Anything that attracts your attention, also attracts the bad guys.

http://www.securityweek.com/cybercriminals-ramp-activity-ahead-2014-world-cup

Cybercriminals Ramp Up Activity Ahead of 2014 World Cup

Similar to the Sochi 2014 Olympics and all other major sporting events before it, the FIFA World Cup 2014 in Brazil is being leveraged by cybercriminals and scammers as a means to lure victims for their attacks.

… Cybercriminals are relying on the FIFA World Cup to trick users into installing malware on their computers. Trend Micro discovered a campaign targeting customers of a Brazilian ticketing website, where the attackers managed to obtain the personal details of the site’s users and sent them fake raffle emails containing links to the BANLOAD banking Trojan.

Trend Micro’s researchers also stumbled upon a BLADABINDI backdoor disguised as a FIFA World Cup streaming application, and a piece of adware (ADW_INSTALLREX) disguised as a key generator for the FIFA 14 video game.

[etc., etc., etc. Bob]

(Related) More sites should do this!

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/the-world-cup-starter-kit-and-the-future-of-twitter/372630/

The 'World Cup Starter Kit' and the Future of Twitter

… Twitter has created "starter kits" for each of the sides playing the Mundial. Each one has about 90 Twitter accounts that help you follow what's happening in real time. If you were a new user and didn't know how to follow soccer on the service, this would instantly put you in the real-time networks that talk about the sport.

And thus the debate continues...

Eleventh Circuit: cell site location info requires a warrant

“In short, we hold that cell site location information is within the subscriber’s reasonable expectation of privacy. The obtaining of that data without a warrant is a Fourth Amendment violation.”

– from a Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit decision released today in U.S. v. Davis.

I bet they keep trying...

http://www.bespacific.com/another-fair-use-victory-book-scanning-hathitrust/

Another Fair Use Victory for Book Scanning in HathiTrust

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on June 11, 2014

EFF - “Fair use enjoyed a major victory in court today. In Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a decision that strongly underscores a fair use justification for a major book scanning program. For those counting along at home, today’s decision marks another in a serious streak of judicial findings of fair use for mass book digitization, including Authors Guild v. Google, Cambridge University Press v. Becker, and the district court opinion in the HathiTrust case itself. Given that consistent fair use record for book digitization, today’s ruling might not be totally surprising. Still, the text of the opinion is encouraging, and reflects a court that respects the Constitutional purpose of copyright as a tool to promote the progress of science and the useful arts—not a blunt instrument for rightsholders to regulate all downstream uses. HathiTrust was set up by several research universities to operate a digital library containing electronic scans of the universities’ books (Google provided the scans as part of its Google Books project). The Authors Guild took issue with three practices that HathiTrust engages in: a full-text database that returns the book name and page number for matching search results; a service to make text available in formats accessible to print-disabled people; and a long-term archive to preserve books that might become unavailable during the term of their copyright restrictions. With respect to the full-text database, the court found that although a copy of the entire work is made, the purpose of a full-text searchable database is so different from that of the underlying works that the use must be considered transformative. In fact, the court wrote, “the creation of a full‐text searchable database is a quintessentially transformative use”. [Thanks to Gloria Miccioli]

Here's a thing that won't be on the Internet of Things and therefore won't be hackable. (No scenarios like the current “24”) Unfortunately, it won't be controllable remotely either. The programming has to work the first time and every time in every possible situation.

http://www.bespacific.com/autonomous-weapons-human-responsibilities/

Autonomous Weapons and Human Responsibilities

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on June 11, 2014

Beard, Jack M., Autonomous Weapons and Human Responsibilities (June 9, 2014). 45 Georgetown Journal of International Law 617 (2014). Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2447968

“Although remote-controlled robots flying over the Middle East and Central Asia now dominate reports on new military technologies, robots that are capable of detecting, identifying, and killing enemies on their own are quietly but steadily moving from the theoretical to the practical. The enormous difficulty in assigning responsibilities to humans and states for the actions of these machines grows with their increasing autonomy. These developments implicate serious legal, ethical, and societal concerns. This Article focuses on the accountability of states and underlying human responsibilities for autonomous weapons under International Humanitarian Law or the Law of Armed Conflict. After reviewing the evolution of autonomous weapon systems and diminishing human involvement in these systems along a continuum of autonomy, this Article argues that the elusive search for individual culpability for the actions of autonomous weapons foreshadows fundamental problems in assigning responsibility to states for the actions of these machines. It further argues that the central legal requirement relevant to determining accountability (especially for violation of the most important international legal obligations protecting the civilian population in armed conflicts) is human judgment. Access to effective human judgment already appears to be emerging as the deciding factor in establishing practical restrictions and framing legal concerns with respect to the deployment of the most advanced autonomous weapons.”

(Related) Thinking about your tools...

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/norbert-wiener-the-eccentric-genius-whose-time-may-have-finally-come-again/372607/

The Eccentric Genius Whose Time May Have Finally Come (Again)

… Wiener is best known as the inventor of “cybernetics,” a fertile combination of mathematics and engineering that paved the way for modern automation and inspired innovation in a host of other fields. He was also one of the first theorists to identify information as the lingua franca of organisms as well as machines, a shared language capable of crossing the boundaries between them.

