Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Amusing or merely prophetic?
Russian Police Make First Official Arrest Of A Robot And Skynet Is Not Pleased
Is it possible to arrest a robot?  Do robot’s even have the ability to make unlawful decisions?  Philosophy aside, Russian police just made the first robot arrest in Moscow at a political rally.
The “Promobot” was arrested at a rally for Russian parliament candidate Valery Kalachev, but it is currently unclear why the robot was detained.  The Moscow police have not released an official reason for the arrest, however, local Russian media sources claim that the robot was “recording voters" opinions on [a] variety of topics for further processing and analysis by the candidate's team”.  A Promobot representative hypothesized that the robot was detained because “perhaps this action wasn't authorized”.
A Promobot representative stated, “Police asked to remove the robot away from the crowded area, and even tried to handcuff him.”  The representative noted that the Promobot did not “put up any resistance”.  


Something my students will discuss.
Corporate Judgment Call: When to Disclose You’ve Been Hacked
Companies are getting hacked more frequently but aren’t disclosing the incidents in their regulatory filings, a trend that worries investors.
Just 95 of the nation’s roughly 9,000 publicly listed companies have informed the Securities and Exchange Commission of a data breach since January 2010, according to an analysis of their filings by Audit Analytics.
Yet, the number of breaches or hacks across all U.S. businesses—public and private—totaled 2,642 during the same period, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, an advocacy group.
The reason many data breaches aren’t reported to the SEC, say chief financial officers, is that the damage isn’t “material,” meaning it isn’t significant enough to influence an investor’s decision to buy a company’s stock.


Local.  A specific need or just “everyone else is doing it!?”
Denver police spent $30K on social media surveillance tools in May
In May, Denver police spent at least $30,000 on surveillance software designed to monitor and collect social media posts across at least a dozen networks, according to police records.
Documents acquired by Daily Dot under the Colorado Open Records Act include an invoice to the Denver Police Department from Geofeedia, Inc., a startup whose location-based surveillance wares are exhibited at national security and law enforcement summits across the country. 
   With Geofeedia, Denver police have acquired the ability to simultaneously monitor posts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Vine, Periscope, and Flickr, among others.  Its location-based search capabilities enable police to vacuum up nearly every social media post emanating from within specified geographical boundaries.  The tweets, photos, videos, and live broadcasts of anyone identified by the software within the area are intercepted and recorded by police through a process developers call “geo-fencing.”
   Tools like Geofeedia offer police the ability to conduct real-time social media surveillance during mass shootings or terrorism events.  They are also capable of sucking up copious amounts of data about criminals and innocents alike, information which can then be stored by authorities for later use.
   In the past, police departments have defended the use of such software, promoting in particular its ability to identify eyewitnesses to crimes who might have otherwise never come forward.  It may also be used to locate guns in schools or identify the sources of illegal drug activity.


How much is too much, how much is too little?
Smartphone alert during NY manhunt draws criticism


Interesting.  This could only happen in New York or New Jersey?  "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli." Is a Godfather quote. 
Thieves Helped Crack the Chelsea Bombing Case, Sources Say
Leave the bomb, take the bag.
In two separate cases, thieves snatching bags from city streets and train stations inadvertently helped law enforcement get the upper hand in an ongoing bomb spree that's hurt dozens of people and spans both sides of the Hudson River, sources said.
   two thieves accidentally helped to disable his second pressure cooker bomb left inside a rolling suitcase on West 27th Street, sources said.
The young men, who sources described as being well-dressed, opened the bag and took the bomb out, sources said, before placing the explosive into a garbage bag and walking away with the rolling suitcase.
   Investigators believe they inadvertently disabled the explosive, sources said.
   Then, on Sunday night, two homeless men snatched a backpack resting atop a trash can near a train station in Elizabeth, N.J., officials said.
“They probably thought there was something of value in that backpack,” said the mayor of Elizabeth, Christian Bollwage.
They started rooting through the bag and found five explosives that officials say are tied to Rahami, prompting them to immediately drop the bag in the middle of the street and alert police, officials said.
"When they opened it up and found the wire and the pipe they immediately walked around the other corner to Elizabeth police headquarters and turned it in," Bollwage said. [So they knew the cops were just around the corner?  Bob]


Best Practices.  Simple enough?
1. Make regular backups.
2. Keep your computer updated.
3. Spot suspicious files, enable file extensions.
4. Use mail filtering.
5. Employ an internet security suite.


For my IT Governance class. 
Catalin Cimpanu reports:
A recent brute-force scan of FTP servers available online via an IPv4 address revealed that 796,578 boxes can be accessed without the need for any credentials.
The perpetrator of this scan is a security researcher that goes by the name of Minxomat, owner of a cyber-security firm that performs these types of scans on a regular basis, but usually in a much more targeted manner and for the purpose of detecting malicious traffic and its sources.
Read more on Softpedia.

(Related)
The CFO Imperative: Managing Risks Arising from Technology
   The issue is this: Data that could warn about potential risks are usually scattered across different departments in a company.  Without the right tools and structure to bring those data points together, companies are hampered in how well they manage risk.  Another challenge is that in many companies, there is no consensus on the appetite for risk.  “At the very least, you need to have a discussion about the risks,” Ittner says.  “Risks aren’t standalone, so they need to consider their interdependencies and get the cross-functional discussion going.”  Without adequate risk protection, the inevitable reaction to a breach is immediate crisis management.  But usually, such short-term actions distract from planning for longer-term growth.


Another really good ‘bad example’ for my Governance class.  How do you make certain that what is supposed to happen, happens?
Flaws in Fingerprint Records Allowed Hundreds to Become U.S. Citizens
The Department of Homeland Security granted citizenship to hundreds of people who had previously been ordered deported or removed under different names because of flaws in keeping fingerprint records, according to a report released Monday.
The report from the department’s Office of Inspector General found that nearly 900 individuals were granted citizenship because neither the agency nor the F.B.I. databases contained all of the fingerprint records of people who had previously been ordered to be deported.
Nearly 150,000 older fingerprint records were not digitized or simply were not included in the Department of Homeland Security’s databases when they were being developed, the report said.  In other cases, fingerprints that were taken by immigration officials during the deportation process were not forwarded to the F.B.I.


Virtual money is real money! 
Bitcoin Is Real Money, Judge Rules in J.P. Morgan Hack
   U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan rejected a bid by Anthony Murgio to dismiss two charges related to his alleged operation of Coin.mx, which prosecutors have called an unlicensed bitcoin exchange.
Murgio had argued that bitcoin did not qualify as “funds” under the federal law prohibiting the operation of unlicensed money transmitting businesses.
But the judge, like her colleague Jed Rakoff in an unrelated 2014 case, said the virtual currency met that definition
   The case is U.S. v. Murgio et. al., U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 15-cr-00769.


Perspective.  People seem to like these services, almost as much as investors.
Uber rival Grab raises $750M led by SoftBank at a $3B valuation
   Grab said it 400,000 drivers on its platforms and it has seen over 21 million app downloads to date.  In an announcement, the company added that it sees “up to 1.5 million daily bookings,” which a Grab spokesperson confirmed means ride requests not completed rides.  Uber doesn’t provide business data for Southeast Asia so it is hard to compare them, but we previously reported that Uber is operationally profitable in parts of Southeast Asia and there seems to be little to choose between the two.


Someday I’m gonna get me some culture!
The Museum of Modern Art’s Miraculous New Online Archive
   This archive, available for free on the Museum of Modern Art’s website, now documents every show that it has exhibited, going back to its very first in 1929.
   The photos are almost all spare and without people. They seem to have been captured for documentary purposes, not expressive ones.

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