I know a whole class of
people who will find this interesting...
By Dissent,
April 8, 2012
Class action lawsuits for medical data
breaches are becoming
more attractive to lawyers, particularly in California where
there are statutory damages for violation of the state’s
Confidential Medical Information Act.
(Related) So easy, even the eastern
European mafia can do it.
"The Utah Department of Health
has been hacked. 181,604
Medicaid and CHIP recipients have had their personal information
stolen. 25,096 had their Social Security numbers (SSNs)
compromised. The agency is cooperating with law enforcement in a
criminal investigation. The hackers, who are believed to be located
in Eastern Europe, breached the server in question on March 30,
2012."
Think it will catch on?
Washington
State Supreme Court imposes limits on vehicle searches
April 8, 2012 by Dissent
Mike Carter reports:
The Washington
Supreme Court has limited the ability of police to search someone’s
car after they’ve been taken into custody, further extending a long
tradition of affording state residents more privacy protections than
are guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Read more in Seattle
Times.
How refreshing.
[From the article:
The justices, in an 8-1 vote on
Thursday, held that police must obtain a warrant to search an
arrested driver's car even if they believe it
contains evidence of the crime for which the person was taken into
custody.
The ruling extends protections not
afforded under a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court decision in an Arizona case
that found searches in such cases permissible under the Fourth
Amendment.
That case, Arizona v. Gant, said police
must obtain a warrant to search a vehicle with two narrow exceptions:
officer safety — they can conduct a limited search for weapons, for
example — and when they reasonably believe the car contains
evidence of the crime for which the driver was taken into custody.
Washington's justices found that the
officer-safety exemption already exists under Article I, Section 7 of
the state constitution, which contains protections against illegal
search and seizure similar to those found in the Fourth Amendment.
But they said the search for evidence
of the crime-of-arrest does not qualify as an acceptable warrantless
search, and they rejected arguments of prosecutors from around the
state who warned in pleadings that forcing officers
to obtain warrants to search a car after every arrest will be
time-consuming and have other impacts on law enforcement. [Is that
their best argument? “Time consuming?” Bob]
Is this the only way to
get student information? Is this one of those little “intended
consequences” congress had in mind (think of voting ads to the
'nearly 18' crowd)
If
parents don’t opt-out: FERPA Sunday edition
April 8, 2012 by Dissent
Should churches be allowed to get
public school students’ names and addresses?
If you think not, remember that it’s
directory information under FERPA.
And if you don’t opt-out of sharing
your child’s information, yes, they can get it, and yes, they can
then contact your child to invite them to religious events and the
like — or so says at least one school district.
Read more on Lincoln
Journal Star.
Don't get me started...
Patent
Law 101: What’s Wrong And Ways To Make It Right
Patent blogs were lit up after the
Supreme Court’s decision in Prometheus v. Mayo. Some have
hailed the decision as a “harbinger
of progress to come” while others have denounced it as
revealing “just how little the Court understands the nuances of
science, philosophy and language – let alone the patent law
itself.” Describing the decision as “controversial” is
probably an understatement.
Because one or two free
maps of the globe is never enough?
April 08, 2012
OpenStreetMap
-The Free Wiki World Map
Wikimedia
- "Previous versions of our application used Google Maps for the
nearby view. This has now been replaced with OpenStreetMap
- an open and free source of Map Data that has been referred to as
‘Wikipedia for Maps.’ This closely aligns with our goal of
making knowledge available in a free and open manner to everyone.
This also means we no longer have to use proprietary Google APIs in
our code, which helps it run on the millions of cheap Android
handsets that are purely open source and do not have the proprietary
Google applications. OpenStreetMap is used in both iOS and Android,
thanks to the amazing Leaflet.js library. We are currently using
Mapquest’s map tiles for our application, but plan on switching to
our own tile servers in the near future."
A 440 page look at infrastructure...
Note the increasing use of the terms: Network Readiness Index (NRI)
and Information Communication Technology (ICT)
April 08, 2012
The
Global Information Technology Report 2012
The
Global Information Technology Report 2012 - Living in a
Hyperconnected World - World Economic Forum, 2012
- "We live in an environment where the Internet and its associated services are accessible and immediate, where people and businesses can communicate with each other instantly, and where machines are equally interconnected with each other. The exponential growth of mobile devices, big data, and social media are all drivers of this process of hyperconnectivity. Consequently, we are beginning to see fundamental transformations in society. Hyperconnectivity is redefining relationships between individuals, consumers and enterprises, and citizens and the state. It is introducing new opportunities to increase productivity and well-being by redefining the way business is done, generating new products and services, and improving the way public services are delivered. However, hyperconnectivity can also bring about new challenges and risks in terms of security, cybercrime, privacy, the flow of personal data, individual rights, and access to information. Traditional organizations and industry infrastructures are also facing challenges as industries converge. This will inevitably have consequences for policy and regulation because regulators will have to mediate the blurring lines between sectors and industries, and will be obligated to oversee more facets of each interaction in a pervasive way. For example, in terms of security and surveillance, hyperconnectivity is transforming the way people, objects, and even animals are being monitored. Experts also predict it will have an impact on inventory, transport and fleet management, wireless payments, navigation tools, and so on. The impact of ICT on different facets of life and work is growing. In this context, the way we monitor, measure, and benchmark the deployment and impacts of ICT must evolve to take into account the rapid changes and consequences of living in a hyperconnected world. Reflecting on this imperative of adaptation, a comprehensive review process of the NRI framework has been undertaken, guided by a process of high-level consultations with academic experts, policymakers, and representatives of the ICT industry. The results of this new framework are presented for the first time in this edition of the Report."
For my Ethical Hackers. If they can,
you can! (Once upon a time, “millions of lines of code” was the
realm of Operating Systems only!
"Our cars run millions
of lines of code that need constant and, often,
critical updates. Jim Motavalli writes that Mercedes-Benz's new
mbrace2 'cloud infotainment system' has a
secret capability: [Oops!
Bob] it can update software automatically and
wirelessly. In a process called 'reflashing,' the Mercedes system
turns on the car operating system (CU), downloads the new
application, then cuts itself off. With companies like Fisker paying
dearly for constant
recalls for software problems, automakers will likely rush to
embrace this technology. No more USBs
in the dashboard!"
(Related) Other jobs you can do...
"The U.S. Navy is paying a
company six figures to
hack into used video game consoles and extract sensitive information.
The tasks to be completed are for both offline and online data. The
organization says it will only use the
technology on consoles belonging to nations overseas,
because the law doesn't allow it to be used on any 'U.S. persons.'"
It's not just for teachers...
In the past I have published a couple
of guides to using Google
Documents in the classroom. The problem with those guides is
that they were made before the latest round of updates to Google
Documents. Yesterday I sat down and built a new guide, Google
Documents for Teachers. The 40 page guide (embedded below) is
designed to help teachers who have never used Google Documents. This
document is part of a larger project that I hope to complete this
month. Please leave a comment if you have suggestions about how to
improve this document.
… If you want to download this
document you will have to register on either Issuu or DocStoc to do
so. I realize that this introduces an extra step to the process, but
it's the best way for me to track the number of views, embeds, and
downloads of my documents.
For my Geek/Nerd friends:
Did you miss any?
2012
Hugo Award Nominees Announced
You can read the entire list of
finalists at The
Hugo Awards website.
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