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posted by n1 on Wednesday June 10 2015, @06:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the fbi-encryption-prevention dept.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has issued a directive that requires all publicly accessible federal Web sites to adopt HTTPS:

An HTTPS-Only standard will eliminate inconsistent, subjective determinations across agencies regarding which content or browsing activity is sensitive in nature, and create a stronger privacy standard government-wide. Federal websites that do not convert to HTTPS will not keep pace with privacy and security practices used by commercial organizations, and with current and upcoming Internet standards. This leaves Americans vulnerable to known threats, and may reduce their confidence· in their government. Although some Federal websites currently use HTTPS, there has not been a consistent policy in this area. An HTTPS-only mandate will provide the public with a consistent, private browsing experience and position the Federal Government as a leader in Internet security.

United States Chief Information Officer Tony Scott adds:

Per the issuance of this Memorandum, all publicly accessible Federal websites must meet the HTTPS-Only Standard by December 31st of 2016.

OMB first proposed the HTTPS-Only Standard in March and requested comment from the public. During the feedback period, OMB's proposal received numerous comments and suggestions from Internet's standards bodies, popular web browsers, and concerned citizens. To assist with the conversion to HTTPS, technical assistance and best-practices for migration are available at https://https.cio.gov – a site that is open to contribution from technical experts around the world. Finally, a public dashboard has been constructed to monitor progress.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by NCommander on Wednesday June 10 2015, @09:19AM

    by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Wednesday June 10 2015, @09:19AM (#194450) Homepage Journal

    I believe the United States already has at least one CA in the root store. I know for a fact that the Hong Kong Post Office has/had a CA in Mozilla's store, so I'd be truly flabbergasted if this wasn't already the case. Worst case scenario, you can literially buy a CA certificate for $50k from GlobalSign (intermediate certificate that allows for signing whatever you'd like).

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