And as for retirement benefits, increase those by 79 percent total, or 53 percent per individual employee.

These are figures for the California Department of Technology, which again finds itself the butt of a fault-finding audit.

The report is one big bad report card. It notes that 73 of 77 state departments have not met standard safeguards for their information, for which the department is supposed to be the guardian.

Prone to Hackers

The newly discovered trouble involves the security of state-held information, including the news that the state’s data centers are subject to thousands of hacker attempts every month.

“The California Department of Technology does not provide adequate oversight or guidance to state entities under the direct authority of the governor (reporting entities) for which it has purview,” the audit finds.

Auditors were so troubled by lapses in information security at the state’s Department of Corrections that they issued a separate memo to that agency outlining the problems — the details of which were “too sensitive to release publicly.”

State agencies possess reams of information, from the bank account numbers on income tax forms to the birth dates of victims of crime and the Social Security numbers of people applying for food stamps.

The Department of Motor Vehicles alone holds more than 27 million records.

There are committees (“the Select Committee on Cybersecurity” in the statehouse) and task forces (the “California Cybersecurity Task Force”) in place to help protect data and info from intruders. But it’s the tech department that has responsibility for ensuring departments’ info is secured. To do so, it requires three annual reports. Last year it even offered a one-day seminar to teach info management people what’s up with data safeguarding.

Who’s at Fault?

In one regard, it’s not all on the department; the report found that 90 percent of select departments queried said that they had met the mandates for security when they really hadn’t.

Still, when four in 10 departments reported they had not achieved full compliance, “we expected that the technology department would have followed up. … However, when we reviewed the 2014 correspondence between the technology department and a selection of eight noncompliant reporting entities, we found that the technology department did not conduct any follow‑up.”

In addition, there are no policies on how to enforce the security requirements.

One more interesting element of the audit: Twenty agencies declined to be monitored or assessed and were therefore not measured for cybersecurity compliance. Among them were the Office of the Inspector General, California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery and the Public Employees’ Retirement System.

The auditing team recommends that state lawmakers require the tech department to do an independent, comprehensive security assessment of each reporting entity at least every other year.

Auditors also ask legislators to allow the department to ask for money upon any finding of security flaws. The technology department should follow up on any troubled agency and how that agency intends to make its information more secure, the report says.

Then a final scold from the auditors: “As a result of the outstanding weaknesses in reporting entities’ information system controls and the technology department’s failure to provide effective oversight and assist noncompliant entities in meeting the security standards, we determined that some of the state’s information, and its critical information systems, are potentially vulnerable and continue to pose an area of significant risk to the state.”

The Department of Technology didn’t answer questions, but gave the Associated Press a written statement, saying that it is committed to improving oversight and to “improving the state’s overall information security posture.”

A Continuing Pattern

The report is the second in the last six months to beat down the department. The last one upbraided tech department officials for wasting tens of millions of dollars due to computer troubles and aborted projects that cost taxpayers up to $1 billion.

Some lawmakers are trying to throw more money at the agency.

One measure would allow the technology department to size up contractors with an evaluation scorecard that would cost  $350,000.

“There is no guarantee that they will implement the evaluation system in a long term capacity,” Assemblywoman Autumn Burke, D-Los Angeles, told a Senate committee earlier this month. “In fact, a simple change of leadership with CalTech could put the evaluation system in jeopardy.”

Also noted in the conversation was something as scary as a data breach: “Currently the state has 44 IT projects under development that are reported to cost more than $4 billion,” Burke told her colleagues.

By Katy Grimes

Life in America would be far different if at the end of every day you had to report in to a federal government agency where you had been, who you met with and talked to, who you called and who called you, who you emailed, and what websites you visited.

A chill would take over the land of the free.

In an interview, Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach, said the surveillance the National Security Agency has been conducting on all Americans for the past decade is not much different. And, Allen said, it’s a violation of American’s rights, and needs to stop.

To begin a conversation among Legislatures across the country, Allen introduced Assembly Joint Resolution 26, calling upon the President and Congress of the United States to make the protection of civil liberties and national security equal priorities, and to immediately discontinue any practices that are contrary to the 4^th Amendment of the United States Constitution. Allen’s resolution is the first of its kind in the nation.

“Our country was founded on the principles of protecting individual liberties and the inalienable rights of the people from the infringement of overreaching governments,” Allen said.

“There cannot be a compromise between national security and honoring our commitment to  American citizens through the Constitution. Both are equally important and neither should take precedent over the other,” said Allen. “Government should be transparent, strive for the highest level of integrity, and be held accountable to the public.”

The recent reports of the National Security Agency collecting and storing Internet, phone and financial data of American citizens, under the auspices of an alleged attempt to stop terrorist activity, is overreach Allen said.

“This revelation that the NSA has been collecting these records from unaware American citizens has raised questions amongst the public about the constitutionality of the government’s actions,” Allen said. “I think Americans would be okay with any legal surveillance plan with a high degree of transparency.”

