Saturday, March 03, 2012


“Can we block your connections?”
"The Federal Communications Commission is reviewing whether or when the police and other government officials can intentionally interrupt cellphone and Internet service to protect public safety. A scary proposition which will easily become a First Amendment issue. Does the FCC have the authority to [regulate local or state authorities' decision to] take down cellular networks if they determine there is an imminent threat? The FCC is currently asking for public input (PDF) on this decision."
According to the article, "among the issues on which the F.C.C. is seeking comment is whether it even has authority over the issue. The public notice asks for comment on whether the F.C.C. itself has legal authority over shutdowns of wireless service and whether it can pre-empt local, state or federal laws that prohibit or constrain the ability of anyone to interrupt service." Maybe they just don't like being upstaged by BART.


Ubiquitous surveillance. Think of the Lower Merion High School flap (students being photographed in their bedrooms) only now everyone can be watched on any video/photo enabled device.
"The little cameras in your home are multiplying. There are the ones you bought, perhaps your SLR or digital camera, but also those that just kind of show up in your current phone, your old phone, your laptop, your game console, and soon your TV and set-top box. Varun Arora, founder of startup GotoCamera in Singapore, wants you to turn them all on and let his company's algorithms analyze what they show, then sell the results as marketing data, in a sort of visual version of what Google and other firms do with search results and free email services."

(Related) We like surveillance enough to pay for it!
Highlight, the people discovery app that could change the world
… Highlight is a mobile app that helps you learn more about the people around you. If you are standing near me and you also have Highlight installed, your profile will show up on my phone. I can see your name, profile photo, all of the friends we have in common, and all of the other things we have in common--like if we went to the same school or are from the same hometown. I can also see a history of the times we have crossed paths before. If I am walking down the street and Highlight sees someone particularly interesting crossing my path, it will notify me.


I find it hard to believe they could summarize bio-ethics in 15 pages, let alone translate that into something technology researchers will understand. But I'm not sure it won't become a worthy supplement to the legal framework eventually.
EPIC Urges DHS to Abide by Privacy Laws When Conducting Technology Research
March 3, 2012 by Dissent
From EPIC:
Earlier this week, EPIC submitted comments to the DHS on “The Menlo Report: Ethical Principles Guiding Information and Communication Technology Research.” DHS sought public views on the privacy implications of ethical human subject research in information and communication technology research. EPIC said that many federal privacy laws, such as the Privacy Act of 1974, set out legal standard for how government agencies should protect personal data. EPIC strongly urged DHS to abide by federal privacy laws rather than adopt non-binding principles, which are not enforceable and provide few rights for individuals. For more information, see EPIC: Privacy and The Common Rule
Alice Lipowicz reports on the letter on Federal Computer Week.
[This is part of the report they object to:
Respect for public interest can often be addressed by obeying relevant laws. If applicable laws conflict with each other or with the public interest, and a decision is made to not comply with legal obligations that are viewed as unethical, researchers should have ethically defensible justification and be prepared to accept responsibility for their actions and consequences.


I think it's a great idea we don't (yet) know how to make secure...
A few countries, like Estonia, have gone for internet-based voting in national elections in a big way, and many others (like Ireland and Canada) have experimented with it. For Americans, with a presidential election approaching later this year, it's a timely issue: already, some states have come to allow at least certain forms of voting by internet. Proponents say online elections have compelling upsides, chief among them ease of participation. People who might not otherwise vote — in particular military personnel stationed abroad, but many others besides — are more and more reached by internet access. Online voting offers a way to keep the electoral process open to them. With online voting, too, there's no worry about conventional absentee ballots being lost or delayed in the postal system, either before reaching the voter or on the way back to be counted. The downsides, though, are daunting. According to RSA panelists David Jefferson and J. Alex Halderman, in fact, they're overwhelming. Speaking Thursday afternoon, the two laid out their case against e-voting. [Much more follows Bob]


I'll look for the transcript (or the video) since the slides are merely suggestive.
March 02, 2012
Pew - The emerging information landscape - 8 realities of the "new normal"
"Pew Director Lee Rainie gave a keynote at the NFAIS annual conference about the way the internet and mobile connectivity have transformed the worlds of networked individuals. He discussed how normal life has changed in the past decade because of three revolutions in technology:
1) the spread of broadband;
2) the rise of mobile connectivity; and
3) the emergence of technological social networks.
He discussed trends and likely future developments in technology that will shape the way people learn, share, and create information. The slides in PDF are here."


