County Legislator Judah Holstein

This week, we witnessed a global cyber outage as a faulty CrowdStrike update caused blue screen errors on millions of devices worldwide, affecting airlines, banks, hospitals, and government systems. Critical services like 911 emergency call systems were disrupted all over the world. However, in District 10 and throughout Westchester County, our IT department excelled in detecting, responding to, and recovering from this major outage. As Chair of the Board of Legislators' IT & CyberSecurity Committee, I extend a heartfelt thank you to our IT staff, department liaisons, and all those who cooperated to ensure that Westchester County's critical systems remained operational throughout the incident. Together, they swiftly but tirelessly triaged and updated each affected department, ensuring that even non-critical computers were restored over the next few days. While the news continues to be filled with stories of airlines and agencies that succumbed to this ...

I am proud to announce that on Monday, I officially sent my first legislative memorandum to the Board of Legislators, proposing a bill to address the Misuse of Digitally Deceptive Materials . This marks a crucial step toward protecting Westchester residents in the digital age. The proposal results from collaboration with the District Attorney's office and the County Legal Department, for whose invaluable support I am grateful. It aims to impose criminal penalties on those who create and distribute harmful digital content, such as AI-generated deepfakes and other deceptive materials. This will protect Westchester residents, especially those in vulnerable populations, from harassment, fraud, and cyberstalking. I also attended the National Association of Counties Conference last weekend, where I explored how counties across the nation set policies to improve government operations, increase workforce efficiency, and protect citizens. In addition to tec...

I hope everyone had a fantastic Independence Day! While we celebrate our freedom on July 4th, it's fascinating to remember that our journey to nationhood actually spanned several key days in 1776. The Continental Congress declared independence from Great Britain on July 2, 1776, but it took two more days to finalize the Declaration of Independence for public sharing. Without the internet or eNewsletters, news spread more slowly, and it wasn't until July 8 that the first public reading took place in what is now Independence Square in Philadelphia. On July 11, 1776, Judge John Thomas read the Declaration in White Plains, marking the birth of the State of New York. I had the pleasure of celebrating this historic moment with a reenactment at our own slice of history—the Ward House, at the intersection of Eastchester, Tuckahoe, and Bronxville. With Independence Day behind us an...