Wiener was 69 when he died of a heart attack in 1964. He’s come to mind recently because a conference dedicated to reclaiming his reputation is scheduled in Boston later this month. Sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Norbert Wiener in the 21^st Century will feature a series of papers and panels demonstrating not only that Wiener was ahead of his time, but that now his time has finally come. Indeed, engineers who are well grounded in cybernetic theory will tell you technology is just catching up with ideas Wiener proposed more than half a century ago.

… Yet, much sooner and more thoroughly than could have been expected, memory of Wiener and of his contributions faded. Several reasons account for his eclipse. One is that during the height of his career, Wiener refused, for ethical reasons, to accept research contracts from the military or from corporations seeking to exploit his ideas. Since the military and corporations were the main sources of research support, Wiener’s defiance hindered his progress during a period of unprecedented technological advance. Besides nuclear weapons, Wiener was perhaps most worried about the technology he was most directly responsible for developing: automation. Sooner than most, he recognized how businesses could use it at the expense of labor, and how eager they were to do so. "Those who suffer from a power complex," he wrote in 1950, "find the mechanization of man a simple way to realize their ambitions."

Strange things on the Internet of Things, but will this technology prevent riots? If so, it's priceless.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/11/tech/innovation/goal-line-technology-brazil/index.html?hpt=te_t1

New technology aims to rid World Cup of 'ghost goals'

In 1966, British soccer legend Geoff Hurst booted a right-foot shot against Germany in the World Cup championship game. The ball struck the top crossbar and rifled down near the goal line before spinning out.

Confusion ensued; it was impossible to tell if the ball had crossed the plane.

Eventually, officials awarded the goal, and England secured its first and only World Cup victory.

Try not to remind German fans.

… According to official estimates, FIFA is paying a small German start-up nearly $3.5 million to operate its new goal-line technology in the 2014 World Cup, which kicks off Thursday in Brazil.

The company, called GoalControl, would install 14 cameras in each of the 12 World Cup stadiums that triangulate the motion of the ball with maximum precision: up to 500 images per second.

With that tracking, plus sensors on the goal line, GoalControl can instantly alert a referee when the ball crosses the line. There's no need to consult a replay booth or another official; the referee in charge merely looks at their smartwatch.

Who is doing this? Note to students. I probably will not answer your emails in 15 minutes.

Reply Now

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reply-now/

– Reply right away to emails. With relative timestamps in Gmail, you can see how long an email has been sitting in your inbox. Reply while the time is still green. Timestamps turn yellow after 15 minutes and red after an hour. Extensions are available for both Chrome and Firefox.

Could be a good way to nag my students!

Talkz

http://talkz.com/

– will say anything you type in their own voice. Just type a message to create fun, animated, talking stickers to send to your friends or post on social networks. Talkz also supports huge groups and has Voice, Pictures, Doodles, Video, Location, and Music. Talkz supports user-generated talking stickers, so there’s no end to your creativity.

There are many details in a complete Security plan. I've blogged repeatedly about companies not looking at (or even generating) logs. This is another area where today's “cost” overrides future “risks.” Organizations know they should do it, but it takes skills and dollars.

http://www.securityweek.com/database-monitoring-critical-fighting-sql-injection-few-do-it-survey

Database Monitoring Critical to Fighting SQL Injection, Few Do it: Survey

SQL injection attacks are far from new, and the consequences of being vulnerable to them are hardly unknown.

However, a survey of 595 IT security experts indicates that many organizations may not be doing enough to address them. According to a survey by the Ponemon Institute, only 33 percent said their organizations were scanning their active databases either continuously or daily. Forty-seven percent said they did it irregularly or not at all. Despite those numbers, continuous monitoring of databases was cited by 65 percent of respondents as the best way to avoid a breach of databases.

Are we seeing a return to KGB days or something new? Possible a “Global Warming War?” Stay tuned.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/06/11/4171248/cold-war-style-spy-games-return.html

Cold War-style spy games return to melting Arctic

In early March, a mysterious ship the size of a large passenger ferry left a Romanian wharf, glided through the narrow strait that separates Europe from Asia and plotted a course toward Scandinavia. After a two-year refitting, the $250 million ship will begin its mission: to snoop on Russia's activities in the Arctic.

"There is a demand from our political leadership to describe what is going on in this region," said Norway's military intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Kjell Grandhagen.

… Summer sea ice reached a record low in 2012 and scientific projections suggest it could disappear completely this century. New areas of open water already have allowed more shipping through the Northern Sea Route north of Russia. The melt is also opening a new energy frontier — the Arctic is believed to hold 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its untapped gas.

The most accessible resources lie within national boundaries and are undisputed. Security analysts say the risk of conflict lies further ahead, if and when the ice melts enough to uncover resources in areas where ownership is unclear. The U.S., Canada, Denmark, Norway and Russia are expected to have overlapping claims.

(Related) Is China taking off the kid gloves?

