County Legislator Judah Holstein

Earlier this week, our neighbors in the village of Scarsdale shared important public safety information regarding a hidden surveillance camera found on a resident's property. As Chair of the County's IT & Cybersecurity Committee, I want to thank Mayor Arest and his staff for their vigilance, and encourage all residents to review the shared links and advice. Technology, when used responsibly, enhances our lives in so many wonderful ways, but it also brings with it the potential for misuse and harm. Beyond surveillance cameras, we are also seeing other new technologies like AirTags and AI being exploited and misused. In addition to working on my Digital Deception bill , my government colleagues and I are actively consulting with experts and working to develop additional legislation and policies to safeguard and protect residents. This recent incident is a critical reminder to report any unusual activities or anything that seems out of place to local ...

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...