Traverse City Record-Eagle. June 7, 2024.
Editorial: Strengthen disclosure laws now
Perhaps you’ve received one of those carefully worded letters: Dear customer, you trusted your personal details to us and someone stole them.
Maybe you were one of the estimated 550 million customers who were impacted by the Ticketmaster breach. Or one of the 30 million Santander Bank customers, the 2.8 million Save-Rx customers, the more than 3 million accounts in the Financial Business and Consumer Solutions collection agency breaches.
This week. This. Week. And time is of the essence.
Cyberattacks are spiking with 3,205 breaches in 2023 — a record 78-percent jump over 2022 — which was already up 72 percent from 2021, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center.
It’s a race the good guys seem to be losing, with technology and cloud-based systems allowing cybercriminals to penetrate through security holes seemingly no amount of money and resources can plug.
“Organizations are spending more money than ever on cybersecurity — an estimated $188 billion globally in 2023, a figure expected to grow to almost $215 billion in 2024 — yet hackers always seem to stay a step ahead,” Stuart Madnick, founding director of the Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan research consortium, wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
So there are nefarious cybercriminals — forming growing numbers of ransomware gangs that franchise their malware operations like fast-food chains — and there are the safekeepers of our data (the breached), and the aggrieved parties whose information was stolen. In these cases, two of the three parties know the breach has happened — but the victims aren’t notified sometimes until weeks or months later, and sometimes only after the hackers claim public credit for the attack.
We’re seeing that play out in real time in Traverse City Area Public Schools, which closed school for two days in March after a “network disruption” with assurances that “to date, no reports of identity theft or fraud” arose out of the incident. Three weeks later, Comparitech reported that the hacker group Medusa threatened to publish or sell 1.2 terabytes of data if the district failed to pay them $500,000. Two weeks later, on May 17, TCAPS’ 932 employees were informed that personal information about some — or all — of them had been published by the hacking group.
It’s a bad situation. On one side are parents, students and employees who want to know immediately whether their personal data has been compromised. On the other side are lawyers representing SET SEG and the Thrun Law Firm, which represents TCAPS, who are jointly micromanaging every word the district discloses about the breach.
Our state’s disclosure requirements need to be examined immediately on all fronts, but especially in the public sector where insurance companies are flouting public disclosure laws. That the victims in this case could potentially include children just underscores this point.
In March 2023, after a Minneapolis school refused to pay a $1 million ransom demand, Medusa released highly sensitive documents that detailed “campus rape cases, child-abuse inquiries, student mental health crises and suspension reports,” according to a story in The 74, a nonprofit news outlet that covers education. And Medusa ensured that the Minneapolis students’ files were able to be accessed “with little more than a Google search,” The 74 story said.
In Louisiana, Medusa hacked files related to the St. Landry school district, deploying a double-extortion scheme where criminals downloaded compromising records and demanded ransom from the victims, according to the Acadiana Advocate.
The outlet contends school officials did not notify these individuals for five months. Those kids deserved better from the people charged with protecting them, and that includes the state.
Allowing the insurance companies and attorneys to smother public disclosure, and the state’s complicity in this, is another breach — of public trust.
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Mining Journal. June 5, 2024.
Editorial: Expanding early childhood education is costly but beneficial
State lawmakers including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer may be on to something in pursuing the goal of extending free pre-K to more Michigan families by 2027.
Whitmer’s plan, which has enjoyed a modest measure of bi-partisan support, would make families with incomes up to 400% of the federal poverty level eligible for the program.
The expansion wouldn’t be cheap, sporting a $254.6 million increase in state funding, according to the Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement and Potentials’ Pre-K for All implementation brief.
If the income eligibility cap is removed, all families in the state would become eligible to enroll in Pre-K for All by fall 2024, according to the brief.
Rep. John Fitzgerald, D-Wyoming, who supports the initiative, said Michigan’s budget “should be a reflection of the priority of Michiganders.”
The state is “making sure that we have the ample workforce, space and resources necessary to make sure that these youngest students would have the support that they need,” said Fitzgerald. “We want to prioritize life-long learning,” he said.
Currently, around 49,000 4-year-olds are enrolled in the state’s publicly funded learning settings.
The state would need to enroll an additional 32,000 children to meet its goal of 75% of eligible children participating.
That would require at least 1,700 more lead teachers, 3,400 more associate teachers and 1,700 more classroom spaces, according to the department’s implementation brief.
Pre-K for All is an intriguing proposition with a huge upside. Weighing it down, of course, is the cost, which we hope can be lowered because giving kids an early start in their education is a great way to improve outcomes.
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Iron Mountain Daily News. June 3, 2024.
Editorial: Michigan’s Capitol Christmas tree search is underway
The search has begun for Michigan’s Capitol Christmas tree.
Each year, the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget is tasked with the search and harvest of the state tree and once again asks for the public’s assistance in spotting the perfect conifer.
Over the last 39 years, trees have come from locations across the state — from backyards to public land near highways and forests. Last year’s 60-foot spruce was donated by Onaway resident Vic Ruppert and his family in honor of his late wife Shirley Ruppert.
It marked two straight years that a Lower Peninsula tree was picked. The 2022 tree was a 63-foot spruce harvested from St. Johns.
More often, however, the tree comes from the Upper Peninsula. In 2021, a 63-foot spruce was donated by Carla Fletcher and her family from Marenisco. To date, 24 state trees have come from the U.P. since the program began in 1987.
Four trees have been harvested in Dickinson County, including a 61-foot blue spruce donated in 2019 by Jordan and Sarah Wolfenberg of Iron Mountain. Two past trees have come from Kingsford, and one from Sagola Township.
To be considered, trees need to meet the following criteria:
— Type: Spruce or fir.
— Size: At least 60-feet tall with a maximum crown of 24 feet and maximum trunk diameter of 30 inches.
— Access: Easy access to the road, with no interference from wires.
— Cost: Available at no cost.
DTMB works with the Michigan Association of Timbermen and the Great Lakes Timber Professionals Association to bring the tree to Lansing, usually in late October. Denny Olson of Breitung Township, a member of the Michigan Association of Timbermen and the GLPTA, has been involved with about 20 of the trees chosen for the state Capitol.
Traditionally, the tree reigns over downtown Lansing’s holiday festivities, mounted on the east lawn of the Capitol building. This year’s tree journey will culminate with a lighting ceremony Friday, Nov. 22, at the 40th Annual Silver Bells in the City celebration.
“Each year, our team looks forward to selecting the state Christmas tree, which becomes a destination for friends and families during the holiday season,” said DTMB Director Michelle Lange. “We have to start that process early to make sure everything is in place for Silver Bells in the City.”
The deadline for tree nominations is Monday, Aug. 19. Individuals who would like to nominate a tree are asked to email their name, telephone number, a photograph of the tree, and information about its size and location to ChristmasTree@michigan.gov. Tree nominations can also be mailed to the address below.
Christmas Tree Search
Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget
Building Operations Division
P.O. Box 30026
Lansing, MI 48909
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