I'm not going to say “I told you so!”
Not often, anyhow. Q: Why did it take them 2 years to blow the
whistle? A: There's a lot of money flowing to the states because of
this program. Unfortunately, none of it flows to John Q. Public.
Intelligence
effort named citizens, not terrorists – Senate report reveals
uselessness of fusion centers for fighting terrorism
October 2, 2012 by Dissent
Eileen Sullivan and Matt Apuzzo of
Associated Press reports:
A
multibillion-dollar information-sharing program created in the
aftermath of 9/11 has improperly collected information about innocent
Americans and produced little valuable intelligence
on terrorism, a Senate report concludes. It portrays an
effort that ballooned far beyond anyone’s ability
to control.
What began as an
attempt to put local, state and federal officials in the same room
analyzing the same intelligence has instead cost huge amounts of
money for data-mining software, flat screen televisions and,
in Arizona, two fully equipped Chevrolet Tahoes that are used for
commuting, investigators found.
Read more on Yahoo!
Update: Huffington
Post has uploaded a copy of the full
report. [Broken link, see below Bob]
But take your blood pressure medication before reading it because it
is truly scathing and will infuriate anyone who is sick and tired of
privacy and civil liberties being sacrificed while taxpayer dollars
are wasted on useless programs that do not not protect us from
terrorism.
The full report is
HERE.
Perhaps we could have a Privacy Seminar
and invite the Royal Family?
Kate
Middleton and Privacy Law
October 2, 2012 by Dissent
Privacy law scholar Dan Solove writes:
The recent
incident of paparazzi snapping photos of Kate Middleton sunbathing in
the nude has sparked renewed attention to privacy law. According to
the Washington
Post: “The royals contend that the photos of Middleton —
apparently taken by a single paparazzo — violate her privacy and
that the photographer trespassed on the private French estate where
she and Prince William were vacationing. The editor of the Italian
magazine disputes the trespassing allegation, saying the photos were
shot from a public road.”
Many pundits have
said dismissingly that any legal action Middleton might take is
essentially a fool’s errand and she shouldn’t have expected
privacy. For example, Donald
Trump has declared in a tweet that Middleton has “only
herself to blame.” [..and The Donald should
certainly know about Blame... Bob] According to a
Washington
Times editorial: “Princess Kate needs to remember there is no
privacy, so keep your top on.”
These sentiments
are the typical reactions to media invasions of privacy — people
should expect no privacy whenever they are outside the confines of
their homes. I contend that this view isn’t correct both
descriptively and normatively.
Read more on Linkedin.
I can see swarms of high schoolers
asking such intellectually stimulating questions as “Boxers or
briefs, Mr. President?”
October 02, 2012
Government
Agency Consortium Launches FOIAonline
"FOIAonline
is a tool that allows both the public and agency staff to make,
monitor, and manage FOIA requests from a single website. Requesters
may choose to submit requests and file appeals by registering for an
account. This will also allow requesters to track progress and
communicate directly with agency staff. Prior to making a request, a
searchable repository of records previously released may be reviewed
to eliminate the need to make a new request. Agency staff can move
requests between organizations, review documents for potential
withholding, generate invoices and make referrals and consultations
quickly to other partner agencies. Agency management will be pleased
with the time saved to prepare the Annual Report to the Department of
Justice, a standard report in FOIAonline. FOIAonline was developed
by a small group of government agencies looking for ways to use
technology to process FOIA requests in a cost-effective way.
FOIAonline operates as a module of the eRulemaking system and, like
eRulemaking, is managed by a Change Control Board of partner
agencies. The current partner agencies are: Departments of Commerce
and Treasury, Environmental Protection Agency, National Archives and
Records Administration, Merit System Protection Board and Federal
Labor Relations Authority."
Perspective Sometimes, great business
models are obvious – in retrospect.
The
World's Largest Payment Platform Can Reach 2 Billion People
When Jana co-founder Nathan Eagle
needed to connect to a cell carrier in the developing world, he'd
come to meetings with a duffel bag full of cash and say that he
wanted to buy airtime. For carriers who were taking on more
customers than ever, but struggling with declining revenue per user,
it was an irresistible sales pitch. The result, two years later, is
that Jana is now the largest payment platform in the world.
Eagle describes Jana
as an "opt-in mobile network" that pays
users to fill out consumer surveys and try products. The
company has access to 100% of the users on 237 cell carriers in 101
countries throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America.
By 2004, there were more mobile
subscribers in the developing world than in developed countries, and
the gap has been widening ever since. In 2012, Jana estimates that
of the 6.5 billion mobile subscriptions on Earth, 5 billion are in
emerging markets. The World Bank estimates that 75% of the people on
Earth have access to a mobile phone. According to the McKinsey
Quarterly, three
billion people are projected to move into the middle class in the
next twenty-five years. Right now their mobile devices are in some
respects the most direct way to reach them.
Eagle comes from an academic
background--he has appointments at Harvard and MIT and once more than
a year as a Fulbright professor in Kenya--and his roots lie in using
technology for development and social good. Jana was born, in part,
of Eagle's success in setting up a network in rural villages in Kenya
for nurses to text
in status reports on supplies of hospital blood banks.
Jana's network, which is connected
directly to the computer systems used by mobile carriers around the
world, doesn't send actual money; instead, it gives
mobile-phone credit. In emerging markets, where,
according to Eagle, the average user spends 8%-12% of his or her
income on prepaid mobile service, that's almost as good as cash.