Are there lessons here for other media?
"In March 2011, personalized-magazine startup Zite got a cease-and-desist letter from a group of 11 media giants outraged by the way Zite's popular iPad app 'misappropriated' their news articles. By August 2011, Zite had become part of CNN, which is owned by Time Warner, one of the organizations behind the C&D letter. Zite's brief clash with the media establishment, followed by its swift assimilation into the same establishment, is emblematic of a larger story unfolding in the media business: the grudging acknowledgement by publishers that readers want to access their content in new ways. In this article Zite CEO Mark Johnson explains how the startup mollified publishers (by presenting articles in 'Web view' mode rather than a stripped-down 'reader mode'), why CNN bought the company, and how it strives to make reading more enjoyable while still respecting publishers' business models."
[From the article:
Old-line media companies have spent the last 25 years coping with the digital fragmentation of their content, starting with CompuServe and AOL in the 1980s and exploding in recent years across the Web, RSS, Google News, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and all the rest. Just as they’ve started to figure out how to make money in this radically altered world—not as much as they did in the print era, but something above zero— a new technology trend comes knocking: apps like Zite, Flipboard, and Pulse that hoover up publishers’ content fragments and put them back together in the form of tablet- and smartphone-based “magazines.” (See “The 10 Social News Apps You Need to Try,” 1/20/12.)


For my Data Mining & Data Analysis students...
"The ACM's Queue magazine has a new, comprehensive taxonomy of visualization techniques, drawing from the theories of Edward Tufte and citing examples from academia, government, and the excellent NYT visualization team. This list contains 12 steps for turning data into a compelling visualization: Visualize, Filter, Sort, Derive, Select, Navigate, Coordinate, Organize, Record, Annotate, Share, & Guide. 'For developers, the taxonomy can function as a checklist of elements to consider when creating new analysis tools.' The citations alone make this an article worth bookmarking."


Would the average police department know how to use Facebook this way?
The website Criminal Justice Degrees Guide posted an interesting infographic today about how Facebook played a pivotal role in solving 20 different criminal cases. Police are finding ways to use the social networking site to track down cyberstalkers, pranksters gone awry, and inappropriate posting of information. The UK police have reported a sharp rise in Facebook-related crimes in the past few years.


Should this be on my Ethical Hacking wish list?
The Little White Box That Can Hack Your Network
… Built by a startup company called Pwnie Express, the PwnPlug is pretty much the last thing you ever want to find on your network — unless you’ve hired somebody to put it there. It’s a tiny computer that comes preloaded with an arsenal of hacking tools. It can be quickly plugged into any computer network and then used to access it remotely from afar. And it comes with “stealthy decal stickers” — including a little green flowerbud with the word “fresh” underneath it, that makes the device look like an air freshener — so that people won’t get suspicious.
The basic model costs $480, but if you’re willing to pay an extra $250 for the Elite version, you can connect it over the mobile wireless network. “The whole point is plug and pwn,” says Dave Porcello, Pwnie Express’s CEO. “Walk into a facility, plug it in, wait for the text message. Before you even get to the parking lot you should know it’s working.”
Porcello decided to start making the PwnPlug after coming across the SheevaPlug, a miniature low-power Linux computer built by Globalscale Technologies that looks just like a power adapter.


Definitely for my Ethical Hackers...
… Windows Phones come locked by default, with users only able to install apps from the Windows Phone Marketplace on a region-specific basis. This can result in some disparity between users based in different territories and also prevents amateur developers from testing their apps on the platform.
Fortunately, two unlock methods are currently available across all Windows Phone devices. The first option is to register your Windows Phone as a developer device, enabling access to a wealth of development options – for a fee. If you don’t have resources for this, however, a much cheaper but limited choice also exists.


Freebies for my students!
"VALO-CD is an open source software collection similar to The Open CD. Version 8 is now available in English. The open source collection has been available in Finnish for several years, but now it has been translated into English and is available internationally as well. The collection contains pretty much everything a typical end user would need: LibreOffice, Inkscape, Firefox, Audacity and many other programs. The main goal is to increase knowledge about open source software. The programs are for Windows since most Linux distributions already contain most of the programs, and Linux users obviously are already aware of open source. The CD is developed collaboratively in a wiki. It is freely available as a torrent download."

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