http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10205415-38.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
Cybersecurity review is putting emphasis on privacy
by Stephanie Condon March 26, 2009 2:16 PM PDT
As the National Security Council works on its comprehensive review of federal cybersecurity programs for President Obama, it is going to great lengths to consider privacy and civil liberty issues, some Congress members said Thursday.
The House Cybersecurity Caucus on Thursday met with Melissa Hathaway, the acting senior director for cyberspace for the National Security and Homeland Security Councils, who is conducting for the administration a 60-day cybersecurity review.
Rep. James Langevin (D-R.I.), co-chair of the House Cybersecurity Caucus, said Hathaway has been meeting with privacy and civil liberties groups to receive their input on how to reform cybersecurity.
Isn't this obvious?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/26/2129246&from=rss
Researchers Can ID Anonymous Twitterers
Posted by timothy on Thursday March 26, @06:48PM from the 140-shady-characters dept. Privacy Security
narramissic writes
"In a paper set to be delivered at an upcoming security conference, University of Texas at Austin researchers showed how they were able to identify people who were on public social networks such as Twitter and Flickr by mapping out the connections surrounding their network of friends. From the ITworld article: 'Web site operators often share data about users with partners and advertisers after stripping it of any personally identifiable information such as names, addresses or birth dates. Arvind Narayanan and fellow researcher Vitaly Shmatikov found that by analyzing these 'anonymized' data sets, they could identify Flickr users who were also on Twitter about two-thirds of the time, depending on how much information they have to work with.'"
Related No way the RCMP is just noticing this...
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20090326162838293
Canadian cops cry for BlackBerry wiretap
Thursday, March 26 2009 @ 04:28 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews\
It has recently dawned on Canadian officials that communications sent with the BlackBerry are among the hardest mobile messages to eavesdrop on. But rather than congratulate the Waterloo, Ontario-based Research in Motion on a job well done, they're calling for laws that would force service providers to use only technology that can be tapped.
Source - The Register Thanks to Brian Honan for the link.
Plans.
Related Covers much of their surveillance
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/020943.html
March 25, 2009
United Kingdom’s Strategy for Countering International
Pursue Prevent Protect Prepare - The United Kingdom’s Strategy for Countering International Terrorism, March 2009. Presented to Parliament by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for the Home Department by Command of Her Majesty.
"It sets out our comprehensive approach for tackling international terrorism – from the international, through the national, to the local. It outlines how we are tackling the immediate threat through the relentless pursuit of terrorists and the disruption of terrorist plots; how we are building up our defences against attacks and our resilience to deal with them; and how we are addressing the longer term causes – particularly by understanding what leads people to become radicalised, so we can stop them becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism or violent extremism in the first place."
Related Will there be heavy demand for this intimate surveillance application? Will this become a favorite tool of the supermarket tabloid? (Brittany's blood alcohol level hit 1.6!!!)
http://hometestingblog.testcountry.com/?p=1470
The Apple iPhone: Your New Medical Buddy March 23
Filed under Early Disease Detection, Health & Wellness by VirtualTest | 2 comments
Picture this: you are away on business, but your doctor only gave you the go-ahead with the condition that you need to monitor your blood pressure or your blood sugar levels and keep your doctor informed about your status at regular intervals. Sounds cumbersome? It may not be soon.
Nice of them to make an exception...
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20090326162633845
Madoff data can be extradited back to US
Thursday, March 26 2009 @ 04:26 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews
Data which is protected by the Data Protection Act can be transferred to the US to help in the investigation of companies run by Bernard Madoff, the High Court has said. The transfer would usually be barred but is justified in this case, the Court said.
Source - The Register Thanks to Brian Honan for the link.
[From the article:
The Data Protection Act (DPA) forbids the export of personal data to countries where privacy protection is poor. Data cannot be sent outside of the European Economic Area except to countries which are deemed to have 'adequate' data protection. The US is not one of those countries.
Related Same country, different type of extradition... (For Cindy's “Sex & Power class)
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20090326162404837
UK: Lloyd sues over 'explicit download'
Thursday, March 26 2009 @ 04:24 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews
Model Danielle Lloyd is suing a phone company after one of its workers allegedly downloaded explicit photos from her mobile.
The former Miss England left the phone at her local branch of Carphone Warehouse, where one of the staff viewed the images and made copies, a High Court writ states.
Source - Carluke Gazette
[From the article:
She was told to leave her old phone, so all the data could be transferred, and collect it later the same day. [“Give me the keys to your Rolls, and I'll polish them to a mirror shine.” Bob]
Related Cindy, I will happily help create flashercards for your “Sex & Power” class.
http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/ediscio-com-online-flashcard-box
Ediscio.com - Online Flashcard Box
The team behind this project defines it as a sort of “Swiss army knife among flashcard tools”. In general terms, it a system that lets you employ flash cards in order to learn up anything.
The most satisfactory aspect of this service is that you can actually interact with others and create something akin to a study group. This way, if you don’t know an answer you can always resort to your teammates and ask them. Another nice use of this team-learning facility is that you can study with classmates online, and save time in the process.
Other than that, the system makes for creating both private and public cardboxes, whilst a learning scheduler will let you have a more personalized experience by having the program adapt to your needs and not the other way around.
This platform is wholly free, too, so that if you want to see how can it help you train your memory and become more knowledgeable you can just point your browser to www.ediscio.com and get started right now.
