A noble or at least notable effort.
WSJ –
Level 3 Tries to Waylay Hackers
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Jun 3, 2015
Drew
Fitzgerald – WSJ.com – “Earlier this month, Brett Wentworth
took Level 3 Communications Inc. into territory that most rivals have
been reluctant to enter. The director of global security at the
largest carrier of Internet traffic cut off data from reaching a
group of servers in China that his company believed was involved in
an active hacking attack. The decision was reached after a broad
internal review. The Broomfield,
Colo., company is taking an aggressive—and some say risky
approach—to battling criminal activity. Risky because hackers
often hijack legitimate machines to do their dirty work, raising the
risk of collateral damage by sidelining a business using the same
group of servers. Such tactics also run against a widely held belief
that large carriers should be facilitating traffic, not halting it.
And carriers are reluctant
to create the expectation that they will police the Internet.
Yet with attacks on the rise, Level 3 three years ago decided it is
worth the risks. At a rate of about once every few weeks, the
carrier is shutting down questionable traffic that doesn’t involve
any of its clients. When the source of the trouble is hard to
pinpoint, it often casts a wide net and intercepts traffic from large
blocks of Internet addresses. Recently, that meant stopping traffic
from a powerful network of computer servers controlled by a group of
hackers that security researchers dubbed SSHPsychos. The group used
rented machines in a data center to hack other computers that could
bring down target websites by flooding them with junk traffic. Level
3 blocked a broad swath of the Hong Kong-registered data center’s
IP addresses from the Internet.”
It can't be because management is doing such a
fine job of controlling their organizations. Perhaps it is because
politicians don't like to be second guessed? More likely because
they don't know how to use the IG to their advantage.
Watchdogs
Needed: Top Government Investigator Positions Left Unfilled for Years
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Jun 3, 2015
“At their best, Offices of Inspector General
(OIG) are essential to a well-functioning federal government. IG
offices recover billions of dollars in wasted taxpayer funds and make
improvements to federal programs that keep us healthy, safe, and
secure. IGs wear two hats, reporting to their agency heads and to
Congress. As a result of this dual-reporting structure, IGs are
uniquely positioned to serve as your eyes and ears within the
executive branch, giving you the information you need to conduct
effective oversight and pass meaningful legislation. POGO has worked
for years to study and improve the IG system, and we have supported
legislation to make IGs more independent and accountable. As such,
we are deeply troubled to find that many senior IG officials are
allegedly currying favor with the very agency leaders they’re
supposed to oversee, and taking other inappropriate actions that
would cause any reasonable person to question the IG’s
independence. Among the most pervasive threats to IG independence
and effectiveness are the long-standing vacancies that have
languished at IG offices throughout the federal government. POGO
believes it is no coincidence that so many long-time acting IGs have
found their independence called into question on front pages of
newspapers across the country—especially when those acting
officials make it known they are auditioning for the role of
permanent IG. At the same time, it is important to keep in mind that
the opening of an IG vacancy can occur for a perfectly appropriate
reason—such as removing a permanent IG who fails to uphold her
office’s mission.”
Are they worried that they might embarrass
politicians?
The Sunlight Foundation’s tool to track
lawmakers’ deleted tweets appears crippled after a three-year run.
Twitter said Wednesday it will no longer allow the
Sunlight Foundation to have access to the company's API, which allows
the foundation’s Politwoops to automatically track deleted tweets.
Twitter said it pulled the plug because it
violated the company’s developer agreement related to privacy.
… Politwoop’s most
recently tracked deleted tweet is from May 15.
Perhaps we should invite Tim to speak at The
Privacy Foundation?
Apple’s
Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech On Encryption, Privacy
Yesterday evening, Apple CEO Tim Cook was honored
for ‘corporate leadership’ during EPIC’s
Champions of Freedom event in Washington. Cook spoke remotely to
the assembled audience on guarding customer privacy, ensuring
security and protecting their right to encryption.
… Cook was characteristically passionate about
all three topics. A theme that has persisted following his
appearance on Charlie
Rose late last year to define how Apple handled encryption, his
public letter on Apple’s new security page in the wake
of the celebrity nude hacking incidents and his speech earlier
this year at President
Obama’s Summit on Cybersecurity at Stanford — an event which
was notably
not attended by other Silicon Valley CEOs like Facebook’s Mark
Zuckerberg, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer and Google’s Larry Page and
Eric Schmidt.