AJR 26 includes a quote from James Madison, the fourth President of the United States, “Father of the Constitution” for being instrumental in the drafting of the United States Constitution and as the key champion and author of the Bill of Rights: “Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

AJR 26 appeals to the federal government to equally prioritize the need for national security against terrorist threats, along with the civil liberties and protection of every American citizen’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches. AJR 26 also acknowledges with the high level of technology available today, the personal information of the citizenry can be easily obtained and cataloged, which is why it is incumbent upon all individuals to be vigilant in securing our civil liberties.

Allen added, “Our government should always work to protect Americans from threats to national security, but we must not cast aside our Constitution in the process.”

Katy Grimes: I couldn’t decide if Vice Presidential incumbent Joe Biden was manic during the VP debate last evening, or just being condescending and rude to intimidate challenger Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

Rude, condescending, and just weird, Biden interrupted Ryan 82 times, while Ryan remained respectful and polite; it was a stark contrast. Joe’s OPD came shining through. Obnoxious Personality Disorder is not an official personality disorder, but it should be, especially after last night’s debate.

Biden’s smirks, laughs, eye rolls, huffing and puffing, only made him look like a petulant child, instead of the “statesman” he prefers to be called. Even veteran FOX journalist Chris Wallace said after the debate that in his years of watching debates, since the first Kennedy-Nixon debate, he had never seen anyone behave so disrespectfully or contemptuously as Biden.

After the bounce that the GOP got from the Romney-Obama Presidential debate, the expectations placed on Biden were high; he had to bring home a win for Obama-Biden.

But that did not happen. Even the CNN and Associated Press polls called the debate for Ryan last evening.

While moderator Martha Raddatz offered solid questions, she did not maintain control of Biden. She even interrupted Ryan many times, often just as he was making a point.

Ryan handled pointed questions on foreign policy, surprising many, and handed Biden his tush on taxes and the economy with numbers and facts.

Libya

The debate opened with Raddatz asking Biden if the terrorist attack on Libya and the murder of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens was a huge blunder. “It was a pre-planned assault by heavily armed men. Wasn’t this a massive intelligence failure Vice President Biden?” Raddatz asked about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, where Stevens was brutally murdered.

Biden dodged the question and launched into his own speech about how great the President is.

But Ryan answered the question and said that  Stevens had been denied sufficient security by Obama administration officials. “It took the President two weeks to acknowledge that this was a terrorist attack,” Ryan said.

“With all due respect, that’s a bunch of malarkey. Not a single thing he said is accurate,” Biden snarled.

Raddatz told Biden to “be specific.”

Biden retorted that Ryan cut the embassy security budget, and then launched again into how great Obama has been on security.

Economy

Biden said that the economic recovery America is enjoying would proceed if Republicans “get out of the way.” Ryan deftly pointed out that the Democrats had complete control of Congress and the White House when Obama and Biden took over in 2009-10. “He had his chances. He made his choices,” Ryan said, and “this is where we are at.”

Obamacare

The debate moved to Obamacare allowing to Ryan bring up the unelected panel which would make important health decisions and ultimately what the future of health care would look like. Biden laughed again, and said that Sarah Palin had already argued the death panels with him in the last debate.

Foot-in-mouth-syndrome

Out of the blue, Biden brought up Romney’s campaign comment when he said that 47 percent of Americans pay no federal income tax, see themselves as victims, and take no responsibility for their own lives.

“It’s about time they take responsibility” instead of signing pledges to avoid raising taxes, Biden said about Romney, Ryan and the Republicans. And somewhere during the debate, Biden brought up Grover Norquist and his “no-tax” pledge.

“This is a man who gave 30 percent of his income to charity, more than the two of us combined,” Ryan retorted. “Mitt Romney’s a good man. He cares about 100 percent of Americans in this country. And with respect to that quote, I think the vice president very well knows that sometimes the words don’t come out of your mouth the right way.”

Ryan finally succeeded in wiping the smirk off Biden’s face, but only temporarily.

Medicare

Ryan said Obama’s health care plan will take $716 billion from Medicare, as well as create a new board that could have the power to deny care to the elderly patients who need it.

Democrats “haven’t put a credible solution on the table,” Ryan said. “They’ll tell you about vouchers. They’ll say all these things to try to scare people.”

In a throw-granny-off-the-cliff moment, Biden retorted that Ryan had authored two proposals in which seniors would be given government payments that might not cover all of their care. And he said that the Romney-Ryan plan would never achieve the savings they claimed.

It was clear that without a strong record to run on, both Obama and Biden are on the  attack, and Ryan let them know that he knows their plan. Quoting Barack Obama from 2008 when he was on the campaign trail, Ryan said that their strategy is obvious: “If you don’t have a good record to run on, you paint your opponent as someone to run from.”

It’s exactly what Obama and Biden are doing, and why they steer clear from their four years in charge, and spend much more of their time on-the-attack. This debate was more evidence of the strategy. Thankfully, it’s over.

Politico has the debate transcript.