Thousands of travelers were stranded at airports during delays and subsequent chaos on Monday evening as the computer system for customs screenings went down in several cities. The system was only out of service for a few hours, from about 5 to 9 p.m., but since it was one of the busiest travel days of the year, the impact was profound. As the computer system for screening people was down, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers used “alternative procedures” to vet international travelers. The agency’s spokesman Daniel Hetlage said that officers had access to national security databases the whole time and that they screened all travelers properly according to safety standards.

Passengers on more than 30 flights that arrived at Miami International Airport were affected. In Atlanta, the outage “only” lasted for an hour and a half. In Salt Lake City, airport staff didn’t know where to put all the people to wait. “Delta had us all line up after we landed and it took a while before customs was even able to find us a place where we could wait because the airport is so small,” said passenger Jennifer Powers-Johnson to CNN.

The problems also hit San Francisco, Boston, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and New York’s JFK Airport. As people were coming back home from the holiday weekend and preparing to go back to school and work the day after, this was not a welcome surprise  and many travelers took to Twitter to express their frustration.

US Customs is down and this is the back of the line Atlanta #atl pic.twitter.com/RHcB8Fh4HF

— Darrellkc (@hamptonsunset) January 2, 2017

One passenger wrote on Twitter that two people had passed out because of the heat and humidity in the Miami airport.

@AmericanAir feeling a warm welcome here in Miami. Standstill at the passport control, and we’ve barely moved for half an hour. Please help! pic.twitter.com/gmKqPdWCDU

— Carlos Rico (@carlosrico011) January 2, 2017

According to the New York Daily News, a spokeswoman from the CBP, who remained anonymous, didn’t explain what could have caused the computer glitch, but she said, “CBP officers continue to process international travelers using alternative procedures until systems are back online.” She added that they were “working to process travelers as quickly as possible while maintaining the highest levels of security.” The CBP then sent out a tweet around 10:30 p.m., saying that the system was back online. But by then, most passengers already had been informed, and were delayed or had missed connecting flights.

All airports are back on line after a temporary outage of #CBP’s processing systems. No indication the disruption was malicious in nature.

— CBP (@CustomsBorder) January 3, 2017

Roger Dow, CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, did not think the incident came as a surprise. He said:

What happened at Customs airport checkpoints yesterday is disturbing, but unfortunately it is not surprising. Technology at these facilities is too outdated to cope with existing travel volume, let alone the increased traffic we hope and expect to see at our gateway airports in years to come.

Maybe we all have to prepare for more complicated and lengthy travel procedures in the coming years.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The newest update to Windows is here, complete with a pretty unique feature. The newest version of the system will send weekly “activity updates” on children’s accounts to their parents, allowing the parents to see their browsing histories and usage. But Window’s new parental control feature is a potentially dangerous invasion of privacy for young people.

The feature, according to Business Insider, is automatically turned on for family accounts on a computer running Windows 10. Each week, the parental account will get an email with information about the activity on the child’s account. As Microsoft put it on its website:

When you add a child’s Microsoft account to your family, you’ll get regular activity report emails summarizing how much time they spent on the PC, the websites they visited, the games and apps they used, and the terms they’ve looked up in search engines like Bing, Google, or Yahoo! Search.

But the internet has long been a valuable resource for young people to explore parts of the world on their own. It allows young people to connect with others outside of their immediate area and discover new hobbies or interests.

The internet has also been a particularly important resource for LGBTQ teens who are looking for resources. Some of these teens could be accidentally outed to their parents by Window’s new service. LGBTQ youths are still subject to abuse, harassment, and rejection by their families at heartbreakingly frequent rates. The Center for American Progress reports that roughly half of LGBTQ youth face a negative reaction from their families when they come out. According to the Williams Institute, a non-profit organization that works with LGBTQ young people, roughly 40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ. For a young person who is not ready to have that conversation with his parents yet, the fact that his internet searches can out him has the potential to become incredibly dangerous and damaging.