Never, ever challenge my hacker class some anonymous group of hackers!
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/03/hackers-deface.html
Hackers Deface Aussie Censorship Board's Website
By David Kravets March 26, 2009 | 1:53:59 PM
Australia's official online censorship board's web page was offline Thursday, hours after hackers hijacked it to protest revelations the government was going to require ISPs to block public access to thousands of websites, many of which aren't obscene.
Anonymous hackers defaced the Censorship Board's homepage -- classification.gov.au -- and restated the board's public message in a chilling and humorous tone.
"We are part of an elaborate deception from China to control and sheepify the nation, to protect the children," one part of the five-sentence message read, according to a screenshot. "All opposers must hate children, and therefore must be killed with a (sic) large melons…."
Interesting question...
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2009/03/securitymatters_0326
It's Time to Drop the 'Expectation of Privacy' Test
Commentary by Bruce Schneier
… The problem is, in today's information society, that definition test will rapidly leave us with no privacy at all.
In Katz, the Court ruled that the police could not eavesdrop on a phone call without a warrant: Katz expected his phone conversations to be private and this expectation resulted from a reasonable balance between personal privacy and societal security. Given NSA's large-scale warrantless eavesdropping, and the previous administration's continual insistence that it was necessary to keep America safe from terrorism, is it still reasonable to expect that our phone conversations are private?
You know you're in a recession when...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10205316-93.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
Google cuts nearly 200 sales, marketing jobs
by Stephen Shankland March 26, 2009 12:58 PM PDT
Google is eliminating about 200 sales and marketing jobs, the company said in a blog post Thursday, blaming the move on overlapping areas and overhiring during a more optimistic time.
Related Is this Google's way of telling you “You're fired?”
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5951455.ece
March 22, 2009
UK Google boss escapes cameras
Simon Alford
THE £2m home of the UK head of Google, the internet search engine, is not visible in the company’s new Street View service.
Damn it Al Gore, that's enough!
http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/26/1639250&from=rss
California May Reduce Carbon Emissions By Banning Black CarsComments:364
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 26, @04:37PM from the try-only-driving-at-night dept.
Legislation may by 2016 restrict the paint color options for California residents looking for a new car. Black and all dark hues are currently on the banned list. The California Air Resources Board says that the climate control systems of dark-colored cars need to work harder than their lighter siblings — especially after sitting in the sun for a few hours.
Buy your begonia an iPhone!
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10205294-71.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
The plant that twitters when it's thirsty
by Chris Matyszczyk March 26, 2009 12:50 PM PDT
People always used to laugh when Prince Charles talked to his plants. Now, thanks to Twitter and a software called Botanicalls, the plants can talk back.
The leading actor in the Botanicalls realm seems to be a plant called Pothos.
Please don't ask me what kind of plant Pothos is. I can barely tell an oak tree from a park bench. However, he (can a plant be a "he"?) has more than 2,600 followers and--suggesting Pothos might be a little on the self-centered side--Pothos is following no one.
http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/wikirank-com-measuring-wikipedia-popularity
Wikirank.com - Measuring Wikipedia Popularity
wikirank.com
Wikipedia is an ineluctable source when it comes to finding information on the web. It actually includes so many information that a resource like the one being reviewed right now is more or less of a necessity.
Broadly speaking, Wikirank is a portal that shows the most popular articles on the online encyclopedia via graphs and statistics. You can also see the most read articles in the last 30 days. In every case, a link that leads to the full Wikipedia entry is provided for additional convenience.
Not just no, hell no! I'm not gonna have you... you readers sending me videos of yourselves in your bathrobes, (coffee in hand, eyes half open) starting my morning screaming “Bob, you complete idiot!” On the other hand, my web site students might find it amusing.
http://www.killerstartups.com/User-Gen-Content/riffly-com-video-enabling-your-blog
Riffly.com - Video-enabling Your Blog
riffly.com
Riffly can be termed a free service that video-enables any weblog. What does that mean? Basically, it means that the service allows those who visit your blog to add video and audio comments to any content you have posted. This system integrates with you existing comment system, and users do not have to download anything in order to employ it – it is all web-hosted, but you will obviously have to procure a plugin, and the official WordPress plugin is available through the site. On the other hand, programmers can employ the provided API in order to integrate Riffly with any other existing configuration.
Global Warming! Global Warming! Maybe we don't fully understand the implications of our actions, but that's no reason to try other actions without at least a small scale experiment... (Although from a global perspective, perhaps this was small scale.)
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/26/1622243&from=rss
Hungry Crustaceans Eat Climate Change Experiment
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 26, @02:17PM from the circle-of-life dept.
Earlier this month, an expedition fertilized 300 square kilometers of the Atlantic Ocean with six metric tons of dissolved iron. This triggered a bloom of phytoplankton, which doubled their biomass within two weeks by taking in carbon dioxide from the seawater. The dead phytoplankton were then expected to sink to the ocean bed, dragging carbon along with them. Instead, the experiment turned into an example of how the food chain works, as the bloom was eaten by a swarm of hungry copepods. The huge swarm of copepods were in turn eaten by larger crustaceans called amphipods, which are often eaten by squid and whales. "I think we are seeing the last gasps of ocean iron fertilization as a carbon storage strategy," says Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University. While the experiment failed to show ocean fertilization as a viable carbon storage strategy, it has pushed the old "My dog ate my homework" excuse to an unprecedented level.
No comments:
Post a Comment