90 Miles From Tyranny

Monday, August 31, 2015

Girls With Guns

Her White House campaign is said to be in 'panic' over the growing scandal which comes out of probe into US diplomats' deaths in Benghazi
Daily Mail Online can reveal Denver, Colorado, based firm was sued for illegally accessing master database of US phone numbers
It was also accused of causing chaos to White House military advisers when their numbers stopped working as it took their numbers
Case raises questions over how Platte River Networks' ability to secure server which would have been major target for foreign spy hackers

The Internet company used by Hillary Clinton to maintain her private server was sued for stealing dozens of phone lines including some which were used by the White House.

Platte River Networks is said to have illegally accessed the master database for all US phone numbers.

It also seized 390 lines in a move that created chaos across the US government.

Among the phone numbers which the company took - which all suddenly stopped working - were lines for White House military support desks, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, a lawsuit claims.

Others were the main numbers for major financial institutions, hospitals and the help desk number for T2 Communications, the telecom firm which owned them.

A lawsuit filed on behalf of T2 claims that the mess took 11 days to fix and demands that...

U.S. grads settle for lower pay amid influx of foreign tech workers...

San Diegans already know full well that foreigners are competing for their jobs. They don’t need national politicians from Donald Trump to Bernie Sanders telling them to worry.

Consider the recent blowback from layoff decisions of two prominent regional companies, Qualcomm and Southern California Edison.

The layoffs highlighted a controversial corner of immigration policy occupied by H-1B visas, which allow companies to hire foreign workers for up to six years in “specialty” occupations such as software, engineering, biotech or even fashion modeling.

Early this year, Edison began displacing about 500 information technology workers, about 100 voluntarily and 400 through layoffs. But their functions were outsourced to Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, two giant firms based in India.

Before they left, some workers were compelled to train their replacements, and some of them were foreign nationals working in the U.S.

The H-1B program “was supposed to be for projects and jobs that American workers could not fill,” one Edison worker told Computerworld, an IT news magazine. “But we’re doing our job. It’s not like they are bringing in these guys for new positions that nobody can fill. Not one of these jobs being filled by India was a job that an Edison employee wasn’t already performing.”

In response, 10 federal lawmakers asked the Department of Labor to investigate whether the H-1B program can be used to directly replace American workers. As of June, that probe was...