This happens when you think of your customers as
“sources of revenue” rather than people. I'm thinking of
starting an “Advertising Advisory Service.” I'll load my social
networking pages will all kinds of “interests” and charge anyone
who “opts in” to my service (by sending me an ad) a very
reasonable $100 per review. I figure I can review about 200 ads per
day, as soon as I get the program written.
PayPal
Changes User Agreement To Send Ads On Numbers You Didn’t Provide
Today, PayPal
announced a few upcoming changes to its user agreement, which
will affect a lot of users so read the fine print once you’re
agreeing to the soon-to-be-updated terms. The main clause discovered
in the agreement gives the company rights to contact you via text or
call to your personal number which you didn’t provide to the
service in the first place.
According to the Washington Post, an updated
clause in the agreement allows the company to send "autodialed
or prerecorded calls and text messages," on phone numbers; which
if you didn’t provide yourself, the company has "otherwise
obtained" from other sources.
While the new clause may seem as a dire violation
of your privacy, under the previous agreement, PayPal already had the
authority to scour various sources in order to keep a repository of
phone numbers belonging to its clients.
(Related) Soon, everyone will do this.
Instagram
is going to start showing you ads based on information in your
Facebook profile
Instagram ads are about to get a lot more
personal.
…
But soon advertisers will know if
you're a 20-something living in Brooklyn who likes cats. How? Your
Facebook profile.
Another method of ensuring “Open Government?”
What happened to the wisdom behind “Double Secret Probation?”
Whistleblower
website WikiLeaks offered a $100,000 bounty for copies of a Pacific
trade pact that is a central plank of President Barack Obama's
diplomatic pivot to Asia on Tuesday.
WikiLeaks, which has published leaked chapters of
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiating text before, started
a drive to crowdsource money for the reward, just as U.S. unions
launched a new push to make the text public.
…
Nine hours after the campaign was launched, WikiLeaks' website was
showing $25,835 pledged by more than 100 people.
(Related) Who really runs the government when
your PAC contributors know more that congressmen in your own party?
...and here I was thinking that we had already
reached ubiquity.
Ericsson:
Smartphones Nearly Ubiquitous In Five Years
Ericsson’s
latest mobility
report is out this morning, and it finds, perhaps unsurprisingly,
that we’ll be swamped in smartphones by 2020. Even taking into
account the company’s obvious interest in this finding, it’s
still a shock to realize that the recently acquired cultural posture
of bending over a small shiny object while swiping away at the glass
will become nearly universal in just five more years.
The company predicts that the world’s population
will support 6.1 billion smartphone subscriptions in 2020. Accepting
a population estimate from Population
Pyramids of the World of 7.7 billion yields a proportion of 79%.
In its report, Ericsson gives a figure of 70%.
… Including all phones, the report says, not
just smart ones, phone penetration will reach 90% of the world’s
population by 2020.
Darn, I was going to try this. But if it's legal,
why was he suspended? Can he sue?
A science
teacher was suspended without pay for using a signal jammer to block
his students' phones
A teacher in Florida has been suspended without
pay for five days after he used
a signal jammer to stop his students' phones from working, Ars
Technica reports.
Science
teacher Dean Liptak affixed a jammer to a cell tower located on
campus, which enabled him to jam mobile phones in order to stop
students from getting distracted during lessons.
Liptak said that he had an override button for the
device in case of emergencies, and also claimed that he checked with
a local police officer who told him that using a jammer was legal.
Alarmist or realistic? Clearly US “happy news”
does not cover this. Not as important as National Donut Day.
Ukraine's
Poroshenko warns of 'full-scale' Russia invasion
President Petro Poroshenko has told MPs the
military must prepare to defend against a possible "full-scale
invasion" from Russia, amid a surge of violence in eastern
Ukraine.
Russia has denied that its military is involved in
Ukraine, but Mr Poroshenko said 9,000 of its troops were deployed.
Clashes involving tanks took place in two areas
west of Donetsk on Wednesday.
(Related) Of course we have plans, but have we
updated them since the Berlin wall came down? Yeah, probably but are
we ready to implement it?
Start of
WW3? Putin could force the West to use NUCLEAR WEAPONS against
Russia, warns NATO
Europe and the United States are "embarrassingly"
unprepared for Russian aggression, claimed General Petr Pavel.
