This is a relatively trivial breach, but I suspect it shows our interest in “stars gone crazy” (since UCLA seems to be where they take the Hollywood loonies) It also suggests that UCLA is not monitoring their systems...

http://www.databreaches.net/?p=21524

UCLA Psychology Dept. database hacked (again?)

November 12, 2011 by admin

Via Cyber War News, it seems that a UCLA Department of Psychology faculty database was hacked by Inj3ctor. Much of the data represent the names of departmental programs with corresponding names, e-mail addresses, and/or phone numbers and are just directory information, but there is also a dump of applicant information that reveals 26 applicants’ first and last names, gender, date of birth, and full mailing address. There is also a user dump with 40 usernames and passwords (not clear-text), two of which are administrative passwords. The hacker also lists available open ports.

This is not the first time that the department database has been dumped on Pastebin. In July 2011, another hacker posted psychology department faculty’s phone number, first and last name, e-mail address, street address, and UCLA ID number.

I sent an e-mail to UCLA’s Department of Psychology via their contact form to alert them to the breach, but have not heard back yet.

I don't know if this is the best case to serve as the Privacy poster boy, but I sure hope it's not the only case...

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/028747.html

November 12, 2011

Commentary - The WikiLeaks-Fueled Erosion of Civil Liberties Has Begun

Atlantic Wire - Adam Clark Estes: "When a federal judge ruled that Twitter must reveal the private data of three WikiLeaks associates on Thursday, privacy advocates died a little inside. The two organizations that had defended the three users, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundations (EFF), immediately filed mournful blog posts that respectively raised doubts about the United States government's secretive handling of the case and highlighted grave message the ruling sends about the future of privacy on the internet. But Wall Street Journal reporter Jennifer Valentine-DeVries sums up the implications of the case best with a leading question: "Should the government be able to collect information related to your Internet use without a warrant?" We now know that the federal court's answer is, "Yes."

It's good to see people are waking up...

http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/11/8743687-digital-evidence-becoming-central-in-criminal-cases

Digital evidence becoming central in criminal cases

If you are unfortunate enough to land in court after a serious automobile accident, the star witness against you may not be an eyewitness or even a human being. It could be your car.

… such information could be cross-checked with information from devices like cellphones and GPS units to build what could be an air-tight court case.

“Now you’re in a situation where, if someone has the time and expertise, they can say you drove from here to there at this speed, you parked at Whole Foods, here’s what you bought, then you got back in your car and drove here and made a call to this number,” said Dean Gonsowski, eDiscovery counsel with Clearwell, which is part of the security firm Symantec. “... It’s staggering how much information can be collected.”

Drew Findling, an Atlanta attorney and chairman of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Forensic Disciplines Committee, notes that e-evidence might just as easily create an unshakable alibi, which is why he routinely hires experts to examine equipment and data.

“You want to have the equipment examined to determine the reliability, both from a chronological and content standpoint,” he said. “And there are times when that evidence is of an exculpatory nature, so you want to make sure that you gain access to it – whether it’s a computer or an iPhone or whatever – and that you preserve that evidence immediately.”

… When you think about it, even a crime scene photograph is electronic evidence now.”

… In some cases – particularly those involving corporations – the amount of digital data that must be retrieved and sorted through prior to trial is immense.

… “We changed the discovery laws eight or 10 years ago, but we need to change a bunch of different laws, including electronic privacy laws,” he said. “And we need to continue to tweak the laws on chain of custody, validation and verification, authentication, corroboration and the scope and extent of discovery.”

While lawmakers struggle to catch up, judges and courts are taking wildly varying positions on the reliability and admissibility of digital evidence.

A rather depressing article about how creativity and technology are conspiring to keep the serfs in check.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/12/what-if-this-is-the-future/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

What If This Is No Accident? What If This Is The Future?

The New Luddites are back, and they’re packing heat. The mighty Economist writes of “the disturbing thought” that “America’s current employment woes stem from a precipitous and permanent change caused by not too little technological progress, but too much … A tipping point seems to have been reached, at which AI-based automation threatens to supplant the brain-power of large swathes of middle-income employees.” The New York Times chimes in: “technology is quickly taking over service jobs, following the waves of automation of farm and factory work.”

I too have some private laws I want enacted... Perhaps the next article holds a clue as to how we would do that?

The Privatization of Copyright Lawmaking

"The biggest misperception about [the Stop Online Piracy Act] is that it is somehow unprecedented or extraordinary. It is not. SOPA represents just the latest example of copyright law defined and controlled not by the government but by private entities. Copyright owners will deploy SOPA in the same way they have behaved in the past: to extend out their rights. They will disrupt sites that do not infringe a copyright, interfere with fair uses of copyrighted works, and take other steps that evade the limits that the Copyright Act sets on a copyright owner's actual rights."

(Related???) I wonder... Are there other things “social networks' might enable?

Ask Slashdot: Crowdfunding For Science — Can It Succeed?

"Can crowdfunding work for science? Having raised nearly $40,000 for scientific research in 10 days for projects as diverse as biofuel catalyst design to the study of cellular cilia to deploying seismic sensor networks (that attach to your computer!) to robotic squirrels, the #SciFund Challenge is taking off like a rocket. Might this be a future model for science funding in the U.S. and abroad? What would that mean?"