Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP) is initiated to spur solar, wind, and geo-thermal energy generation in California

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rolled out its Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP) at a webinar on September 15, 2016.

Here is a link to the webinar presentation: http://drecp.org/meetings/2016-09-15_webinar/2016-09-15_DRECP_ROD_webinar.pdf

The BLM also provided Etopia News with a link to the associated Twitter Chat: https://twitter.com/hashtag/drecp?f=tweets&vertical=default&src=hash 

The California Energy Commission provided Etopia News with these further related links:

--Draft DRECP and EIR/EIS

http://www.drecp.org/draftdrecp/

--BLM record of decision and Land Use Plan Amendment and Environmental Impact Statement

http://www.drecp.org/finaldrecp/

--MOU’s between BLM and counties

http://www.drecp.org/whatisdrecp/mou.html

Not everyone is happy with the process so far, as you can read here.

Read more here.

Defense Innovation Board (DIB) will release interim report and recommendations publicly on October 5th

According to a statement provided today by the Pentagon to Etopia News:

“The DIB (Defense Innovation Board)'s interim findings and recommendations will be made public, as time permits, on October 5 at the public meeting which will be announced in the Federal Register."

The DIB is responsible for advising Secretary of Defense Ash Carter on ways in which the Department of Defense (DoD) can become more agile in addressing and executing its mission.

Recent appointees to the group include astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and Amazon founder and CEO, Washington Post owner and space pioneer Jeff Bezos, as you can read here.

Along with this advisory board, the DoD has established the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) which, according to its website “serves as a bridge between those in the U.S. military executing on some of our nation’s toughest security challenges and companies operating at the cutting edge of technology.”

The premise and the promise of the DIB is that the efficiency and power of the technologies developed in Silicon Valley, and the methods used to achieve them, can be applied successfully to the operations of the United States Armed Forces.

NASS spokesperson explains its position on designating state voting systems as “critical infrastructure”

On August 15^th, two weeks before the FBI announced that Illinois’ and Arizona’s voter registration systems had been hacked, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson conducted a conference call with, among others, the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), about which you can read here, to talk about the cybersecurity of the states’ electoral infrastructure.
 

During that call, he said that “DHS is exploring all ways to deliver more support to the sector in a collaborative and non-prescriptive manner, and would be examining whether designating certain electoral systems as critical infrastructure would be an effective way to offer this support.”

In order to more fully explore the issue of declaring state electoral systems to be “critical infrastructure,” Etopia News contacted NASS and asked for its perspective on this question.

NASS spokesperson Kay Stimson provided these comments:

“NASS does not have a position on the critical infrastructure question at this point, although some members have been vocal in their belief that such a move would greatly undercut traditional state and local control of elections and serve as a major distraction in moving forward with securing our elections from cyber threats by foreign government adversaries.

“To have a thoughtful discussion on this issue amongst our members, we need to have more information on what a critical infrastructure designation for elections would actually mean.  We have no idea what systems would be included under the federal government’s provisions. 

“When we reached out to DHS for information in mid-August, Secretary Johnson told NASS members that he won’t make any decisions on the critical infrastructure designation until after the November elections.

“For now, states tell us they have had no issues in getting cybersecurity information and assistance from federal agencies without any designation in place.”