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/11/world/asia/hong-kong-beijing-two-systems-paper/

Alarm in Hong Kong at Chinese white paper affirming Beijing control

Pro-democracy Hong Kongers have reacted angrily to a Chinese government white paper affirming Beijing's "comprehensive jurisdiction" over the territory, released days after more than 100,000 demonstrators gathered in the city calling for greater rights.

The 14,500-word document, which stresses that Hong Kong does not have "full autonomy" and comes under Beijing's oversight, was released amid fierce debate between residents of the former British colony over impending electoral reform and the nature of the "one country, two systems" concept.

… Hong Kong lawmaker Alan Leong, leader of the pro-democracy Civic Party, said he was "completely taken aback" by the document, which had sent a shiver up (his) spine."

"It is a sea-change to our understanding of what 'one country, two systems' should be," he said.

He argued that the notion that judicial decisions made in Hong Kong should take into account the needs of China was a new concept, and one that was "totally repugnant to our understanding of the rule of law as an institution which we hold very dear to our hearts."

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/three-reasons-to-believe-facebook-might-be-used-to-spy-on-you/

Three Reasons To Believe Facebook Might Be Used to Spy On You

Microsoft, protector of privacy?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/technology/microsoft-protests-order-for-email-stored-abroad.html?hpw&rref=business&_r=0

Microsoft Protests Order to Disclose Email Stored Abroad

Microsoft is challenging the authority of federal prosecutors to force the giant technology company to hand over a customer’s email stored in a data center in Ireland.

The objection is believed to be the first time a corporation has challenged a domestic search warrant seeking digital information overseas. The case has attracted the concern of privacy groups and major United States technology companies, which are already under pressure from foreign governments worried that the personal data of their citizens is not adequately protected in the data centers of American companies.

Verizon filed a brief on Tuesday, echoing Microsoft’s objections, and more corporations are expected to join. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is working on a brief supporting Microsoft. European officials have expressed alarm.

In a court filing made public on Monday, Microsoft said that if the judicial order to surrender the email stored abroad is upheld, it “would violate international law and treaties, and reduce the privacy protection of everyone on the planet.”

… In his ruling in April, James C. Francis, a magistrate judge in federal court in New York, wrote, “Microsoft’s argument is simple, perhaps deceptively so.”

Microsoft contends that the rules that apply to a search warrant in the physical world should apply online. The standard of proof for a search warrant is “probable cause” and “particularity” — that is, a person’s name and where the person, evidence or information reside.

A subpoena — the less powerful court-ordered investigation tool — requires only that the information is “relevant to an ongoing investigation.” But a subpoena, unlike a search warrant, requires that the person being investigated be informed.

Judge Francis, in his order, wrote that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, passed in 1986, created an in-between category intended at the time to protect people from indiscriminate data gathering that subpoenas might allow of online communications. The result, he wrote, is “a hybrid: part search warrant and part subpoena,” and applied to information held in Microsoft’s data center overseas.

I guess you can try any argument, but is “We're completely out of control” the best they can do?

http://www.bespacific.com/aclu-nsa-says-large-complex-comply-court-order/

ACLU – NSA Says It’s Too Large, Complex to Comply With Court Order

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on June 10, 2014

Patrick C. Toomey, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project

News release:” “In an era of too-big-to-fail banks, we should have known it was coming: An intelligence agency too big to rein in — and brazen enough to say so. In a remarkable legal filing on Friday afternoon, the NSA told a federal court that its spying operations are too massive and technically complex to comply with an order to preserve evidence. The NSA, in other words, now says that it cannot comply with the rules that apply to any other party before a court — the very rules that ensure legal accountability — because it is too big. The filing came in a long-running lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation challenging the NSA’s warrantless collection of Americans’ private data. Recently, the plaintiffs in that case have fought to ensure that the NSA is preserving relevant evidence — a standard obligation in any lawsuit — and not destroying the very data that would show the agency spied on the plaintiffs’ communications. Yet, as in so many other instances, the NSA appears to believe it is exempt from the normal rules.”

Perspective. Is this how we will find lawyers, maids and golf pros?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2014/06/10/with-amazon-hovering-local-services-looks-to-be-the-new-e-commerce-battleground/

Amazon Chases Local Services, The New E-Commerce Battleground

Amazon has found a new place to sell and it doesn’t have anything to do with books, DVDs or physical products.

Later this year, the Seattle company will dive into local services, launching a marketplace that will connect regional professionals and businesses to consumers who could need anything from vocal lessons to a kitchen remodel. The company will unveil the new development, which was first reported by Reuters, on a city-by-city basis, similar to what is being done for its grocery delivery service, Amazon Fresh.

… Similar to Amazon, eBay has been testing a new product called eBay Hire, which will place the profiles of service professionals next to associated products that consumers may be shopping for on its website. For example, a person buying golf clubs on eBay may see ads or links referring them to a local golf teacher who’s signed up with the eBay Hire platform.

… Expertise may also keep Amazon from mastering the market, says Zappacosta, who says that selling a professionals’ services are much different than peddling commodities like shoes or electronics.

“You can’t go after a few distributors and get all the titles,” he says, making the comparison to books. “There’s is no wholesaler than you can hook into that gives you access to the market. You have to go professional to professional to find them.”

