Tuesday, October 04, 2016

For my Ethical Hacking student “tool kit.”
We’ve all been tempted to use public Wi-Fi: it’s free, saves on your data allowance, and is always helpful in speeding up loading times.
You might love public Wi-Fi — but so do hackers.
Here are just a few ways cybercriminals can get access to your private data and potentially steal your identity and what you can do to protect yourself.

(Ditto)
   Because your mailbox is encrypted, the ProtonMail staff have zero access, never mind the NSA.  ProtonMail will ask you for your mailbox decryption key after you have initially logged in.  You won’t be able to access your mailbox until you have entered both sets of credentials.


At least my Blog has a few readers…
TN Note: The intelligence community keeps saying that they are not collecting random data on American Citizens and incidents like this keep popping up proving that they are brazen liars.  Remember that DHS is not isolated from the rest of the intelligence community; rather, it reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence for everything it does, including line-item budget approval.  Thus, the DHS vacuuming of social media an intentional policy from the very top.
Neal Ungerleider reports:
At a Congressional hearing this morning that veered into contentious arguments and cringe-worthy moments, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spilled the beans on their social media monitoring project.
DHS Chief Privacy Office Mary Ellen Callahan and Director of Operations Coordination and Planning Richard Chavez appeared to be deliberately stonewalling Congress on the depth, ubiquity, goals, and technical capabilities of the agency’s social media surveillance.  At other times, they appeared to be themselves unsure about their own project’s ultimate goals and uses.  But one thing is for sure: If you’re the first person to tweet about a news story, or if you’re a community activist who makes public Facebook posts—DHS will have your personal information.
Read more on Technocracy News.


My students don’t understand what a new “Cloud” datacenter costs.
Microsoft expands Azure data centers to France, launches trust offensive vs AWS, Google
   Microsoft announced it would build its first Azure data center in France this year, as part of a $3 billion investment that it has made to build its cloud services in Europe.


The arguments continue.  I guess you don’t need to be certain the data is kept by the people who get the subpoena.  Does it impact my Governance class? 
Subpoenas and Gag Orders Show Government Overreach, Tech Companies Argue
It has been six months since the Justice Department backed off on demands that Apple help the F.B.I. break the security of a locked iPhone.
But the government has not given up the fight with the tech industry.  Open Whisper Systems, a maker of a widely used encryption app called Signal, received a subpoena in the first half of the year for subscriber information and other details associated with two phone numbers that came up in a federal grand jury investigation in Virginia.
The subpoena arrived with a court order that said Open Whisper Systems was not allowed to tell anyone about the information request for one year.
   The documents released last week show that the government asked Open Whisper Systems to turn over data associated with two telephone numbers, including web browsing histories and data stored in the tracking “cookies” of the web browsers attached to those accounts.  But one of Signal’s biggest draws is that it does not collect most of that information.
“The Signal service was designed to minimize the data we retain,” said Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of Open Whisper Systems.  Mr. Marlinspike said Signal uses a technology called end-to-end encryption that kept the service from gaining access to the contents of its users’ messages.  The company also does not store information on those with whom its users are communicating.


Amusing.
Census Data Visualization Gallery
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Oct 3, 2016
Data Visualization Gallery.  A weekly exploration of Census data.  The Census Bureau is working to increase our use of visualization in making data available to the public, and this gallery is an early part of that effort.  The first posted visualizations will pertain largely to historical population data, building on prior work done to portray historical changes in the growth and redistribution of the U.S. population.  For later visualizations, the topics will expand beyond decennial census data to include the full breadth of Census Bureau data sets and subject areas, from household and family dynamics, to migration and geographic mobility, to economic indicators.”


This also looks like fun.
   Hologram for Rainmeter renders 3D models — using the OBJ file type — as point clouds.  Point clouds are transparent 3D objects created by placing points at distinct coordinates.  The coordinates used are dictated by the face (underlying shape) vertices in a 3D object.


Apps are out.  Bots are in.

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