Crawley