Perspective. Any way you slice it, that's a lot of data. Is “pay for preferred routing” on existing networks the answer or is it higher overall network speed?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/10/us-internet-consumers-cisco-systems-idUSKBN0EL15E20140610

Videos may make up 84 percent of internet traffic by 2018: Cisco

Video consumption of the World Cup alone will generate nearly as much Internet traffic as occurred in all of Australia in 2013, according to a new Cisco Systems Inc report that shows growth in Internet traffic is fueled by video.

The report, which says video is expected to grow to 84 percent of Internet traffic in the United States by 2018 from 78 percent currently, raises questions about whether Internet service providers should prioritize traffic, which has become a controversial issue.

[I think they refer to this white paper: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/ip-ngn-ip-next-generation-network/white_paper_c11-481360.html

Annual global IP traffic will surpass the zettabyte (1000 exabytes) threshold in 2016. Global IP traffic willreach 1.1zettabytes per year or 91.3 exabytes (one billion gigabytes) per month in 2016. By 2018, global IPtrafficwill reach 1.6 zettabytes per year, or 131.6 exabytes per month.

This raises a lot of questions. Did they test the judges before allowing them to ask questions? The test is for sentience, not humanity.

http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2023807725_thinkingcomputerxml.html

Computer program tricks judges into thinking it’s human

For the first time, a computer program has officially passed the Turing Test, which measures a machine’s ability to think for itself — at least under the standards set by a competition in Britain.

The achievement, being hailed as a milestone for the field of artificial intelligence, came Saturday in London at a competition organized by the University of Reading involving five computer programs. Each was tasked with persuading at least 30 percent of judges into mistaking it for a human. The winner, a program named Eugene Goostman, tricked 33 percent of the judges into believing it was a 13-year-old, non-native-English-speaking Ukrainian boy.

… The Turing Test was originally proposed by British computer scientist Alan Turing in a paper written in 1950, in which he wrote, “I propose to consider the question, ‘Can machines think?’”

… The winning entrant’s accomplishments suggest that people may soon be able to hold conversations with computers that feel real.

“Siri is just awful. You can’t have a conversation with Siri,” Denning said, referring to the voice assistant for Apple’s iPhone and iPad. “People should be able to expect more. This shows it’s possible.”

An interesting Security/Privacy development.

iOS 8 to stymie trackers and marketers with MAC address randomization

Lee Hutchinson writes:

Quartz is reporting a change to how iOS 8-equipped devices search out Wi-Fi networks with which to connect. The new mobile operating system, which is on track for a release in the fall, gives iOS 8 devices the ability to identify themselves not with their unique burned-in hardware MAC address but rather with a random, software-supplied address instead.

This is a big deal.

Read more on Ars Technica

For my Android packing students.

http://www.mobileburn.com/22987/news/swiftkey-androids-best-keyboard-is-now-free-with-new-theme-packs

SwiftKey, Android's best keyboard, is now free with new theme packs

Since it debuted on Android several years ago, SwiftKey has been one of the best paid apps available on the platform thanks to its gesture-based typing and smart word prediction. Now the app has dropped its $4 price tag and gone completely free to use, but it will still cost if you want to style the keyboard into something more to your liking.

Mostly for my International students. (Us 'mericans know that ain't football!)

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/follow-brazil-world-cup-anywhere-six-android-apps/

Follow the Brazil World Cup From Anywhere With These Six Android Apps

… A staggering 3.2 billion people are expected to watch at least one match, with more than 1 billion expected to tune in to watch the tournament’s final. We’ve already looked at some innovative ways you can follow the tournament yourself, but if you’re one of those 3.2 billion and you also own an Android phone, what apps do you have available to keep abreast of the latest news and scores from the 64-game event?

For my students.

http://www.makeuseof.com/pages/ultimate-netflix-guide-everything-wanted-know-netflix-afraid-ask

The Ultimate Netflix Guide: Everything You Wanted To Know About Netflix But Were Afraid To Ask

For y students.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2014/06/videos-and-guides-to-copyright-creative.html#.U5hkZHamVw0

Videos and Guides to Copyright & Creative Commons

In my previous post I shared the copyright flowchart created by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano and Meryl Zeidenberg. I am planning to share that chart along with the following videos and guides in a video creation workshop that I am facilitating on Wednesday morning.

An infographic for ALL my students.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/use-punctuation-marks-correctly/

How To Use Punctuation Marks Correctly

… Don’t just depend on spelling and grammar checkers in Word. If you do, you’re probably making dumb grammar mistakes that can otherwise be avoided. By learning the proper use of punctuation marks, you’re not only improving your knowledge, but also causing less confusing for your readers.

For my Computer Security students.

http://www.securityweek.com/free-python-script-detects-mitm-vulnerability-openssl

Free Python Script Detects MitM Vulnerability in OpenSSL

Tripwire has released a free Python script that’s designed to help organizations determine if their servers are affected by the recently patched Man-in-the Middle (MitM) vulnerability in OpenSSL.

… The OpenSSL CCS Inject Test Script is available for download on Tripwire’s website.