… Czech general Pavel, next chairman of the
NATO Military Committee, issued a warning to Western leaders
expressing his concern they are not ready for military action by
Putin.
He said: "Russia could seize the Baltic
countries in two days.
"NATO wouldn't be able to react to the
situation in that time."
The Alliance would be forced to "weigh its
positions regarding whether it would start a war - maybe even a
nuclear war - against Russia for the Baltic states," he said.
I bet this will cost much more than they estimate.
Truckmakers
Ordered by U.S. to Add Anti-Rollover Technology
Makers of heavy-duty trucks in two years must add
electronic stability-control systems to new vehicles, an effort by
the U.S. government to prevent rollover crashes that kill about 300
drivers a year and injure 3,000 others.
The technology uses engine torque and
computer-controlled braking to help truckers maintain control in
emergencies by keeping the wheels on the ground and the trailers from
swinging. The regulatory requirement, proposed in 2012, is estimated
to cost $585 per truck
Once again we see that the world does not work as
the MPAA would like it to.
A judge in New Zealand has said that Kim Dotcom,
the founder of now-defunct file-sharing service Megaupload, who is
facing federal charges, does not have to forfeit his property,
despite the order of a U.S. judge.
It’s a blow to federal prosecutors, who were
hoping to force Dotcom to comply with the order of a federal judge in
Virginia, Ars Technica reported
on Wednesday.
The Virginia judge ruled in March that Dotcom had
lost the case over forfeiting his property by default. But a judge
on the High Court of New Zealand, Auckland Registry, found the legal
theory being used by American authorities was not recognized in New
Zealand.
Teaching in the 21st Century should be
even easier than learning.
Teaching
Mathematics With a Surface Pro Tablet
For the last 6 years I have done all of my
teaching on a tablet Windows PC. I have really liked using the tool
for these reasons. I can have a digital copy of all of my lessons
sync to all of my computers and be instantly searchable. Since my
lesson was already digital I could easily upload it to my website. I
could use any computer program (graphing utilities, geometric or
algebraic drawing utilities, Excel, and more) in my lesson
seamlessly.
But up until last year there was a drawback. I
could never leave my podium for a couple of reasons. First, the
computer did not have a way to wirelessly stream the video output to
the projector. Also, the computer was not small enough to just pick
up and walk around with using only one hand.
One of the best things about technology is how the
tools we use are constantly changing. Last year I updated my school
computer to a Surface Pro 2. The portability of this computer is
incredible! I was inspired to look into ways of untethering myself
from my podium. I originally used the software program AirParrot to
send the video to my Apple TV. And while that solution was good, it
was rather processor intensive and would drain the battery pretty
quickly. Just recently I started using a Microsoft
Wireless Display Adapter, which Windows 8 natively supports (the
streaming stick uses the Miracast wireless streaming protocol). This
setup has a much smaller drain on my battery which means more time
away from my podium!
For my Statistics students. Is this greater than
random? What data do you need to answer this question?
Shootings are on the rise this year in New York
City, and the trends are
raising questions about whether Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision
to cut down on stop-and-frisk tactics has made it easier to carry
guns in New York.
… In 2012, the NYPD made
more than 532,000 stops, each of which could progress to a frisk or
to a full search. The police found guns only 715 times.1
In other words, guns were found during 0.1 percent of stops.
… The NYCLU data set shows
that 23 percent of all stops and searches were prompted by concerns
about a possible weapon.2
The police did find guns more often in these cases (36 of every
10,000 weapon-related stops compared with seven of every 10,000
non-weapon-related stops). However, this still seems like a low
success rate, and it may be skewed. Police officers write up their
reasons for a stop afterward and can retroactively claim gun-related
causes after finding the weapon, even if they weren’t the true
reason for the stop.
A paper my Data Management students might find
interesting. (Yes, that is what I call a “hint.”)
Navigating
a World of Digital Disruption
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Jun 3, 2015
Navigating
a World of Digital Disruption by Philip Evans & Patrick Forth:
“Digital disruption is not a new phenomenon. But the
opportunities and risks it presents shift over time. Competitive
advantage flows to the businesses that see and act on those shifts
first. We are entering the third, and most consequential, wave of
digital disruption. It has profound implications not only for
strategy but also for the structures of companies and industries.
Business leaders need a new map to guide them. This article explains
the factors underlying these disruptive waves, outlines the new
strategic issues they raise, and describes a portfolio of new
strategic moves that business leaders need to master.”
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