Monday, March 25, 2013

Somehow this strikes me as a really, really bad idea. If it's a lie, what little credibility they had is gone. If it's true, they just made a final, perhaps fatal error. Is there an up-side?
When HackRead reported, #OpIsrael: Mossad Website breached, Personal Details of over 30,000 Agents Leaked by Anonymous, my first thought was that I wished they didn’t just uncritically repeat claims.
Did they examine the database/spread sheets before repeating tweets and claims? I did a random check of the database, and frankly, I find it extremely unlikely that the hackers obtained any information on Mossad agents, much less all their agents as well as government officials and politicians.
The data seem to include the names, addresses, phone and fax numbers, ID numbers, and email addresses of approximately 35,000 individuals. Some of the individuals in the database have multiple entries. Many seem to be merchants or others with no connection to the government at all.
Maybe some of the data are from people applying to become part of Mossad, but even that is a stretch when you start Googling some of the individuals in the database.
Think what you want of Mossad’s actions, but they are not stupid. They’ve known that they are targets, and not just by Anonymous or hacker groups. Covert operatives’ names and contact details thrown into a large database connected to the Internet? Highly unlikely. So unless someone has some proof that this database really has data on Mossad agents, I remain skeptical, to say the least.
I’ve emailed the Prime Minister’s Office on behalf of the Open Security Foundation to ask for their response to the claimed hack and leak. If I ever get an answer, I’ll post it.
Update: I’m not the only one who doesn’t accept claims about what the data represents. See this article and this one. Blog headline now revised.


Simple question: Is it your data or the doctor's?
World’s Health Data Patiently Awaits Inevitable Hack
Eugene Vasserman is uneasy about his digital pedometer. The company that makes the thing doesn’t know his name, age, or gender, but it does track his every step and his location. “They know where I sleep. They know my address,” says the Kansas State University cybersecurity and privacy researcher.
Some might think he’s paranoid. But he hasn’t stopped using the device. It’s just that he sees the worst-case scenario — and he’s adamant that the rest of us should see it too. Once health data leaves your immediate possession, he explains, it’s out of your control.
… What we do know is that security breaches surrounding healthcare information have been on the rise, according to the Ponemon Institute. And according to the The Washington Post, there are “gaping security holes” in many of the systems that hold our healthcare data.

(Related) We're inventing new ways to monitor our patients health...
This Pill Bottle Is a Smartphone Wannabe
The technologies that made you fall in love with your iPhone or Galaxy are now making their way into pill bottles.
To help patients take their medications on time, AdhereTech is remaking that ubiquitous orange bottle and giving it a high-tech facelift with the addition of lights, speakers, a 45-day-long battery, 3G and LTE capabilities, and sensors that measure humidity and how many pills are left in the bottle.
“We’ve built cellphone technology into the bottle,” said Josh Stein, the CEO of the New York City-based startup. “The bottle [will be] constantly connected to the cloud, just like a cell phone. Patients don’t have to link it to WiFi or Bluetooth. They don’t have to set it up in any way.”
… Down the line, if users want to merge their AdhereTech data with other apps or with their activity, glucose or blood pressure monitors, they’ll be able to thanks to AdhereTech’s open API. “It’s very important to us for patients to own their personal adherence data,” Stein says. “We want to be the pill bottle that plugs into other systems and integrates with all these other apps.”


My students are always amazed at how little data it takes...
Jason Palmer reports on a new study, “Unique in the Crowd: The privacy bounds of human mobility:”
Individuals can be uniquely identified with just four points of location data, a study of mobile phone records shows.
Countless mobile applications make use of location data, and such information is increasingly used to tailor both services for users and advertisements.
But a study in Scientific Reports warns that human mobility patterns are unique identifiers, even when data are scarce.
Read more on BBC. Their link to the study doesn’t work for me, but you can access the full study here.
Reference: Unique in the Crowd: The privacy bounds of human mobility Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, César A. Hidalgo, Michel Verleysen & Vincent D. Blondel; Scientific Reports 3, Article number: 1376 doi:10.1038/srep01376 Received 01 October 2012 Accepted 04 February 2013 Published 25 March 2013