For anyone living under a rock.

http://www.securitybistro.com/?p=8847

For Sale: Practically All the Details of Your Personal Life

… The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently published the report Data Brokers: A Call for Transparency and Accountability. It’s an eye opener for anyone who thinks they lead a private life. Companies known as data brokers collect and sell just about every kind of data point about your life, and it goes far beyond what the NSA is doing with phone calls and emails.

Here's the report I blogged about yesterday.

http://www.mcafee.com/us/resources/reports/rp-economic-impact-cybercrime2.pdf

Net Losses: Estimating the Global Cost of Cybercrime

At least someone is thinking about the future.

http://www.zdnet.com/preparing-for-the-internet-of-things-7000030300/

Preparing for the Internet of Things

What are you doing to prepare for the Internet of Things in your company? How are you going to handle connectivity of the new internet-enabled "things"? How will you handle the new bandwidth requirements from network-hungry devices? Are you prepared for the amount of storage required to maintain those devices? What about security concerns for new devices? And, how will you handle the significant amount of device and user management that's coming your way?

You might not know the answers to any of these questions, but fortunately, you have colleagues who at least have taken their best guesses at it. In a recent survey of 440 IT professionals in North America and EMEA, Spiceworks has compiled some surprising results.

1. Most IT pros agree that IoT will impact consumers in addition to the workplace. In fact, the vast majority believes the trend will pose significant security and privacy issues.

2. Even so, more than half say they aren’t doing anything specific to brace their infrastructure for the coming impact of IoT.

3. Despite the divide between belief and targeted action, it turns out the future is now. Our survey found that many IT pros are already doing things that’ll help support IoT – even if they aren’t thinking of them in that context. But chances are…they should be doing more.

(Related) Your car is several “Things.”

Editorial: When a car rats you out: Your license plate vs. your privacy

An editorial in the L. A. Times includes:

It’s easy to say that no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy when driving on the streets or parking in a public place. But changing technology — especially the digitizing of license plate photographs and an almost endless storage capacity — has dramatically widened the window through which police can track an individual’s comings and goings.

Like GPS technology, which allows police to track the movements of suspects through their cars and telephones, the proliferation of license plate scanners demonstrates the need to adapt traditional notions of privacy to new and invasive technologies. The American Civil Liberties Union has proposed several recommendations to protect privacy: Police must have reasonable suspicion that a crime has occurred before examining collected license plate data; citizens should be able to find out if data about their license plate are contained in a database; license plate data should be deleted after a short period to avoid fishing expeditions; and law enforcement shouldn’t share such data with third parties that don’t adhere to these protections.

Read more on L.A. Times.

Long article.

http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/big-data-analytics/10-powerful-facts-about-big-data/d/d-id/1269522?image_number=1

10 Powerful Facts About Big Data

Most companies estimate they're analyzing a mere 12% of the data they have, according to a recent study by Forrester Research.

For my students and not just the Trekies...

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/george-takei-explains-technology-internet-takeis-take-stuff-watch/

George Takei Explains Technology & The Internet In Takei’s Take [Stuff to Watch]

There are many reasons to admire George Takei: his much-loved role as Mr Sulu in Star Trek, his dedicated work as a gay rights activist and his efforts to improve Japanese-American relations. But now we have another reason: Takei’s Take on YouTube.

Produced in part by the AARP, George separates fact from fiction and explains some of the latest trends, buzz-words and technologies in short, easily consumable videos.

… Last week’s Stuff to Watch was all about 2014′s Webby winners – and George was one of them, for this very show.

Measuring the “harm” of a security breach.

PayTime Data Breach Hits Some Workers Hard

When we think about consequences of hacks or breaches, let’s not lose sight that people may lose their jobs simply because their data was caught up in an incident – even if there was no evidence that their information was misused. idRADAR.com has a good example of that in the aftermath of the PayTime hack. They previously reported other examples of how becoming a victim of hack can cost security clearance and/or jobs, with a follow-up on one such case.

I don't think I'd put it that way. Still, some interesting assertions.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/09/us-technology-cybersecurity-idUSKBN0EK0LL20140609

Upsurge in hacking makes customer data a corporate time bomb

… The reality, cyber security experts say, is that however much they spend, even the largest companies are unlikely to be able to stop their systems being breached. The best defense may simply be either to reduce the data they hold or encrypt it so well that if stolen it will remain useless. [Or take most of it off-line? Bob]

… A report from cyber security think tank the Ponemon Institute showed the average cost of a data breach in the last year grew by 15 percent to $3.5 million. The likelihood of a company having a data breach involving 10,000 or more confidential records over a two-year period was 22 percent, it said.

… Still, a study of 102 UK financial institutions and 151 retail organizations conducted earlier this year by Tripwire showed 40 percent said they would need 2 to 3 days to detect a breach.

So, if I search for information on a company and Google indicates they have “something to hide,” I will expand my search by using search engines that do not comply with the EU rule. Or I may just not invest in that company. (Imagine the impact on politicians!)

http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/09/google-may-soon-let-you-know-when-its-required-to-hide-something-from-you/

Google may soon let you know when it’s required to hide something from you

A European Union court recently ruled that Google must respect the EU’s “right to be forgotten” and remove links to web pages that individuals find embarrassing.

