The Washington Post Closes a Window on Hackers and Big Government
The Washington Post is pushing back against government surveillance, hackers and other nosy folks trying to get a peek at you and your data.
Starting Tuesday it will begin to encrypt parts of its website to make it more difficult to track the reading habits of visitors. The encryption will apply to the Post’s homepage, stories on the site’s national security page and The Switch, its technology policy blog.
A display icon of a small lock in the web address bar will signal readers that pages are encrypted. In addition, the secure pages will start with the letters “https,” rather than the standard “http.”
The encryption also has the potential to make it tougher for governments to censor content. If censors are monitoring website traffic, they can see only the domain a person is visiting, not the specific page. A country would have to block the entire website if it wanted to block content.
The Post acknowledges that the additional security measures could make online advertising less attractive to companies. Advertisers might also be driven away by having to make sure their content is also secure, an extra step some companies might not be willing to take.
The Post is the first major news organization to introduce such security measures. Last fall, The New York Times published a blog post imploring websites to implement secure connections, but it has yet to follow through on its own challenge.
However, other smaller news sources, such as the Intercept and TechDirt, use https technology by default.
Encrypted traffic is becoming increasingly common for many sites, including online banking and web-based email services. Earlier this month, the Obama administration ordered all public federal websites to begin using https technology by the end of 2016.
The social media giant Facebook announced in early June that users could encrypt notifications sent from the website to a user’s personal email address, protecting potentially sensitive emails. Facebook – as well as hackers, spies and others -- will be denied access to the user’s private encryption key.
This move prevents hackers who have accessed a user’s email inbox from being able to understand emails from Facebook without knowing their private key. While a user’s activity on the actual site will not be encrypted, this announcement could be the first in a series of moves to protect Facebooks’ user privacy.
Apple and Google have also implemented more security measures for user privacy over the last year.
Maybe Don’t Count Out Obamacare Repeal Just Yet
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) told reporters on Friday that he’s getting close to securing enough votes to pass the last-ditch ACA repeal and replacement bill he’s put forth with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Dean Heller (R-NV) and Ron Johnson (R-WI).
“I am pretty confident we’ll get there on the Republican side,” Cassidy said. “We’re probably at 48-49 [votes] and talking to two or three more.” And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has asked the Congressional Budget Office to estimate the effects of the Cassidy-Graham bill, which would speed up the scoring process.
Of course, those last two or three votes have been the challenge for the GOP all along, and they may not be any easier to round up this time. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who voted for a prior repeal bill, said Friday that he won't support this one. Plus, opponents are already stepping up their criticisms about the effects of the bill. And time is running out: Cassidy and his colleagues only have until September 30 to pass the bill this year under a process that would require only 50 supporters in the Senate. So while the Obamacare repeal may still have life, it remains a longshot.
Orrin Hatch Signals Just How Complicated Tax Reform Will Be
GOP leaders said Wednesday that they'd issue a more detailed framework of their tax overhaul the week of September 25. But while lawmakers are eager to get more details about the outline being hashed out by the so-called Big Six team of negotiators, Republicans are still divided on key elements of the plan — going from blueprint to bill is bound to be a contentious process.
In his opening remarks at a Senate Finance Committee hearing today on individual tax reform, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said the plan from the Big Six — of which he is one — "will not dictate the direction" the tax-writing committee takes. "Anyone with any experience with the Senate Finance Committee knows that we are not anyone’s rubber stamp," he said. "If a bill – particularly on something as consequential as tax reform – is going to pass in this committee, the members of the committee will have to be involved in putting it together."
Oh, and remember: Republicans also need to agree on a budget before they can push through tax reform without Democratic votes.
Aging Baby Boomers Drive Down the Uninsured Rate
About 10,000 boomers turn 65 every day, becoming eligible for Medicare on their birthdays. The Census Bureau says that the sheer number of boomers entering Medicare is affecting the uninsured rate for the whole population. That rate fell to 8.8 percent in 2016, down from 9.1 percent a year earlier, with most of the decline driven by the aging of the post-war generation. (Wall Street Journal)
Social Security Kept 26.1 Million Out of Poverty Last Year
Social Security kept more than 26 million people out of poverty last year, according to a new report from the Census Bureau. Refundable tax credits such as the one for earned income kept 8.2 million people out of poverty, while food stamps lifted 3.6 million above the line, housing subsidies reduced the number of poor people by 3.1 million and unemployment insurance kept 680,000 out of poverty. Overall, the Census Bureau reported, the poverty rate was 12.7 percent, while a more sophisticated alternative measure that factors in government programs for low-income families put the rate at 13.9 percent, down from 14.5 percent in 2015.
Read more about the new Census Bureau numbers here.
Tax Reform on Menu for Trump's Dinner with Dems
President Trump is set to host three moderate Democratic senators for dinner on Tuesday as part of his push for tax reform, Politico reports. The Democrats on the guest list: Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana, all of whom are up for reelection in 2018 in states Trump won last November. Vice President Mike Pence and GOP Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah, John Thune of South Dakota and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania are also slated to attend.