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WASHINGTON - Congressman Ted W. Lieu (D | Los Angeles County) sent a letter to Secretary John Kerry urging the State Department to request that Japanese authorities investigate and prosecute Olympus for civil or criminal misconduct in their mishandling of antibiotic-resistant bacteria infections caused by their medical devices.
The letter reads:
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Amnesty International has accused the U.S. of “deadly hypocrisy” for its massive arms deals with Middle East governments that have carried out war crimes and other violations of international law.
“One of the unspoken legacies of the Obama administration is the extraordinary uptake in the amount of U.S. weapons and military aid that are provided to major U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt that have terrible records when it comes to human rights,” explained Sunjeev Bery in an interview with Salon.
U.S. Representative Ted W. Lieu, from the 33rd District of California, called on the FCC to expedite the investigation it started on the Signaling System Seven (SS7) earlier this this April. The call comes after recent reports of alleged Russian hacking of members of the U.S. Congress.
The reported hack exposed the phone numbers of 180 members of Congress, among other sensitive information. Due to the SS7 flaw, it should now be relatively easy, especially for state-sponsored attackers, to intercept all of the conversations and messages sent by those phone numbers.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) is calling on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to accelerate its investigation of the Signal System 7 (SS7) flaw.
In a public letter to FCC Chairman Thomas Wheeler, Lieu asked the agency head to “expedite” the ongoing investigation into the vulnerability. He warned that the “problem is no longer a theoretical threat,” noting that a breach of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) earlier this month released mobile phone numbers of House Democrats.
Hundreds of members of Congress may have had all of their cellular voice and text data intercepted by foreign governments before a leak of their information came to light this month, Rep. Ted Lieu said Wednesday.
A documented weakness in Signaling System 7 has been shown to allow widespread interception of phone calls and text messages (SS7 is the public switched telephone network signaling protocol used to set up and route phone calls; it also allows for things like phone number portability). This weakness in SS7 can even undermine the security of encrypted messaging systems such as WhatsApp and Telegram.
Congress urged to investigate security concerns raised by Apple flaws used by ‘digital arms dealers’
Rep. Ted Lieu, who has a degree is computer science, urged his colleagues Thursday to hold a hearing on mobile phone security after Apple rushed to repair critical iPhone vulnerabilities reportedly being leveraged by state-sponsored hackers.
The California Democrat was among the first lawmakers to formally weigh in this week after Apple asked its users to install an iPhones update that patches previously undisclosed security flaws affecting iOS 9.
Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., asked the FCC this week to step up its investigation of a Signaling System Seven (SS7) flaw following reports of alleged Russian hacking of members of the U.S. Congress.
The weakness in SS7 came to light again in April when CBS’ 60 Minutes reported that hackers need nothing more than a phone number to listen to phone calls, read text messages and track users’ location. The hack was demonstrated by security researcher Karsten Nohl, who tracked a new iPhone that 60 Minutes gave to Lieu for the broadcast.
As I have written recently, the $70 billion-per year global arms trade doesn’t get nearly enough coverage given its size, scope and devastating consequences. But a new report by the London-based charity Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) offers an important exception to that rule.