Now, the Guardian reports, Google may soon add a note to its edited search results, indicating that something is missing.

Google already does this with pages from which it’s removed search results in response to DMCA takedown requests, usually as a result of alleged copyright violations.

Interesting idea. Automate the Privacy Policy review. (Maybe I see it as an Audit tool because of 35 years of auditing?)

http://www.bespacific.com/bootstrapping-privacy-compliance-big-data-systems/

Bootstrapping Privacy Compliance in Big Data Systems

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on June 8, 2014

“In this paper, we demonstrate a collection of techniques to transition to automated privacy compliance compliance checking in big data systems. To this end we designed the LEGALEASE language, instantiated for stating privacy policies as a form of restrictions on information flows, and the GROK data inventory that maps low level data types in code to highlevel policy concepts. We show that LEGALEASE is usable by non-technical privacy champions through a user study. We show that LEGALEASE is expressive enough to capture real-world privacy policies with purpose, role, and storage restrictions with some limited temporal properties, in particular that of Bing and Google. To build the GROK data flow grap we leveraged past work in program analysis and data flow analysis. We demonstrate how to bootstrap labeling the graph with LEGALEASE policy datatypes at massive scale. We note that the structure of the graph allows a small number of annotations to cover a large fraction of the graph. We report on our experiences and learnings from operating the system for over a year in Bing. — Shayak Sen (Carnegie Mellon University), Saikat Guha (Microsoft Research, India), Anupam Datta (Carnegie Mellon University), Sriram Rajamani (Microsoft Research, India), Janice Tsai (Microsoft Research, Redmond), and Jeannette Wing (Microsoft Research), Bootstrapping Privacy Compliance in Big Data Systems, IEEE Security and Privacy Symposium 2014, Best Student Paper (1 of 2) – See more at: https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/news_events/news/2014/ieee-sp-2014.html#sthash.eM6ZYdS3.dpuf”

[The paper: https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/files/pdfs/Research/ieee2014_sen.pdf

Another programming inspired paper?

http://www.bespacific.com/location-tracking-mosaic-theory-machine-learning/

Location Tracking, Mosaic Theory, and Machine Learning

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on June 8, 2014

Enough is Enough - Location Tracking, Mosaic Theory, and Machine Learning - Steven M. Bellovin, Renée M. Hutchins, Tony Jebara, Sebastian Zimmeck. New York University Journal of Law & Liberty, vol 8:555, 2014.

“Since 1967, when it decided Katz v. United States, the Supreme Court has tied the right to be free of unwanted government scrutiny to the concept of reasonable expectations of privacy. An evaluation of reasonable expectations depends, among other factors, upon an assessment of the intrusiveness of government action. When making such assessment historically the Court has considered police conduct with clear temporal, geographic, or substantive limits. However, in an era where new technologies permit the storage and compilation of vast amounts of personal data, things are becoming more complicated. A school of thought known as “mosaic theory” has stepped into the void, ringing the alarm that our old tools for assessing the intrusiveness of government conduct potentially undervalue privacy rights. Mosaic theorists advocate a cumulative approach to the evaluation of data collection. Under the theory, searches are “analyzed as a collective sequence of steps rather than as individual steps.” The approach is based on the recognition that comprehensive aggregation of even seemingly innocuous data reveals greater insight than consideration of each piece of information in isolation. Over time, discrete units of surveillance data can be processed to create a mosaic of habits, relationships, and much more. Consequently, a Fourth Amendment analysis that focuses only on the government’s collection of discrete units of trivial data fails to appreciate the true harm of long-term surveillance — the composite. In the context of location tracking, the Court has previously suggested that the Fourth Amendment may (at some theoretical threshold) be concerned with the accumulated information revealed by surveillance. Similarly, in the Court’s recent decision in United States v. Jones, a majority of concurring justices indicated willingness to explore such an approach. However, in general, the Court has rejected any notion that technological enhancement matters to the constitutional treatment of location tracking. Rather, it has found that such surveillance in public spaces, which does not require physical trespass, is equivalent to a human tail and thus not regulated by the Fourth Amendment. In this way, the Court has avoided quantitative analysis of the amendment’s protections. The Court’s reticence is built on the enticingly direct assertion that objectivity under the mosaic theory is impossible. This is true in large part because there has been no rationale yet offered to objectively distinguish relatively short-term monitoring from its counterpart of greater duration. As Justice Scalia recently observed in Jones: “it remains unexplained why a 4-week investigation is ‘surely’ too long.” This article suggests that by combining the lessons of machine learning with the mosaic theory and applying the pairing to the Fourth Amendment we can see the contours of a response. Machine learning makes clear that mosaics can be created. Moreover, there are also important lessons to be learned on when that is the case… In five parts, this article advances the conclusion that the duration of investigations is relevant to their substantive Fourth Amendment treatment because duration affects the accuracy of the predictions. Though it was previously difficult to explain why an investigation of four weeks was substantively different from an investigation of four hours, we now have a better understanding of the value of aggregated data when viewed through a machine learning lens. In some situations, predictions of startling accuracy can be generated with remarkably few data points.”