For years, SciFi has assumed all journalists will be using drones. Just another tool for the paparazzi...
Why All Reporters (Not Just J-School Students) Should Learn to Fly Drones
These days the future of journalism may look cloudy. But one thing about the future of the business is clear, according to ABC News. It will be full of drones.
In fact, the emergence of drone journalism is expected to become such a mainstay of the media industry in the next few years that “undergraduate journalism students at the University of Missouri Journalism School, in Columbia, Mo., are now taking courses on how to use drones to report stories,” ABC News reported March 22.


Someone is practicing law without a brain. A wise judge would recommend remedial law school...
Jessica Masulli Reyes reports that Vernon Township in New Jersey is suing the recipients of an inadequately redacted email attachment with town employees’ Social Security numbers. They are also reportedly suing the newspaper that published a story about the breach.
Riiiiight….
Reyes writes:
The lawsuit, filed by Kevin Kelly in state Superior Court in Newton on Friday, is seeking financial compensation, as well as stopping the individuals — Sally Rinker, Jesse Wolosky, Curious George (anonymous name), Lynn Van Gorder and Sandra Ooms — from disseminating the confidential information.
The lawsuit stems from an incident reported in the New Jersey Herald on Friday about these individuals who made Open Public Records Act requests to the township for payroll information. Municipal Clerk Sue Nelson responded by sending an attachment that she believed redacted the Social Security numbers and other personal information, but those hidden columns in the document were still visible.
The town alleges that viewing all columns and data on a spreadsheet sent them to is an “intentional invasion of (employee’s) privacy and constitutional rights.” So if you open a file the government sends you, you’re intentionally invading privacy and constitutional rights? I don’t think so.
The judge was not convinced and declined to issue the order sought by the township, although he noted that anyone misusing the information might be subject to criminal penalties and/or civil damages.
Herald Publisher Jack Findley said, “I think that by trying to place the blame on the recipients of these documents, Kevin Kelly’s lawsuit is entirely frivolous. He should explain on what grounds he is pursuing this lawsuit which does nothing but waste the taxpayers’ money and township resources. If Kelly is trying to divert attention away from himself, it looks like his tactic backfired.”
Jesse Wolosky and Sally Rinker are also arguing that the blame should instead be placed on Vernon, rather than on those who received the documents under OPRA.
Indeed.
Read more on The New Jersey Herald.


Tools for Stalkers or your local surveillance hobbyist.
There are certain situations in which you would want to take pictures through your phone discreetly. But even if you turn your phone to silent and disable its flash, anybody who is looking at your phone’s screen will be able to tell that you are taking a picture. Offering a solution to that is a phone app called Sneaky Cam.
Sneaky Cam is a free to use phone application that is compatible with Android devices.
… The camera’s preview screen can be replaced by a screen of your choosing, and the preview can be set at a transparency level so you can see what you are photographing. You can also opt to get a notification each time a photograph has been successfully taken.
Similar tool: Gallery Private.


For my amusement...
… The Utah legislature has passed a law that would create a “cloud-based student achievement ‘backpack,”” allowing students and parents to access their education records from their entire school career, all in one place. [Making hacking easier by placing all their eggs in one basket. Bob] Utah has earmarked $250,000 for this — a budget and a process to keep an eye on, particularly in light of the $100,000,000 that the Gates Foundation has poured into its student data infrastructure, InBloom.


Because I like lists (and I'm cheap)


Attention Trekies! It's couch potato time!
Star Trek fans, you’re looking at the best week of your lives. To celebrate William Shatner’s birthday on March 22nd, Hulu has made every episode of every Star Trek series available for free. Yes, you heard right, every episode of The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise is now free on Hulu, until the end of March.
According to a tally made by TheNextWeb, this makes a total of 693 episodes of Star Trek from 30 different seasons, which means you’d have to watch over 69 episodes per day to make it before April 1st.

(Related) Of course, if you can start multiple sessions on each of your devices, you could grab everything in an hour or so...

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