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National Stories
The Homeland Security Department abruptly reversed course Wednesday and dropped plans to ask a private company to give the government access to a nationwide database of license plate tracking information. Secretary Jeh Johnson directed that a contract proposal issued last week be canceled.
USA Today
With an effective date about a month away, some doctor groups are cautious about how a new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services policy on the release of Medicare payment data will impact members. “We'll have to wait to see how CMS uses this new authority,” Reid Blackwelder, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, told Bloomberg BNA. “Our hope is that researchers use this data to understand and improve how health care dollars are spent.”
Bloomberg BNA
A release of 27,000 emails and hundreds of court documents on Wednesday portrays Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a Republican from Wisconsin, as having presided over an office where aides used personal computers and email to conceal that they were mixing government and campaign business. The conduct of campaign work on government time led to the criminal convictions of two aides and several others. Mr. Walker, who has for years denied wrongdoing, was never charged.
New York Times
A data breach at the University of Maryland has left some 300,000 staff members and former and present students exposed, with their personal information — including Social Security numbers — stolen and floating around unknown locations. “Computer forensic investigators are examining the breached files and logs to determine how our sophisticated, multilayered security defenses were bypassed,” said university President Wallace Loh in a letter reported by the New York Daily News. “Further, we are initiating steps to ensure there is no repeat of this breach.”
Washington Times
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission will propose new rules to encourage equal access to the web, by pushing Internet providers to keep their pipelines free and open. The proposal on so-called net neutrality, to be introduced by Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the commission, will prohibit broadband companies from blocking any sites or services from consumers.
New York Times
Following the leaks of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the U.S. government has released a treasure trove of classified documents in a bid to quell public dissent. But answers to key questions about NSA surveillance have been blacked out from these thousands of pages of once-secret documents, as shown in this WIRED photo gallery.
Wired
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