Would the response be similar in any jurisdiction?
I would think so.
Andrew Paplowski reports:
Montreal Police will not confirm, but there is a report this morning they are going all out to try to recover sensitive information stolen from the private vehicle of a senior police officer, while he was attending a Christmas party.
The Journal de Montreal says the bag of Captain Patrice Vilceus was taken in a smash and grab near Union Street December 17.
The bag contained files and other confidential information regarding ongoing police investigations.
Read more on CJAD.
If this info was really left in an unattended vehicle, well….
Yikes.
[From
the article:
It also included a USB memory stick which
contained the numbers of several police sources, information about
misconduct involving several police officers and details of a
criminal investigation that had just been concluded which was going
to be sent on to the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions.
Less than encouraging words.
Your Tax
Refund May Take Longer, But at Least You'll Get It
Last year's income tax season was marked by an
explosion of refund theft. Will this year be any different?
Increased protections may cut down on fraud but
will likely draw out the wait for your money. Changes will be
visible when you use tax preparation firms and filing software, with
warnings akin to those from your bank if you try to log in from a new
device or change account information. Less visible will be broader
changes, such as revamped fraud-sniffing programs used by the IRS,
states, and the tax prep industry, as well as new information-sharing
agreements among all three.
Whether theses measures will make
it appreciably harder for someone to use your identity to claim your
refund isn't clear. One of the best consumer defenses against
refund fraud is to file as early as possible, starting Jan. 19,
beating would-be thieves who depend on your procrastination. But the
best defense is to set your deductions ahead of time so that you get
no refund at all.
How quickly will this deviate from Census data?
Joe Cadillic writes:
Under a proposed new law, Missouri cops will record a person’s race, their perceived sexual orientation, religion, disability and their English language proficiency!
Reams of data now show that “driving while black” is a real offense in the eyes of some Missouri officers and departments and it’s about to get worse!
Below are a some excerpts taken from the new law….
Read more on MassPrivateI.
The law reads as if the intent is to collect data,
aggregate it, and determine if there is a problem reflecting bias.
There is no indication that the observations will be tied to any
individual’s name. Disturbingly, however, the data will not be
tied to any officer’s name or ID, either, meaning that if a police
officer is biased, the public will not know who s/he is…? One
of the provisions of the law:
iv. Provide for the protection of the privacy of individuals whose data is collected by not providing to the public individual names and identifying information regarding the particular law enforcement officers who made the stops and the pedestrians, drivers, and passengers who were stopped.
And if this is all about “perceived” sexual
orientation, etc., why does Joe say that police will ask? I
put the question to Joe, who responded:
Officers conduct what’s know as ‘threshold inquiries’ which allow them lots of
latitude to question (interrogate) a person(s).
Knowing the police world as intimately as I do, what they’re really saying is
question them about everything.
Once DHS took over our Police, everything’s changed.
Will other major content providers follow? I
don't think so. So are these the major players of the future?
ProPublica
Launches the Dark Web’s First Major News Site
… On Wednesday, ProPublica became the first
known major media outlet to launch a version of its site that runs as
a “hidden service” on the Tor network, the anonymity system that
powers the thousands of untraceable websites that are sometimes known
as the darknet or dark web. The move, ProPublica says, is designed
to offer the best possible privacy protections for its visitors
seeking to read the site’s news with their anonymity fully intact.
Unlike mere SSL encryption, which hides the content of the site a web
visitor is accessing, the Tor hidden service would ensure that even
the fact that the reader visited ProPublica’s website would be
hidden from an eavesdropper or Internet service provider.
“Everyone
should have the ability to decide what types of metadata they leave
behind,” says Mike Tigas, ProPublica’s developer who
worked on the Tor hidden service. “We don’t want anyone to know
that you came to us or what you read.”
“Give us a decade or two and we'll figure out
what we're supposed to be doing.” See the next article for their
next attempt.
Alan L. Friel and Gerald J. Ferguson of Baker
Hostetler provide their interpretation of recent rulings:
Both the administrative law judge’s decision in LabMD and the Third Circuit’s recent decision in Wyndham, which we previously blogged about, put the FTC on notice that it cannot assume that in the wake of a security breach, allegedly inadequate data security will necessarily constitute an unfair practice under Section 5 of the FTC Act. Further, the FTC’s body of data security consent orders – basically private settlements of uncontested and unadjudicated cases (most of which also include deception claims), where the remedies include “fencing in” that goes beyond what the law requires – are merely indications of best practices and not some sort of “common law” as some have contended. Indeed, to treat consent orders as precedential would fly in the face of Congress’ purposeful curtailment of the FTC’s rulemaking authority under Mag Moss, as compared to the APA standards applicable to other federal agencies. Finally, the decisions suggest that the application of Section 5 unfairness authority to consumer privacy, especially in the context of interest-based advertising, is limited.
Read more on Data
Privacy Monitor.
(Related) “How's this?”
Adam H. Greene of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
discusses the consent
order Henry Schein Practice Solutions signed
to settle an FTC complaint, and finds it noteworthy for a number of
reasons. One of the reasons, he writes, is that it is the first
consent order in a data security case to involve a monetary penalty.
[…]
Greene also mentions some take-home messages,
beginning with:
HIPAA compliance may not be enough.
