Politicians,
lawyers and marketing executives study semantics so they can do this
well. (P. T. Barnum once sold a load of white fleshed salmon by
advertising that they were guaranteed not to turn pink.)
I
posted something about this previously, but Tim Cushing’s article
is still worth reading:
James Clapper’s defense of leaked NSA programs have fallen into the
“strictly
legal + oversight” framework so often it’s become a cliche
that can be ably wielded by lower level staffers. Occasionally,
Clapper fires off something longer, like
his defense of the NSA’s collection of French phone metadata.
During this longer “debunking,” Clapper denied accusations that
were never made by attacking a lousy translation of the original
French article. This provided for some plausible deniability (“NSA
does not collect recordings”), even if the underlying claims —
correctly translated — pointed to something the agency was actually
doing (bulk phone metadata collection).
The new head of the NSA, Michael Rogers, is doing the same thing.
Read
more on TechDirt.
[From
the article:
…
no one suggested in the article that the NSA targeted US citizens.
In fact, one of the biggest complaints about the NSA's programs is
the fact that they're clearly untargeted. The NSA doesn't select a
person and start the surveillance from that point. The surveillance
is pervasive and ongoing and any selection tends to occur long after
tons of data/communications have been collected. It's the
after-the-fact nature of the programs that makes them so dangerous.
"Those
who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it." (probably)
George Santayana
From
Washington’s Blog:
Spying has been around since the dawn of civilization.
Keith Laidler – a PhD anthropologist, Fellow of the Royal
Geographical Society and a past member of the Scientific Exploration
Society – explains:
Spying and surveillance are at least as old as civilization itself.
University of Tennessee history professor Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius
agrees:
Espionage and intelligence have been around since human beings first
began organizing themselves into distinct societies, cities, states,
nations, and civilizations.
Unfortunately, spying hasn’t been limited to defense against
external enemies. As documented below, tyrants have long
spied on their own people in order to maintain power and
control … and crush dissent.
Read
more on Washington’s
Blog.
About
time someone revisited this...
Via
Public
Citizen: Chris Jay Hoofnagle and Jennifer M. Urban, both of
Berkeley, have written Alan
Westin’s Privacy Homo Economicus, 49 Wake Forest Law Review 261
(2014). Here’s the abstract:
Homo economicus reliably makes an appearance in regulatory debates
concerning information privacy. Under the still-dominant U.S.
“notice and choice” approach to consumer information privacy, the
rational consumer is expected to negotiate for privacy protection
by reading privacy policies and selecting services consistent with
her preferences. A longstanding model for predicting these
preferences is Professor Alan Westin’s well-known segmentation of
consumers into “privacy pragmatists,” “privacy
fundamentalists,” and “privacy unconcerned.”
… This Article contributes to the ongoing debate about notice and
choice in two main ways. First, we consider the legacy Westin’s
privacy segmentation model itself, which as greatly influenced the
development of the notice-and-choice regime. Second, we report on
original survey research, collected over four years, exploring
Americans’ knowledge, preferences, and attitudes about a wide
variety of data practices in online and mobile markets. Using these
methods, we engage in considered textual analysis, empirical testing,
and critique of Westin’s segmentation model.
Interesting.
Is there much demand for lawyers in positions like this?
Last month, a report based on documents obtained by Edward Snowden
uncovered an elaborate National Security Agency surveillance program
that monitors every call made in the Bahamas. The island nation
appears to have responded to those charges by retaining attorneys to
work on “surveillance and privacy” issues.
According to disclosure
documents obtained by The Hill, the government of the
Bahamas has hired American law firm Hogan Lovells to represent it in
a variety of cases. While the Bahamas has worked with the firm
before, it added new responsibilities to their agreement. The firm
will represent the nation on issues “that may affect or relate to
[its] activities and interests … including but not limited to
surveillance and privacy matters.”
Read
more on Breitbart.com.
Another
interesting concept. Could the owners of “private” systems
charge for this access? Retain copyright? Have any rights at all?
Stacy
Lange reports:
Authorities in Scranton are looking to increase surveillance all over
the city. Not by adding more cameras, but by adding more eyes
looking at the cameras already in place.
Scranton City Council announced this week that it is applying for a
grant that would create community-wide surveillance for Scranton
Police.
But the grant money wouldn’t pay for any cameras. It
would pay for software that would allow Scranton Police to tap into
private surveillance systems.
Read
more on WNEP.
For
my Computer Forensics students.
WSJ
– In a Single Tweet, as Many Pieces of Metadata as There Are
Characters
by
Sabrina I.
