Can any country adopt a
“No Security Needed” strategy?
UK
gears up for cyberwarfare offensives
… Speaking
at the annual Conservative party conference, Hammond said the United
Kingdom was dedicating additional resources and funds to building a
strong cyber intelligence and surveillance network, according
to Reuters.
As cybercrime continues
to prove a lucrative way for hackers to steal valuable data for
profit or as part of state-sponsored jobs -- and many governments
struggle to catch up and protect networks adequately against rising
attacks -- defense budget funds now need to not only consider
physical threats, but digital warfare as well.
I wonder if this will
help Google?
Wendy Davis reports:
The
Internet service provider WOW has defeated a long-running privacy
lawsuit stemming from its partnership with defunct behavioral
targeting company NebuAd.
On
Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Edmond Chang in the Northern
District of Illinois dismissed claims that WOW (formerly called Wide
Open West) violated federal wiretap laws by intercepting and
transmitting information about consumers’ Web activity to NebuAd.
Read more on MediaPost.
I wonder if they can
provide better examples than, “sometimes we can't read the
handwriting.” What could possibly go wrong? (Question from the
Ethical hacking mid-term exam)
Peter Bacqué reports:
Using
Department of Motor Vehicles records as its core, the state
government is quietly developing a master identity database of
Virginia residents for use by state agencies.
The
state enterprise record – the master electronic ID database –
would help agencies ferret out fraud and help residents do
business electronically with the state more easily, officials said.
While
officials say the e-ID initiative will be limited in scope and
access, it comes at a time of growing public concern about electronic
privacy, identity theft and government intrusion.
Read more on Richmond
Times-Dispatch
[From
the article:
DMV points out that, in
today's world, state driver's licenses are the fundamental
identification documents used by most Americans. [Except
you can't use it to get a drivers' license Bob]
State officials say
participation in the e-ID system will be voluntary [Why
do I doubt that? Bob]
… "To us, it
is a tool that allows individuals to create online
accounts," said Craig C. Markva, communications
director of the Department of Medical Assistance Services, speaking
for Secretary
of Health and Human Resources William A. Hazel Jr.
"When someone
wants to do this, we need to be able to verify
that the person trying to access the account is who he or she claims
to be," Markva said. "This requires that
they provide basic demographic information ... that we can compare to
what is known by DMV or by DSS (Department of Social
Services) already."
So far there's been
no public discussion in Virginia of the state's electronic
personal identity initiative or the use of the Internet for
increasingly more transactions with the state government.
… For example, if a
Virginian sells a car to another state resident, the deal requires a
physical exchange of the registration card and the handwritten
information on the card that is often hard for DMV representatives to
read [and of course DMV has no record of the car's
registration Bob]
… DMV says the $4.3
million Commonwealth Authentication Service system will be safe from
abuse because agencies will control individuals' files. Those files
will not all be put into a single database open to other agencies.
Agencies
using the service to verify a client's identity will get only a
yes-or-no reply from the Commonwealth Authentication
Service system, DMV said.
“There's an App for
that!” and a privacy concern. Note that they don't brag about the
service they provide the mother.
April Dembosky reports:
The
computer engineers at BabyCenter are often among the first people
women tell they are pregnant. Mothers-to-be go to babycenter.com or
sign up for the site’s mobile app to get advice long before they
clear the first trimester and begin sharing their news with friends.
Sometimes even before telling the baby’s father.
“When
women register, they tell us their due date,” said Julie Dempsey,
BabyCenter’s vice-president of product. “Not
many apps are able to capitalise on that the way we are.”
BabyCenter
was named on Wednesday as one of 12 companies newly targeted by the
US Senate Commerce Committee’s investigation into data brokers and
their collection of health information for use in advertising.
Read more on FT.com
(sub required)
(Related) Remember
this one from February last year? (using Big Data)
(Related) For my App
developing students. Perhaps we could turn this into an “App
Buying Guide”
Hamish Barwick reports:
The
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OACI) has unveiled
a guide designed to help mobile app developers embed better privacy
practices into their products.
The
guide, Mobile
privacy: A better practice guide for mobile app developers,
recommends that developers use short privacy notices rather than
lengthy policies which are hard to read on a small screen.
Read more on TechWorld
(AU)
An idea whose time has
come? But, does anyone think long-term any more?
Nat Hentoff has an OpEd
on student privacy that will sound familiar to regular readers of
this blog. In it, he describes the case of Andrea Hernandez, a
student in Texas who refused to wear an RFID tag, and the strip
search of J.C. Cox, a 10 year-old boy, to search for a missing $20
bill.
Nat writes:
During
the 2016 presidential and congressional elections, I doubt very much
that candidates of either party — except maybe insistent
libertarians — will raise the issue of how so many of our kids
are taught that they are continually under criminal suspicion and
surveillance in their schools — in this land of the free
and home of the brave.
How
many of our students are even taught the Constitution in their
schools? How many of their parents bother to find out?
As someone who has
watched the erosion of students’ rights over the past 20 years
without frustration and outrage – the limitations on protected
speech, drug searches and searches without reasonable suspicion,
questioning of students without Miranda rights or right to involve a
parent, monitoring of students’ extracurricular speech and conduct,
and the creation of massive databases that record so many details of
a student’s and parent’s information – I share his concerns.
There is a mechanism
parents could use to organize to start restoring their children’s
rights and civil liberties. It’s called the PTA (Parent-Teacher
Association), and most schools have one. Why not
start a national campaign on student privacy and rights?