Another big flaw in this supposed “safety feature” implemented by Windows is that it doesn’t tell the young people they are being monitored. There’s apparently a small pop up that informs the user that their use could be monitored, but there aren’t any details about what extent, or the very active way in which Microsoft informs parents.

It’s understandable that some parents would want to know what their child is looking at on the internet, but this new Windows feature could end up doing more damage than good.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Security breaches among major companies such as Target, eBay, and Neiman Marcus dominated news headlines this past year and led many to wonder about the safety of the information stored with organizations throughout the United States. The statistics from the May 2014 US State of Cybercrime Survey are far from reassuring.

The survey, a combined effort of PwC, CSO magazine, the CERT Division of the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, and the US Secret Service, states that the number of cybercrime incidents and the fiscal losses they incur are rapidly rising. The findings reveal that this is mainly because the companies could not adequately defend themselves from cyber-attacks. According to the 2014 survey, the top five methods for cyber-attacks involve malware, phishing (the attempt to acquire sensitive information such as usernames or passwords), network interruption, spyware, and denial-of-services attacks.

The report covered information from 500 different corporations and government agencies, including law enforcement, and stated that “three out of four had had some kind of security breach just in the last year, and the average number of incidents per organization was 135.”

Fourteen percent of those surveyed reported that monetary losses attributed to cybercrime have increased in the past year. The actual costs are generally not known, as the majority of those who reported a cyber attack were unable to estimate the associated financial costs. Of the few survey respondents that could, the average yearly loss was around $415,000. Businesses are beginning to feel that cyber security is an issue that is out of their control and that cyber attacks are costing them an increasing amount of money.

 Why the Rising Rate?

One of the major problems associated with the rising rate of cybercrime is that few companies, only 38% according to the survey, are adequately prepared to combat cybercrime. These rising rates are not simply due to inadequate defenses, but also increasingly sophisticated techniques used by cyber criminals. According to an article on Time.com, the most pertinent threats to cyber security in the United States come from Syria, Iran, China and Russia.

There are two kinds of big companies in the United States: those who’ve been hacked by the Chinese and those who don’t yet know that they’ve been hacked by the Chinese.

-FBI Director James Comey

The 2014 report lists major reasons why these attacks are on the rise. It claims that a few reasons are that most organizations do not spend enough on cybersecurity and do not properly understand cyber security risks. According to the survey, there is also a lack of collaboration among companies that have experienced a breach or other form of cyber attack, specifically that “82% of companies with strong protection against cybercrime collaborate with others to strengthen their defenses.” Other pertinent issues leading to increased cybercrime are insufficient security of mobile devices and lack of proper evaluation of attacks within organizations.

What can be Done to Lower the Rate of Cyber Attacks?

According to the 2014 survey, one major way for corporations and agencies to prevent cybercrime is through company-wide employee training which has been shown to be effective but is no currently used frequently enough. According to an article on CSO’s website, many organizations aren’t running information security training programs that are up to date. The 2014 survey recommends that the main focus of companies should be protecting the private financial information of their consumers. Perhaps as companies continue to strengthen the efforts of their cybersecurities, the rate of attacks from online adversaries will begin to lower, causing the 2015 report to reflect a decrease in cybercrime.

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Marisa Mostek (@MarisaJ44) loves globetrotting and writing, so she is living the dream by writing while living abroad in Japan and working as an English teacher. Marisa received her undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado in Boulder and a certificate in journalism from UCLA. Contact Marisa at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [geralt via Pixabay]

Marisa Mostek

Marisa Mostek loves globetrotting and writing, so she is living the dream by writing while living abroad in Japan and working as an English teacher. Marisa received her undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado in Boulder and a certificate in journalism from UCLA. Contact Marisa at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The President’s State of the Union address sounded similar to some of his previous addresses, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, who can disagree with a statement like this:

“Opportunity is who we are.  And the defining project of our generation is to restore that promise. We know where to start: the best measure of opportunity is access to a good job.”  -President Obama

Yes! Access to a good job is a great measure of opportunity, but if people are unaware of the opportunities, it’s hard to believe that they exist. There are thousands of openings in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields with some of the largest growth found in information & technology. As of 2011, STEM jobs accounted for 20 percent of all U.S. jobs and this number is predicted to increase. Some advantages of STEM jobs are that they have median pay higher than the national average, unemployment rates lower than national average, and half the jobs in these fields do not require a four-year degree.

According to a Brookings Institute report, half of all STEM jobs are in manufacturing, health care, or construction industries, with installation, maintenance, and repair occupations constituting 12 percent of all STEM jobs. These jobs are given to workers with qualified certificates or associate’s degrees, workforce training, vocational training, or community college education. These particular STEM areas are a great place to start for people who are unemployed and unable to commit to completing a four-year degree. Yes, obtaining a STEM job requires additional training and/or education, but that is the direction in which the job market has moved for nearly every field. Our options are to accept this fact, or stick our heads in the sand and see what comes of it.

“We know that the nation that goes all in on innovation today will own the global economy tomorrow. This is an edge America cannot surrender.”  – President Obama

For high school and college students, I want to tell you that technology is your friend. I’m sure you’re probably tweeting the link to my post and talking about it over Snapchat, but seriously, if you’re not considering a professional career in IT, you should really think about it. Comparatively, the unemployment rate for tech professionals in 2013 averaged 3.5 percent while the national unemployment rate was more than double that, at 7.4 percent.

According to eWeek, 54,300 new jobs were created in 2013 in the tech consulting field. These jobs include software developers, web developers, database administrators, programmers, and more.   Also, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, since July 2013, 474,800 employees voluntarily left their jobs each month. Yes you read that correctly, they voluntarily left their jobs. Some may have retired, others moved to new positions, and some could have left to start their own tech businesses. Whatever the case, they left voluntarily, and with each person that leaves, a new person has to fill that position. Between higher job turnover, and reports that companies plan to create new jobs by significant numbers,  high school and college students should investigate these upcoming opportunities. You can start by looking here at the Bureau of Labor and Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook for Computer and IT Occupations.

“Teachers and principals in schools from Tennessee to Washington, D.C. are making big strides in preparing students with skills for the new economy – problem solving, critical thinking, science, technology, engineering, and math.” – President Obama

We can’t retreat from the notion that this new economy is managed by technology and requires a more skilled and sophisticated labor force. Technology has advanced so quickly that many adults feel ill prepared for the current job market. With that said, it would be unwise to risk the future of America’s children by continuing with the same education practices that have been unsuccessful in preparing a technology-based labor force. A first step could be the passage of the STEM Gateways Act. This Act would increase funding to schools through grants for the purpose of encouraging interest and motivating engagement in STEM fields, supporting workforce training and career preparation in STEM fields, and supporting classroom success in STEM disciplines at the elementary or secondary school levels. These are the kinds of policies the President was encouraging in his State of the Union Address and STEM Gateways is the kind of policy I would like to see.

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Teerah Goodrum (@AisleNotes), is a graduate student at Howard University with a concentration in Public Administration and Public Policy.  Her time on Capitol Hill as a Science and Technology Legislative Assistant has given her insight into the tech community.  In her spare time she enjoys visiting her favorite city, Seattle, and playing fantasy football!

Featured image courtesy of [Pete Souza via Wikipedia]

Teerah Goodrum

Teerah Goodrum is a Graduate of Howard University with a Masters degree in Public Administration and Public Policy. Her time on Capitol Hill as a Science and Technology Legislative Assistant has given her insight into the tech community. In her spare time she enjoys visiting her favorite city, Seattle, and playing fantasy football. Contact Teerah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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