Read Greene’s full article on Privacy
& Security Law Blog.
The criminal justice system in China works a bit
differently.
Another
Chinese billionaire goes missing
The billionaire founder of Metersbonwe, one of
China’s best-known fashion brands, has gone missing, the latest in
a series of Chinese business people and financiers apparently
embroiled in the country’s anti-corruption campaign.
Metersbonwe suspended trading in its shares on the
Shenzhen stock exchange on Thursday while the company said it was
investigating reports in the Chinese media that Zhou
Chengjian, its chairman, had been picked up by police.
The company is a household name on the Chinese
high street and Mr Zhou was China’s 65th-richest man last year,
according to the Hurun Rich list, with a fortune of Rmb26.5bn
($4.01bn).
The company said in a second statement on Thursday
night that it was unable to reach Mr Zhou or the secretary of the
board, Tu Ke. The statement gave no further details.
Oh look. They drew pretty pictures so even
Congress can understand.
CBO
Releases New Budget Infographics
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Jan 7, 2016
“View CBO’s budget infographics to see how
much the federal government spent and took in during fiscal year
2015, as well as broader trends in the budget over the past few
decades.”
The
Federal Budget in 2015
Mandatory Spending in 2015
Discretionary Spending in 2015
Revenues in 2015
Mandatory Spending in 2015
Discretionary Spending in 2015
Revenues in 2015
Like self-driving cars, but for indoor commuting –
cuts the twenty minute walk from the front door to the master
bedroom.
Segway’s
Hoverboard Robot Uses Intel RealSense To Find Its Way Around
… When a rider hops off of the hoverboard, the
Ninebot Segway can shape shift into a robot that'll follow that
person around, taking
pictures and commands.
The robot uses Intel's RealSense camera to make
its way around dynamic environments and it can interact with both
users and sensors in the home. The robot also has an Intel Atom
processor inside.
But just because this thing is a bot doesn't mean
it slacks on speed and performance. The Ninebot
Segway can hit a top speed of over 11 mph and can travel up to 18
miles on a single charge.
Perspective. What can Watson do for you?
IBM's
Rometty Takes Watson to CES
… at CES Rometty announced that Under
Armour and IBM have developed a new cognitive coaching system
that will serve as a personal health consultant, fitness trainer and
assistant by providing athletes with timely, evidence-based coaching
about health and fitness-related issues, including outcomes achieved
based on others "like you."
… Omar Ishrak, CEO of Medtronic
joined Rometty onstage to unveil the latest advances in applying
Watson for diabetes management.
… Softbank
Robotics and IBM announced plans to take their partnership on a
Watson-powered robot global. Through their joint work, Softbank has
infused Watson into their "empathetic" robot Pepper,
enabling it to understand and answer questions in real time, opening
up new possibilities for the use of robotics in business scenarios
such as banking, retail and hospitality.
… And Whirlpool
and IBM announced that real-time data from Whirlpool's connected
appliances will be combined with analytics in the Watson IoT cloud to
create a range of new cognitive products and services. For example,
a cognitive oven, over time, could learn about a family's eating
habits, health issues and food preferences—and suggest healthy
recipes customized for each family member.
Do you suppose this means teens are accepting of
surveillance or have found simple ways to avoid detection? That's a
survey I'd like to see.
Pew –
Parents, Teens and Digital Monitoring
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Jan 7, 2016
“The widespread adoption of various digital
technologies by today’s teenagers has added a modern wrinkle to
a universal challenge of parenthood – specifically, striking a
balance between allowing independent exploration and providing an
appropriate level of parental oversight. Digital connectivity offers
many potential benefits from connecting with peers to accessing
educational content. But parents have also voiced concerns
about the behaviors teens engage in online, the people with whom they
interact and the personal information they make available. Indeed,
these concerns are not limited to parents. Lawmakers
and advocates have raised concerns about issues such as online
safety, cyberbullying and privacy issues affecting teens. A
Pew Research Center survey of parents of 13- to 17-year-olds
finds that today’s parents take a wide range of actions to monitor
their teen’s online lives and to encourage their child to use
technology in an appropriate and responsible manner.”
Implications for teaching, too.
Trump
Supporters Appear To Be Misinformed, Not Uninformed
Donald Trump has a consistently loose relationship
with the truth. So much so, in fact, that the fact-checking website
PolitiFact rolled
his numerous misstatements into one big “lie of the year.” But
all the fact-checking in the world hasn’t pushed Trump toward a
more evidence-based campaign, and his support
has held steady or even increased in some polls. What explains
Trump’s ability to seemingly overcome conventional political
wisdom?
… Trump’s backers tend
to be whiter, slightly older and less
educated than the average Republican voter. But perhaps more
importantly, his supporters have shown signs of being misinformed.
Political science research has shown that the behavior of misinformed
citizens is different from those who are uninformed, and this
difference may explain Trump’s unusual staying power.
…
Furthermore, in 2010, political scientists Brendan
Nyhan1
and Jason
Reifler2
found
that when misinformed citizens are told that their facts are
wrong, they often cling to their opinions even more strongly with
what is known as defensive processing, or the “backfire effect.”
I do try to get better, but not too hard.
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