Midday Roundup: U.S. suspects China in federal employee data hack

Personal information. The Chinese government responded today to allegations it hacked into U.S. computers and stole information about 4 million federal workers. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the attackers appeared to be looking to identify government employees who have access to sensitive information. Chinese officials did not explicitly deny masterminding the attack but rather called the accusations irresponsible. The hacking into the Office of Personnel Management could affect every federal agency and former government employees, an official said.

Delay tactic? Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush set a date for later this month to announce he’s running for president, but left-leaning watchdog groups say Bush has avoided campaign finance laws by keeping his candidacy unofficial for so long. The issue stems from the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court ruling. The court said individuals and corporations could spend unlimited money through political action committees—if done without coordinating with candidates. The New York Times and others have called for an investigation into Bush’s activities.

Snowden satisfied. Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who exposed the government’s snooping on U.S. citizens, exulted in the changes Congress has made to curb domestic spying. “This is the power of an informed public,” Snowden wrote Thursday in an op-ed piece in The New York Times. Snowden, charged with espionage two years ago for leaking the information, now lives in exile in Russia. “Privately, there were moments when I worried that we might have put our privileged lives at risk for nothing—that the public would react with indifference, or practiced cynicism, to the revelations,” he wrote, adding that the end of mass surveillance of domestic, private phone call data is “a historic victory for the rights of every U.S. citizen.”

Safe to drink. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported Thursday that fracking, the controversial technique used to drill for oil and gas in the United States, has not significantly polluted drinking water in the country. Oil companies have mostly followed established safeguards to protect water supplies when they inject so-called “fracking fluids” to better access oil and gas deposits. The report did cite specific instances of local drinking water pollution but said they were minimal compared to the large number of fracking taking place throughout the country.

WORLD Radio’s Mary Reichard and The Associated Press contributed to this report.