Big Brother collecting big data — and in China, it's all for
sale
Living in China, it's safe to assume pretty much everything
about you is known — or easily can be known — by the government. Where you go, who you're with, which
restaurants you like, when and why you see your doctor.
… "You could
go so far as to make the argument that social media and digital technology are
actually supporting the regime," says Ronald Deibert, the director of The
Citizen Lab, a group of researchers at the University of Toronto's Munk School
of Global Affairs. They study how
information technology affects human and personal rights around the world.
… An investigation
by a leading Chinese newspaper, the Guangzhou Southern Metropolis Daily,
found that just a little cash could buy incredible amounts of information about
almost anyone. Friend or fiancé,
business competitor or enemy … no questions asked.
(Related).
Joe Cadillic gets so excited when someone else posts
something that he’s been screaming writing
about about for ages.
In August, Joe recognized that DHS offering extra security
for elections by declaring the election process as “critical infrastructure”
had the potential to expand
DHS’s power waaaay too much.
Of course, the government sees it differently and as a
Good Thing. As AP
reported this past week:
Citing increasingly sophisticated
cyber bad actors and an election infrastructure that’s “vital to our national
interests,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson is designating U.S.
election systems critical infrastructure, a move that provides more federal
help for state and local governments to keep their election systems safe from
tampering.
“Given the vital role elections
play in this country, it is clear that certain systems and assets of election
infrastructure meet the definition of critical infrastructure, in fact and in
law,” Johnson said in a statement Friday. He added: “Particularly in these times, this
designation is simply the right and obvious thing to do.”
But what does this involve? Although it seems to give DHS more
responsibility, do local election boards have any added responsibility to
ensure the fairness of the election process? It turns out that entities who get tagged as
“critical infrastructure – including storage facilities, polling places and
vote tabulation locations, plus technology involved in the process, including
voter registration databases, voting machines and other systems used to manage
the election process and report and display results – don’t have to
participate.
But perhaps one the most concerning parts of this all is that:
The designation allows for
information to be withheld from the public when state, local and private
partners meet to discuss election infrastructure security — potentially
injecting secrecy into an election process that’s traditionally and expressly a
transparent process. U.S. officials say
such closed door conversations allow for frank discussion that would prevent
bad actors from learning about vulnerabilities. DHS would also be able to grant security
clearances when appropriate and provide more detailed threat information to
states.
That secrecy could also be used to withhold information
about absolutely shabby security or insider wrong-doing. And that’s not acceptable.
Jon Rappoport is concerned, too, as Joe was obviously
delighted to read Rappoport’s
opinion:
In truth, the Dept. of Homeland
Security is spearheading a movement to connect, cross reference, and integrate
every major apparatus of data- collection in both the private and public
sectors.
This is the ongoing op.
It is not partisan. It flies the banner of no political party. It pretends to protect the citizenry.
But, in fact, it is the major
long-term threat to the citizenry.
Are Joe and Jon over-reacting, or are too many of us
under-reacting? And if most of us are
under-reacting, there will be no way to salvage anything of our privacy soon,
as DHS amasses more and more information and databases.
Of course they do.
Higher always wants the troops to tell them where they are, what they
see and what they are going to do about it.
The other side would also like that information. Perhaps one of my students will solve this problem
and get rich?
DARPA wants to create secure data-sharing tech
… The Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research arm of the Department of
Defense, said
it's working on a project that would use software and networking technology to
securely share information on unsecured commercial and military networks.
My students will probably be the ones to install the AI
that makes their job redundant.
Report – changing face of business and the part artificial
intelligence has to play
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Jan 11, 2017
Accenture via World Economic Fortune: “Artificial
Intelligence (AI) may be the single most disruptive technology the world has
seen since the Industrial Revolution. Granted, there is a lot of hype out there on
AI, along with doomsday headlines and scary movies. But the reality is that it will positively and
materially change how we engage with the world around us. It’s going to improve not only how business is
done, but the kind of work we do – and unleash new levels of creativity and
ingenuity. In fact, research from Accenture estimates that artificial
intelligence could double annual economic growth rates of many developed
countries by 2035, transforming work and fostering a new relationship between
humans and machines. The report projects
that AI technologies in business will boost labor productivity by up to 40
percent. Rather than undermining people,
we believe AI will reinforce their role in driving business growth. As AI matures, it will potentially serve as a
powerful antidote for the stagnant productivity and shortages in skilled labor
of recent decades.”
Something others should emulate?
6 ways Amazon is trying to win friends and influence
governments in Europe
They’ve already got most of our money, perhaps they’ll
lend us some?
Amazon's New Credit Card Primed To Disrupt Retail
… Yesterday,
Amazon announced its latest benefit
for Amazon Prime members: an Amazon Prime credit card that offers 5% off every
Amazon purchase, plus multiple other benefits.
(Related).
Turns Out Many Consumers Are Interested in Banking With
Google, Amazon, and Facebook
Roughly one in three banking and insurance customers
globally would consider switching their accounts to Google, Amazon, or Facebook if the Silicon Valley giants offered
financial services, according to a new survey on Wednesday.
(Related). Another ‘benefit?’
How did Amazon know my new Visa card information before me?
… None of us, it
seems, were aware of VAU – Visa Account Updater. This allows subscribing merchants to receive
automatic updates to cardholder account information, including account numbers
and expiry dates. It sounds ominous, but
the idea is to save retailers – and customers – the hassle of recurring
payments being declined when a registered card has expired.
Perspective.
Lenovo, HP, And Dell Lead the Shrinking PC Market
Overall shipments of PCs dropped 5.7% year-over-year in
2016 to 260 million, according to a report Wednesday by market research firm International
Data Corporation.
Lenovo was the biggest PC maker last year
with 55.5 million PCs shipped, a 3% decline from the 57 million shipped in
2015. The company has a 21.3% share of
the PC market, IDC said.
HP,
Inc. is a close second, however, with shipments of 54.2 million PCs in 2016, up
1.3% year over year. It had 21% of the
PC market.
Dell Technologies came in third with 40.7
million PCs shipped in 2016, up 4.3% from the previous year. Dell had about 14% of the PC market.
As for Apple, the technology giant shipped 18.4
million PCs in 2016, a nearly 10% drop from 2015.
Do people still print?
… you need to know about Google Cloud Print.
This service by Google makes it possible
for you to print to ANY printer from anywhere — even when you’re halfway across
the globe — as long as you have an internet connection and the printer is set
up beforehand.
Toys for geeks or the future for everyone?
Opera showcases ‘future of the web’ with Neon, a new concept
browser for Windows and Mac
… The Opera Neon browser start page
displays browser tabs as little circular icons that can be dragged around and
reordered. The left sidebar includes a
video player, download manager, and image gallery, while a new visual sidebar
on the right hosts other active pages that can be pulled into the middle. The Neon browser can automatically manage tabs
so that the most frequently used tabs will float to the top on their own
volition, while those used less frequently will sink to the bottom.
… “Web browsers of
today are basically from the
last millennium, [That
makes me feel old. Bob] a
time when the web was full of documents and pages,” said Opera browser chief
Krystian Kolondra. “With the Opera Neon
project, we want to show people our vision for the future of the web.”
Stuff my niece and nephew already know.
(Ditto).
Some history for my spreadsheet students. A TED talk.
Meet the inventor of the
electronic spreadsheet
Dan Bricklin changed the world forever when he codeveloped
VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet and grandfather of programs you
probably use every day like Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets.
No comments:
Post a Comment