See also a rebuttal of interpretations of this paper by Orin Kerr – No, machine learning doesn’t resolve how the mosaic theory applies

Politicians, lawyers and marketing executives study semantics so they can do this well. (P. T. Barnum once sold a load of white fleshed salmon by advertising that they were guaranteed not to turn pink.)

NSA Chief Defends Facial Recognition Database By Denying Claims That Weren’t Made

I posted something about this previously, but Tim Cushing’s article is still worth reading:

James Clapper’s defense of leaked NSA programs have fallen into the “strictly legal + oversight” framework so often it’s become a cliche that can be ably wielded by lower level staffers. Occasionally, Clapper fires off something longer, like his defense of the NSA’s collection of French phone metadata. During this longer “debunking,” Clapper denied accusations that were never made by attacking a lousy translation of the original French article. This provided for some plausible deniability (“NSA does not collect recordings”), even if the underlying claims — correctly translated — pointed to something the agency was actually doing (bulk phone metadata collection).

The new head of the NSA, Michael Rogers, is doing the same thing.

Read more on TechDirt.

[From the article:

… no one suggested in the article that the NSA targeted US citizens. In fact, one of the biggest complaints about the NSA's programs is the fact that they're clearly untargeted. The NSA doesn't select a person and start the surveillance from that point. The surveillance is pervasive and ongoing and any selection tends to occur long after tons of data/communications have been collected. It's the after-the-fact nature of the programs that makes them so dangerous.

"Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it." (probably) George Santayana

5,000 Years of History Shows that Mass Spying Is Always Aimed at Crushing Dissent

From Washington’s Blog:

Spying has been around since the dawn of civilization.

Keith Laidler – a PhD anthropologist, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a past member of the Scientific Exploration Society – explains:

Spying and surveillance are at least as old as civilization itself.

University of Tennessee history professor Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius agrees:

Espionage and intelligence have been around since human beings first began organizing themselves into distinct societies, cities, states, nations, and civilizations.

Unfortunately, spying hasn’t been limited to defense against external enemies. As documented below, tyrants have long spied on their own people in order to maintain power and control … and crush dissent.

Read more on Washington’s Blog.

About time someone revisited this...

Hoofnagle & Urban Reexamine Alan Westin’s Privacy Classifications of Consumers

Via Public Citizen: Chris Jay Hoofnagle and Jennifer M. Urban, both of Berkeley, have written Alan Westin’s Privacy Homo Economicus, 49 Wake Forest Law Review 261 (2014). Here’s the abstract:

Homo economicus reliably makes an appearance in regulatory debates concerning information privacy. Under the still-dominant U.S. “notice and choice” approach to consumer information privacy, the rational consumer is expected to negotiate for privacy protection by reading privacy policies and selecting services consistent with her preferences. A longstanding model for predicting these preferences is Professor Alan Westin’s well-known segmentation of consumers into “privacy pragmatists,” “privacy fundamentalists,” and “privacy unconcerned.”

… This Article contributes to the ongoing debate about notice and choice in two main ways. First, we consider the legacy Westin’s privacy segmentation model itself, which as greatly influenced the development of the notice-and-choice regime. Second, we report on original survey research, collected over four years, exploring Americans’ knowledge, preferences, and attitudes about a wide variety of data practices in online and mobile markets. Using these methods, we engage in considered textual analysis, empirical testing, and critique of Westin’s segmentation model.

Interesting. Is there much demand for lawyers in positions like this?

Bahamas hires law firm for ‘surveillance and privacy matters’ after NSA revelations

Last month, a report based on documents obtained by Edward Snowden uncovered an elaborate National Security Agency surveillance program that monitors every call made in the Bahamas. The island nation appears to have responded to those charges by retaining attorneys to work on “surveillance and privacy” issues.

According to disclosure documents obtained by The Hill, the government of the Bahamas has hired American law firm Hogan Lovells to represent it in a variety of cases. While the Bahamas has worked with the firm before, it added new responsibilities to their agreement. The firm will represent the nation on issues “that may affect or relate to [its] activities and interests … including but not limited to surveillance and privacy matters.”

Read more on Breitbart.com.

Another interesting concept. Could the owners of “private” systems charge for this access? Retain copyright? Have any rights at all?

PA: Scranton Police Plans For Expanded Security

Stacy Lange reports:

Authorities in Scranton are looking to increase surveillance all over the city. Not by adding more cameras, but by adding more eyes looking at the cameras already in place.

Scranton City Council announced this week that it is applying for a grant that would create community-wide surveillance for Scranton Police.

But the grant money wouldn’t pay for any cameras. It would pay for software that would allow Scranton Police to tap into private surveillance systems.

Read more on WNEP.

