http://www.philly.com/philly/education/92943009.html
L. Merion won't block feds in Web-cam case
… Lawyers for the district, some Lower Merion parents, and the Harriton High School sophomore whose lawsuit spotlighted the school system's use of Web-camera monitoring said Wednesday that they wouldn't try to block federal agents from poring over thousands of images secretly captured from students' computers. [“They've got guns!” Bob]
The development came as a federal judge prepared to permanently bar the district from using Web-cam monitoring and as Superintendent Christopher McGinley announced plans to meet with students, overhaul technology policies, and take other steps to repair the district's tattered image.
… The 69-page report [ … ] said investigators had found no proof of intentional spying. [Just 56,000 accidental images... Bob]
… Mark Haltzman, the lawyer for Robbins and his parents, said they had no objection because they didn't believe the photos of Robbins were incriminating. But Haltzman's letter said he was worried about other students.
"Since the government has not agreed to immunize all students and their parents from prosecution for criminality that could possibly be depicted in the data . . . there is concern that the government will target or, worse, prosecute students and parents based on the illegally obtained evidence," his letter said. [So the school has deliberately been covering up the criminal activity they didn't intentionally obtain? Bob]
Update
http://www.databreaches.net/?p=11552
Heartland Breach: Consumer Settlement Proposed
May 6, 2010 by admin
Linda McGlasson reports:
A proposed settlement of the consumer class action suit brought against payments processor Heartland Payments System got preliminary approval from a U.S. District Court judge in late April. The proposed settlement would create a $4 million pool to pay consumers and settle the case.
[...]
In a “fairness hearing” on April 27, U.S. District Court Judge Lee Rosenthal heard from both sides of the class action suit. Several class action suits brought by consumers from around the country were collected into one case in September 2009. The case was heard in the Southern District U.S. Court in Houston, TX.
Read more on BankInfoSecurity.com. The article also provides an update on other Heartland-related litigation:
The financial institutions’ class action case against Heartland gained two more defendants, Heartland’s acquiring banks Key Bank and Heartland Bank. The suit brought against the two banks was consolidated into the class action suit brought against Heartland.
Can we learn something from these guys? Isn't this the equivalent of having your fingerprints on file? (or is it a hint that the DNA is used for more than identification?)
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=9903
AU: Forensic police who refused to supply DNA sent back to general duties
May 7, 2010 by Dissent
Robyn Ironside reports:
Five police forensics officers have been booted out of their roles for refusing to supply DNA samples to their employer.
The Queensland Police Service had given the officers until March 1 to provide a “voluntary” sample for the purpose of eliminating their DNA from crime scenes.
As many as 50 per cent of officers are believed to have objected to the requirement but only a handful stood their ground out of concern about the lack of safeguards for their genetic blueprint.
Read more in The Courier-Mail.
Introducing the “Double Secret” Library of Congress?
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=9895
Library of Congress Responds To Privacy Gripes By Making Twitter Archive Less Useful
May 7, 2010 by Dissent
Karl Bode writes:
We recently noted how the Library Of Congress and Twitter made a big deal of the fact that the LOC would now be archiving Twitter conversations. The idea is that researchers may find a mountain of largely-incoherent blathering about the Twilight films useful in providing context as they try to piece together events of the twenty-first century. Late last week a little more detail of the archiving process leaked out, the LOC saying that in response to privacy complaints they wouldn’t store deleted tweets, and they’d also be placing all tweets under embargo for a period of six months (for whatever that’s supposed to accomplish). For good measure, they’re also apparently locking down the Twitter archive to “qualified researchers” and considering further restrictions:
Read more on TechDirt.
(Related) I imagine the employee was surprised too. Are employees subject to a “Caesar's wife” standard?
http://www.inc.com/news/articles/2010/05/nonprofit-fires-woman-for-blogging-about-sex.html
Surprised Employer Fires Sex Blogger
A St. Louis-area nonprofit has fired a 37-year-old office worker – after discovering that in her own time, the woman blogs about her polyamorous escapades.
… TBK, as she's known, refers to what happened to her as a Twitter "glitch." But her webmaster clarified to Inc. that her downfall was really "in the failure of how third party search/archiving sites work." [I don't think that makes any sense... Bob]
… According to TBK, her boss – at the suggestion of top management – searched the web for information about employees, and discovered the sex blog. When she arrived at work April 27, she was fired on the spot.
Per an account TBK posted on another website, Aagablog, her boss was furious. “I need to let you go," the woman said, according to TBK. "Corporate office suggested I Google employees. I typed in your name and it took me two seconds to find your website. How COULD you put that stuff out there? What were you thinking?! I feel like I’m talking to a 14 year old! We’re DONE.”