Bring in speakers, send home informative literature, and start
educating parents and students.
Don’t
count on the schools to teach your children their rights – or to
respect them. That’s part of your job as a
parent. If you sit back and let the schools, the state, and the
federal government just erode your children’s rights, well, in 30
years, all the cool clothes and electronics you bought them won’t
count for squat when you realize you’ve raised a
nation of sheep.
(Related) Some attacks
on students ar so off the wall they are easy to slap down.
Principal
sues students over parody Facebook, Twitter accounts
… Yes, they
happened to be his students. And yes, they appear to have made
parody Facebook and Twitter accounts that mocked him, presumably in a
middle school sort of way.
But did it seem
reasonable to invoke the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in order to put
them (and their parents) into emotional -- and, who knows, financial
-- detention?
Yet, as
Boing Boing reported, this is what he did.
His
complaint was stunningly educative. It alleged that these
growing humans had used Facebook and Twitter "without
authorization." He also used terms such as "defamation,"
"negligent supervision," and "parental liability."
… US District Judge
Michael J. McShane wasn't impressed. In denying Matot's action, he
reminded him that the idea of unauthorized computer behavior meant
having no authorization to use a particular computer for any purpose.
… One sentence from
the judgment is especially poetic. Referring to another case, it
said: "The Court found that 'lying on social media websites is
very common.'"
… Matot wasn't
going to give up without a battle, however. When he discovered he
couldn't persuade the judge on CFAA grounds, he tried to invoke RICO.
Yes, there were two
students creating these parody account. They were clearly a criminal
organization.
The judge might well
have offered a hollow laugh. For, in reply, he offered: "Congress
did not intend to target the misguided attempts at retribution by
juvenile middle school students against an assistant principal in
enacting RICO."
Some dissertations are
cooler than others... Some are more... “fluffy.”
Information
Sharing and Collaboration in the United States Intelligence Community
Information
Sharing and Collaboration in the United States Intelligence
Community: An Ethnographic Study of the National Counterterrorism
Center by Bridget Rose Nolan, PhD dissertation, University of
Pennsylvania, 2013. [via FAS/Secrecy News]
“The National
Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) was established to serve as the
primary organization in the U.S. Government for the integration,
sharing, and analysis of all terrorism and counterterrorism
intelligence. To date, no study has sought to illustrate whether and
how NCTC overcomes the barriers to information sharing among agencies
and the people that comprise them. The purpose of this dissertation
is to explore the micro-level ways in which intelligence work is
conducted in a post-9/11 world and to examine the circumstances that
both facilitate and discourage collaboration. By presenting detailed
ethnographic evidence and the in-depth interview perspectives of the
people who actually do this work daily, this study provides a
sociological analysis and discussion of best practices to help
identify ways in which NCTC can move closer to fulfilling its
mission.”
For anyone who needs to
stay current (like my students, hint hint)
What
Is the Best Podcast Manager For Windows?
… If you want to
listen to podcasts while at your Windows PC, the best option is still
a Windows desktop application that will play them for you. With
these programs, you can listen to the
MakeUseOf podcast and all
your other favorite podcasts.
As with many things in
life, there’s no one best podcast manager for everyone.
[See
also:
5
Essential Technology Podcasts That Geeks Should Listen To
Think of it as “Just
in Time” learning.
– lets you learn any
subject with teachers who are located almost anywhere in the world.
You can be at home in London and learn Spanish with a teacher from
Argentina, or you could be on the beach in Brazil learning how to
make sushi with a chef in Japan. All you need is a computer and a
video conferencing program like Skype or Google Hangout. Jukebox
Lessons is that simple.
For my website
students...
Build
HTML5 Sites and More With Google Web Designer
Earlier today Google
launched the public beta of Google
Web Designer. Web Designer is a desktop application for creating
interactive HTML5 sites and advertisements. The tool was built for
the purpose of creating advertising units, but it can be used for
building webpages and other non-advertising materials.
Web Designer allows you
develop pages that contain drawings, animations, and 3D objects. Web
Designer includes galleries of pre-made objects to drag, drop, edit,
and compile in the creation of animations. The animations come
together through a layered timeline.
I gave Web Designer try
this afternoon. It is not a tool that most people
will master quickly unless they've prior web design experience.
Fortunately, Google has produced a lot of tutorials
on how to use it. You can read
tutorials here and watch
tutorials on YouTube. If you decide to try Google Web Designer,
you will probably want to try it on a screen larger than 13 inches.
I tried it on my 13' MacBook Pro and would have liked to have some
more screen space in which to work.
Using Google
Web Designer could be an excellent progression for students who
are ready to move beyond the basics of building webpages in Google
Sites and other free website builders.
What we have to
consider for our App programming classes.
Survey:
Company apps thwarted by mobile device diversity
… "The
survey's top reported obstacle to mobile app delivery is building for
multiple devices and platforms," Appcelerator
said Tuesday after surveying IT executives, development
directors, programmers, and others at 804 companies in August.
Fanboys can quibble about how bad fragmentation really is within the
realms of Android
or iOS, but a higher level, it's definitely a concern.
Of the respondents, 34
percent write apps that support three operating systems, 23 percent
support one OS, 20 percent support four OSes, 11 percent support two
OSes, and 8 percent support five or more OSes.
That's good news for
Appcelerator,
which makes a business out of cross-platform programming tools, but
bad news for anyone venturing farther away from mainstream devices
like iPhones, Samsung's Galaxy Android phones, or Wintel laptops.
No comments:
Post a Comment