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Top Stories: Dec. 23, 2009Thief Strikes SJSU Bandroom; Second Harvest Needs Food for Needy; Reassessment Taking Timeby Danny Wool on Dec 23, 2009Silicon Valley Exec on His Way to the White House Howard A. Schmidt, former Chief Information Security Officer for eBay and Microsoft, will be heading to Washington to serve as the country's Cybersecurity Czar. Before Glenn Beck jumps in on the news, it should be noted that Schmidt also served as a cybersecurity adviser to President George W. Bush and has experience in law enforcement and defense. According to White House officials, President Obama was personally involved in the arduous selection process, which lasted about ten months. In a White House video introducing himself to the nation, Schmidt quoted the President as saying that "This cyberthreat represents one of the most serious economic and national challenges we face as a nation." Most recently, news reports showed how Iraqi insurgents have been able to intercept and follow live feeds from military drones with just $26 worth of off-the-shelf equipment, such as such as SkyGrabber. In an interview on the Rachel Maddow Show, Noah Shachtman of Wired Magazine's Danger Zone blog said that the drones and receivers are not encrypted, adding that "It may take years to solve this problem." And that is just one problem that Schmidt faces in his new position. While hostile states are using hackers to steal state secrets from the federal government, cybercriminals are investing more and more money and efforts into technologies to steal personal information from government files. With all this ahead, Schmidt certainly has his work cut out for him. Read More at NBC Bay Area. Read More at the Business Journal. The Night the Music Died at SJSU The music came to an abrupt halt at SJSU yesterday. Thieves broke into the trailers where the Spartan Marching Band stores its instruments and stole eight saxophones and two trombones, valued at $20,000. Making matters worse, the instruments were not insured, meaning that unless the instruments are recovered soon, the band will not be playing on. Police are worried that the instruments will not show up soon. They are clearly marked as Spartan property and each contains a serial number, which will make it difficult for the thieves to sell them off at pawn shops. Instead police believe that they will be melted down and sold as scrap metal. For now, the band is looking for donations to cover the cost of the missing instruments. Luckily, they still have a few months to go. Band director Scott Pierson says that the next time they will need the instruments will be in August, as they prepare for the coming football season. Still, the Spartans would really appreciate it if Santa found a spare sax or two in his sled this Christmas. Read More at ABC 7. Read More at the Mercury News. Second Harvest Food Drive Falling Short For many families in San Jose, the best Christmas gift this year would be food. Unfortunately, groups like Second Harvest are falling short with supplies this year. Although it is common for food pantries to issue a last minute appeal in the days leading up to Christmas, it has been years since stocks were so depleted, and the food just wasn’t there. Second Harvest had hoped to raise $10 million and 2 million pounds of food, but because of the recession, it has only collected $4.1 million and 685,000 pounds of food. The shortage is coming at a time when Second Harvest is feeding more people than ever before. In November, 272,000 people received food from the group, the highest number since it was founded 35 years ago. Read More at ABC 7. Property Tax Reassessments Will Take Longer than Planned There's some bad news for property owners in Santa Clara County. Though the county has automatically reassessed the taxes on 90,000 properties—20 percent of all properties in the county—there are still record numbers of people submitting reassessment requests. County Assessor Larry Stone says that so far this year, 12,000 property owners have requested a reassessment, when the average number is about 3,000. Will the Assessor's Office be able to withstand the burden? Eventually, says Stone, but with the current budget cuts, Stone's office has lost 50 staff members, putting added strain on the remaining staff. In fact, some home owners will have to wait as long as two years because of the record numbers of requests. In the past, when there was a serious backlog, the state was able to step in and assist the Assessor's office plow through the requests. This time, however, the state itself is under severe financial strain, so there is little it can do to help out. This leaves the burden on Stone and his staff, who have plenty of work ahead of them. Read More at KLIV. The Mercury News. by Danny Wool on Dec 23, 2009 |
 Howard Schidt was sworn in yesterday as the nation's top cybersecurity official. |
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