Pacifici on June 7, 2014
Elizabeth
Dwoskin - “To understand big data, look no further than
a single tweet. At 140 characters a tweet seems tiny, but it can
yield a wealth of information. According to Elasticsearch, a
startup that builds software to help companies mine
data from social media, there are 150 separate points of so-called
metadata
in an individual tweet. Metadata loosely refers to information that
can be gleaned about a piece of content. For example, in legal
terms, the body of an email
is considered content, while the time stamp, the sender and the
receiver are considered metadata. For a tweet, metadata
includes a unique numerical ID attached to each tweet, as well as IDs
for all the replies, favorites and retweets that it gets. It also
includes a timestamp, a location stamp, the language, the date the
account was created, the URL of the author if a website is
referenced, the number of followers, and many other technical
specifications that engineers can analyze. (A Twitter
employee created a
map of metadata with explanations in 2010 that
you can look at here.)”
It's
one more “Thing” for the Internet of Things.
LG
LifeBand Touch soon to be available in India
The
era of 'smartness' has gripped the world. Begining with the 'smart'
phones then to 'smart' TV then to 'smart' eyewear and now 'smart'
wristbands have creeped in the market.
LG
started selling the Lifeband in the US market last month for USD 150.
And it is likely to be available in parts of Asia and Europe in the
coming weeks.
Just
like a life companion LG LifeBand Touch keeps a track on your
workouts and calories burned and syncs it on your devices through an
app-LG Fitness app. The figures collected by the band can be sycn on
an iPhone, iPad or any Android device.
(Related)
How many “Things” are being added to the Internet of Things?
Apple
to make 3-5 million iWatch units per month, sales begin October:
Nikkei
Apple
is preparing to sell its first wearable device this October, aiming
to produce 3 million to 5 million smartwatches a month in its initial
run, the Nikkei reported on Friday, citing an unidentified parts
supplier and sources familiar with the matter.
Specifications
are still being finalized for the watch that many believe will be
called iWatch, but the devices are likely to sport curved OLED
(organic light-emitting diode) displays and sensors that collect
health data from blood glucose and calorie consumption to sleep
activity, the Japanese news service cited industry sources as saying.
Anyone
want to start a car (truck/plane/motorcycle) company?
…
Earlier this week, Mr Musk told Tesla shareholders that in order to
speed up the pace of adoption of electric cars, Tesla was "playing
with doing something fairly significant on this front which would be
kind of controversial with respect to Tesla's patents".
Billion
is the new million... Is this an indication of a bubble? (Are
valuations like these real?)
Uber’s
New Eye-popping Valuation
And
to think $3.5 billion sounded like a lot.
Uber
Inc, the startup known for its fast-growing on-demand car service,
said it has raised $1.2 billion in additional capital, driving the
company’s new valuation to an eye-popping $18.2 billion.
…
Uber’s new net worth is $6.2 billion higher than it was just a
month ago, when the company raised money at a roughly $12 billion
level. Ten months ago the company was valued at $3.5 billion.
…
At $18.2 billion, Uber is worth more than public companies including
car-rental services Hertz Global Holdings, Inc. and Avis Budget Group
Inc.
Bad
move? High risk at best. Is one terabyte enough of a bribe to keep
their users? Stay tuned!
Flickr
closes doors for Facebook, Google logins
…
Yahoo on Thursday announced that logging into Flickr using Facebook
and Google accounts will not be possible after June 30. Instead,
users will have to login with their Yahoo account or create a Flickr
account to continue using the service.
…
Flickr gained significance as the most used photo sharing service
since it was acquired by Yahoo in 2005 but faded away into the
background after the entry of Instagram. However, it started
emerging as one of the prominent services last year after Yahoo
announced a free storage of
1 TB and unlimited free accounts.
Perspective.
Google
Chrome now most popular web browser in the U.S.
Popular
internet browser Google Chrome is more popular than most people even
realized. According to recently released figures, Google’s search
engine has overtaken Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as the most
popular internet browser in the United States.
Currently,
31.8 percent of internet users are running Google Chrome which
according to a report published by the Adobe Digital Index is up 6
percent on the previous year. Oppositely, Internet Explorer was down
6 percent from the previous year. Despite this drop, Internet
Explorer is only narrowly trailing Chrome with a market share of 30.9
percent.
These
figures combine both traffic from desktop and mobile devices. This
explains why both Chrome and Apple’s very own Safari have grown
dramatically over the last few years. With more web browsing
occurring on mobile devices through both iOS and Android, it’s no
surprise that both web browsers have seen such growth.
For
my Website Development students.
Face
Your Fears, Become A True SEO Master
…
SEO can either make or
break a website. We do
what we can to teach you, our readers about
good SEO practices. However, I’ve always believed that SEO
should come secondary to good content. But nevermind me, you should
really pay attention to what the industry experts have to say about
SEO. Here are 21 tips
to help you through the sticky maze that is SEO, face your fears, and
become a true SEO master.
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