… Often, Jana links its promotions
to purchases in the physical world. "In the Philippines, if you
go out and buy a particular brand of candy bar, if you get three of
your friends to also buy it, all of you get it for 50% off."
says Eagle. "We can validate the purchase because 7-Eleven is
now printing Jana IDs on every receipt they have. At any of 713
7-Elevens, it's on the receipt." In another promotion,
consumers in Indonesia who purchased two or more Danone
yogurt products got 5,000 rupiahs ($0.52) worth of airtime directly
on their phones.
A business model that was not
obvious...
Changemakrs
Looks To Reinvent Inspirational Quotes For A More Social Web
A few months ago, former Facebooker
Sacha
Tueni and Matthias Wagner were working on a Twitter client. Yes,
a Twitter client — several years after Tweetdeck launched and
Seesmic pivoted toward being a social media reader. While their app
Zerobird was good at filtering interesting content, investors
weren’t biting. It was also going to be a long uphill battle in
the app store and on Twitter’s increasingly politically complicated
platform.
So they took some good advice to heart.
Steve Jobs’ advice, in fact. They built a tribute site to the
late visionary. It was spartan, with that famous photograph of him
sitting in an unfurnished house. They overlaid some of his best
advice on that picture.
The barebones site quickly went viral,
accumulating 3 million pageviews in about 48 hours. Surprised by the
response to such a simple concept, they redid it with other figures.
They did it with Yoda, and got 300,000 visitors. Then they did it
again with Albert
Einstein, and immediately got 400,000 visitors. Again, they did
it with Lady Gaga, and got 700,000 visitors with 16 percent of them
clicking through to a music track.
Thus, a new idea was born. What if
they built a platform where anybody could share and accumulate bits
and pieces of aspirational wisdom? So they created Changemakrs,
which is a site full of inspirational quotes from different people
ranging from celebrities to intellectuals, and even entrepreneurs
from this community. It’s in beta and invited members can piece
together quotable advice from anyone else.
...and a business model to give the
RIAA heartburn.
One of the
biggest cost centers for streaming audio providers is royalties paid
to artists and music publishers. Music streaming company Rdio has
announced a plan that will see it pay musicians a significant amount
of money for each new subscriber the artist brings to the streaming
service. Rdio launched an Artist Program this week that will pay
musicians as much as $10 per subscriber.
For my Statistics students...
October 02, 2012
BLS
Launches Data Sets Finder Search Tool Launched in Beta
"Data
Finder is a new search and navigation tool for BLS time series
data available on the BLS website. Rather than searching individual
data sets, Data Finder
allows users to conveniently search multiple data
sets all at once. Users can extract specific data by
searching by keyword or by filtering through multiple topics,
measures, and attributes. This tool is designed to eventually
replace many of the existing query tools on data.bls.gov.
It is being developed iteratively, and we plan to update the
application on a regular basis. We therefore encourage feedback,
which we will use to plan and prioritize enhancements. We
want to make this product useful to you." [Codeword check: Are
they saying there is data here that will embarrass politicians? Bob]
(Ditto)
"The phrase 'correlation does
not imply causation' goes back to 1880 (according to Google Books).
However, use of the phrase took off in the 1990s and 2000s, and is
becoming
a quick way to short-circuit certain kinds of arguments. In the
late 19th century, British statistician Karl Pearson introduced a
powerful idea in math: that a relationship between two variables
could be characterized according to its strength and expressed in
numbers. An exciting concept, but it raised a new issue: how to
interpret the data in a way that is helpful, rather than misleading.
When we mistake correlation for causation, we find a cause that isn't
there, which is a problem. However, as science grows more powerful
and government more technocratic, the stakes of correlation — of
counterfeit relationships and bogus findings — grow larger."
For all my Intro to Security
students...
We
know what you're doing...
… queries Facebook's Graph API and
outputs the results. There is nothing on this website that cannot be
accessed by anyone else.
(Related) I suspect it is because we
have not yet developed a culture of appropriate action (we ain't got
no good examples)
"An article in the WSJ
discusses why
internet users are more rude online than they are in person. The
story discusses some of the possible reasons. For example, a study
found that browsing Facebook tends to lower people's self control.
An MIT professor says people posting on the internet have lowered
inhibitions because there is no formal social interaction. Another
theory is that communicating through a phone or other device feels
like communicating with a 'toy,' which dehumanizes the conversation.
Of course, a rude conversation has never
happened on Slashdot in the last 15 years."
Student cell phone rings. Professor
grabs cell phone. Shoves it where the sun... Okay, maybe just a
“No cell phones, please” sign.
There are several ways to make animated
GIFs: You can use a bunch of pictures you took and combine them, you
can create one on the go using a webcam, and you can take an existing
video and turn it into an animated GIF. Most of the tools you’ll
find below are meant for the first method. Turns out that by using a
series of pictures you’ve taken yourself, or just some pictures you
like, you can actually create some really beautiful things!
Geeky stuff?
YouTube is the undisputed king of
online video, even though there are several willing (but
somewhat lacking) competitors. With that in mind, a list of 10
technology YouTube channels you cannot afford to miss would seem to
be appropriate.
Another list, with some Free Stuff!
15
Must Have Windows Utilities
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