For my Computer Forensics students.

http://www.bespacific.com/wsj-single-tweet-many-pieces-metadata-characters/

WSJ – In a Single Tweet, as Many Pieces of Metadata as There Are Characters

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on June 7, 2014

Elizabeth Dwoskin - “To understand big data, look no further than a single tweet. At 140 characters a tweet seems tiny, but it can yield a wealth of information. According to Elasticsearch, a startup that builds software to help companies mine data from social media, there are 150 separate points of so-called metadata in an individual tweet. Metadata loosely refers to information that can be gleaned about a piece of content. For example, in legal terms, the body of an email is considered content, while the time stamp, the sender and the receiver are considered metadata. For a tweet, metadata includes a unique numerical ID attached to each tweet, as well as IDs for all the replies, favorites and retweets that it gets. It also includes a timestamp, a location stamp, the language, the date the account was created, the URL of the author if a website is referenced, the number of followers, and many other technical specifications that engineers can analyze. (A Twitter employee created a map of metadata with explanations in 2010 that you can look at here.)”

It's one more “Thing” for the Internet of Things.

http://zeenews.india.com/business/gadgets/gadgets-news/lg-lifeband-touch-soon-to-be-available-in-india_101316.html

LG LifeBand Touch soon to be available in India

The era of 'smartness' has gripped the world. Begining with the 'smart' phones then to 'smart' TV then to 'smart' eyewear and now 'smart' wristbands have creeped in the market.

LG started selling the Lifeband in the US market last month for USD 150. And it is likely to be available in parts of Asia and Europe in the coming weeks.

Just like a life companion LG LifeBand Touch keeps a track on your workouts and calories burned and syncs it on your devices through an app-LG Fitness app. The figures collected by the band can be sycn on an iPhone, iPad or any Android device.

(Related) How many “Things” are being added to the Internet of Things?

http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/apple-to-make-3-5-million-iwatch-units-per-month-sales-begin-october-nikkei-225370.html?utm_source=top_stories

Apple to make 3-5 million iWatch units per month, sales begin October: Nikkei

Apple is preparing to sell its first wearable device this October, aiming to produce 3 million to 5 million smartwatches a month in its initial run, the Nikkei reported on Friday, citing an unidentified parts supplier and sources familiar with the matter.

Specifications are still being finalized for the watch that many believe will be called iWatch, but the devices are likely to sport curved OLED (organic light-emitting diode) displays and sensors that collect health data from blood glucose and calorie consumption to sleep activity, the Japanese news service cited industry sources as saying.

Anyone want to start a car (truck/plane/motorcycle) company?

Tesla boss Elon Musk hints at technology giveaway

… Earlier this week, Mr Musk told Tesla shareholders that in order to speed up the pace of adoption of electric cars, Tesla was "playing with doing something fairly significant on this front which would be kind of controversial with respect to Tesla's patents".

Billion is the new million... Is this an indication of a bubble? (Are valuations like these real?)

http://wallstreetpit.com/104219-ubers-new-eye-popping-valuation/

Uber’s New Eye-popping Valuation

And to think $3.5 billion sounded like a lot.

Uber Inc, the startup known for its fast-growing on-demand car service, said it has raised $1.2 billion in additional capital, driving the company’s new valuation to an eye-popping $18.2 billion.

… Uber’s new net worth is $6.2 billion higher than it was just a month ago, when the company raised money at a roughly $12 billion level. Ten months ago the company was valued at $3.5 billion.

… At $18.2 billion, Uber is worth more than public companies including car-rental services Hertz Global Holdings, Inc. and Avis Budget Group Inc.

Bad move? High risk at best. Is one terabyte enough of a bribe to keep their users? Stay tuned!

http://www.techienews.co.uk/9713168/flickr-closes-doors-facebook-google-logins/

Flickr closes doors for Facebook, Google logins

… Yahoo on Thursday announced that logging into Flickr using Facebook and Google accounts will not be possible after June 30. Instead, users will have to login with their Yahoo account or create a Flickr account to continue using the service.

… Flickr gained significance as the most used photo sharing service since it was acquired by Yahoo in 2005 but faded away into the background after the entry of Instagram. However, it started emerging as one of the prominent services last year after Yahoo announced a free storage of 1 TB and unlimited free accounts.

Perspective.

http://esbtrib.com/2014/06/08/371/google-chrome-now-popular-web-browser-u-s/

Google Chrome now most popular web browser in the U.S.

Popular internet browser Google Chrome is more popular than most people even realized. According to recently released figures, Google’s search engine has overtaken Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as the most popular internet browser in the United States.

Currently, 31.8 percent of internet users are running Google Chrome which according to a report published by the Adobe Digital Index is up 6 percent on the previous year. Oppositely, Internet Explorer was down 6 percent from the previous year. Despite this drop, Internet Explorer is only narrowly trailing Chrome with a market share of 30.9 percent.

These figures combine both traffic from desktop and mobile devices. This explains why both Chrome and Apple’s very own Safari have grown dramatically over the last few years. With more web browsing occurring on mobile devices through both iOS and Android, it’s no surprise that both web browsers have seen such growth.

For my Website Development students.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/face-fears-become-true-seo-master/

Face Your Fears, Become A True SEO Master

… SEO can either make or break a website. We do what we can to teach you, our readers about good SEO practices. However, I’ve always believed that SEO should come secondary to good content. But nevermind me, you should really pay attention to what the industry experts have to say about SEO. Here are 21 tips to help you through the sticky maze that is SEO, face your fears, and become a true SEO master.