Friday, August 23, 2013

Are they saying that their current procedures cause harm? They are, aren't they? I would really like to see how this would work. I see the potential for lots of “False Positive” reports requiring (one hour?) reversals.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is seeking to fast-track the rollout of a new process that state health insurance exchanges will use to report–within one hour–information security incidents.
With the exchanges expected to open on October 1, CMS has submitted a request for an emergency review of the new reporting system from the Office of Management and Budget “because public harm is reasonably likely to result if the normal clearance procedures are followed,” according to a notice issued on August 20.
Read more on Health Data Management.
[From the article:
In absence of this change, [i.e. If we keep doing what we are doing... Bob] a significant number of incidents will not be detected; therefore causing harm and potential risk to the public’s identity with identity fraud.”


Has anyone (government or corporation) raised concerns like this?
Jasper Hamill writes:
Microsoft’s new touchy Windows 8 operating system is so vulnerable to prying hackers that Germany’s businesses and government should not use it, the country’s authorities have warned in a series of leaked documents.
According to files published in German weekly Die Zeit, the Euro nation’s officials fear Germans’ data is not secure thanks to the OS’s Trusted Computing technology– a set of specifications and protocols that relies on every computer having a unique cryptographic key built into the hardware that’s used to dictate what software can be run.
Read more on The Register.


This was a really good idea until users noticed that non-users thought it was a bad idea?
Associated Press and Catherine Townsend report:
Google Play has been forced to remove a Boyfriend Tracker app from sale in Brazil in response to complaints about privacy abuses, as well as its potential to be used for extortion or stalking.
Brazilians were outraged when they learned their country was a top target of the U.S. National Security Agency’s top secret overseas spying operation, but it seems that all bets are off when it comes to catching cheaters.
Tens of thousands managed to download the software before it was pulled off the market.
Read more on Daily Mail.


An article to stimulate ethical debate?
San Francisco Fire Chief Bans Helmet Cams
… Hayes-White, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, made her decision following the death of 16-year-old Ye Meng Yuan in the Asiana plane crash last month. Footage from a helmet cam filmed during the incident shows that battalion chief Mark Johnson did not know that Ye was lying on the ground near the plane wreck, covered in fire-retardant foam, when she was run over by a fire-department rig.
… But this justification for Hayes-White's decision is, to put it mildly, a bit suspect. Even Ye's family's own lawyer is unimpressed. "Why would anybody not want to know the truth?" he told the Chronicle. "What's wrong with knowing what happened? What's wrong with keeping people honest? That's what the helmet cam did, in effect, in this case."

(Related)
In California, a Champion for Police Cameras
… Rialto has become the poster city for this high-tech measure intended to police the police since a federal judge last week applauded its officer camera program in the ruling that declared New York’s stop-and-frisk program unconstitutional. Rialto is one of the few places where the impact of the cameras has been studied systematically.
In the first year after the cameras were introduced here in February 2012, the number of complaints filed against officers fell by 88 percent compared with the previous 12 months. Use of force by officers fell by almost 60 percent over the same period.


“This way to the EGRESS.”
Ryan Calo has uploaded a new paper to SSRN. Here’s the abstract:
Jon Hanson and Douglas Kysar coined the term “market manipulation” in 1999 to describe how companies exploit the cognitive limitations of consumers. Everything costs $9.99 because consumers see the price as closer to $9 than $10. Although widely cited by academics, the concept of market manipulation has had only a modest impact on consumer protection law.
This Article demonstrates that the concept of market manipulation is descriptively and theoretically incomplete, and updates the framework for the realities of a marketplace that is mediated by technology. Today’s firms fastidiously study consumers and, increasingly, personalize every aspect of their experience. They can also reach consumers anytime and anywhere, rather than waiting for the consumer to approach the marketplace. These and related trends mean that firms can not only take advantage of a general understanding of cognitive limitations, but can uncover and even trigger consumer frailty at an individual level.
A new theory of digital market manipulation reveals the limits of consumer protection law and exposes concrete economic and privacy harms that regulators will be hard-pressed to ignore. This Article thus both meaningfully advances the behavioral law and economics literature and harnesses that literature to explore and address an impending sea change in the way firms use data to persuade.
You can download the paper from SSRN.


Not what I would have guessed...
Assessing Factors That Affect Patent Infringement Litigation Could Help Improve Patent Quality
Conclusion
This suggests that the focus on the identity of the litigant rather than the type of patent may be misplaced.


Not surprising. I have students come to class in their sleep... (This is actually a joke, right?)
The sleep-texting epidemic
… Earlier this year, Philadelphia nursing professor Elizabeth Dowdell worried that teens were now LOLing while they slept.
But teens do all sorts of crazy things out of which they ultimately grow. However, now a New York doctor, sleep expert Dr. Josh Werber, reveals that sleep-texting is spreading to even those with fully-developed faculties.
In a quite painful report published Wednesday, CBS New York interviewed Werber, as well as a couple of women who sometimes wake in the morning, to see that their sleep has been punctuated by messaging.

No comments: