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A Sewer By Any Other Name Would Smell As Foul

Client Alert | 1 min read | 03.24.05

Southwest Marine, Inc. (Feb. 23, 2005), concerned costs incurred by a contractor in defending a private action brought under the Clean Water Act in which the government did not intervene and in which a federal court found that the contractor had violated the act, imposed a penalty for that violation, and then remitted the penalty entirely in recognition of costs incurred by the contractor to correct the violation. The ASBCA acknowledged that there was no FAR provision that expressly made the costs of a private action unallowable, but noted that FAR 31.205-47 would make such costs unallowable if the action had been brought by the government and concluded that the costs incurred in this private action were sufficiently similar to costs incurred in an action brought by the government to make the costs of the private action unallowable as well.

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Client Alert | 4 min read | 06.25.26

Twin Executive Orders Seek to Spur Quantum Leap in Technology and Cybersecurity

On June 22, 2026, President Trump signed two executive orders, “Securing the Nation Against Advanced Cryptographic Attacks” (Quantum Security EO) and “Ushering in the Next Frontier of Quantum Innovation” (Quantum Innovation EO), marking the most significant federal action on quantum technology since the Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act of 2022, which directed agencies to harden their information systems against quantum-enabled hacking. The orders seek to speed the development of quantum computers, which are advanced processors that can calculate multiple possibilities simultaneously and thus solve problems exponentially faster than traditional computers. At the same time, the orders look to protect against the danger that quantum technology can “break” traditional encryption by easily decoding it. Of particular note for government contractors, the Quantum Security EO directs agencies to update federal acquisition regulations to require contractors by 2031 to adopt information processing standards that resist quantum-enabled codebreaking....

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