This will work fine until you have a heart attack and need to call an ambulance...
http://www.macnn.com/articles/10/05/06/biometrics.still.absent.from.real.apple.products/
Future iPhones could identify users by heartbeat
A newly-published Apple patent application proposes identifying iPhone users by their heartbeat, rather than by more conventional means like a passcode.
This is the Information Age equivalent of Toyota telling their dealers to replace a part without notifying their customers that it will keep their brakes from failing.
Security Firm Reveals Microsoft's "Silent" Patches
Posted by timothy on Thursday May 06, @03:23PM
CWmike writes
"Microsoft silently patched three vulnerabilities last month, two of them affecting enterprise mission-critical Exchange mail servers, without calling out the bugs in the accompanying advisories, a security expert said on Thursday. Two of the three unannounced vulnerabilities, and the most serious of the trio, were packaged with MS10-024, an update to Exchange and Windows SMTP Service that Microsoft issued April 13 and tagged as 'important,' its second-highest threat ranking. Ivan Arce, CTO of Core Security Technologies, said Microsoft patched the bugs, but failed to disclose that it had done so — which could pose a problem. 'They're more important than the [two vulnerabilities] that Microsoft did disclose,' said Arce. 'That means [system] administrators may end up making the wrong decisions about applying the update. They need that information to assess the risk.'"
"Secret patches are neither new or rare. 'This has been going on for many years and the action in and of itself is not a huge conspiracy," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security. What is unusual is that Core took Microsoft's silent updates public. Saying that Microsoft 'misrepresented' and 'underestimated' the criticality of MS10-024 because it didn't reveal the two bugs, Core urged company administrators to 'consider re-assessing patch deployment priorities.' Microsoft confirmed this instance and defends the practice, noting that updates can "be destructive to customer environments." But Storms echoed Arce's concern about possible misuse of the practice, which could result in a false sense of security among users."
I doubt we'll ever hear the details if this is true. Imagine a system this vulnerable with this much influence on the economy and you have a near perfect target for terrorists (or cyber warriors) Apparently the “automatic limits” that suspend trading in a stock didn't kick in – perhaps a one time sale is exempt?
Stock Market Sell-Off Might Stem From Trader's Fat Finger
Posted by timothy on Thursday May 06, @05:36PM
s122604 points out a CNBC story according to which
"the catalyst for today's extraordinary price swing (at one point the Dow lost almost 9 percent in less than an hour) may have been because a trader entered a 'B' for billions instead of an 'M' for millions on a trade of Procter and Gamble: 'According to multiple sources, a trader entered a "b" for billion instead of an "m" for million in a trade possibly involving Procter & Gamble, a component in the Dow. (CNBC's Jim Cramer noted suspicious price movement in P&G stock on air during the height of the market selloff).' Unbelievable there are no safeguards to protect against this."
Interesting formula. Suggests it might be cheaper for a small business to pay for multiple accounts and divide its downloads across several to say in the “sweet spot' Think of a small law firm that need to move the results of a small e-discovery project (1-20 terabytes) from a client to a consulting firm for analysis, then to opposing council... OR is this change for home users only? Comments suggest this is a 70% price increase for customers that hit 80GB (but stay under 300GB) with no change in service. Perhaps they anticipate that more customers will start watching TV over the Internet?
CRTC Approves Usage Based Billing In Canada
Posted by timothy on Thursday May 06, @11:02PM
qvatch writes with this from CBC News: "The CRTC has approved Bell Canada's request to bill Internet customers, both retail and wholesale, based on how much they download each month. The plan, known as usage-based billing, will apply to people who buy their Internet connection from Bell, or from smaller service providers that rent lines from the company, such as Teksavvy or Acanac. ... Customers using the fastest connections of five megabits per second, for example, will have a monthly allotment of 60 gigabytes, beyond which Bell will charge $1.12 per GB to a maximum of $22.50. If a customer uses more than 300 GB a month, Bell will also be able to implement an additional charge of 75 cents per gigabyte."
(Related)
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20004392-266.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
FAQ: The FCC's plan to reclassify broadband
by Marguerite Reardon May 6, 2010 5:19 PM PDT
The Federal Communications Commission released detailed plans Thursday to ensure that it has authority to craft new rules to keep the Internet open.
Figuring out exactly what the FCC is proposing and how it will affect the industry and consumers is confusing. The procedure the FCC has chosen to shore up its authority is complicated and requires some legal gymnastics. To get the skinny on what's being proposed check out this FAQ below:
If the FCC is reclassifying broadband as a Title II service will all the rules under this classification apply to broadband?
The short answer is no. Under this plan, the FCC will reclassify broadband as a regulated service under Title II. But broadband services will be exempt from most of the old rules written for a monopolistic, 100-year-old telephone infrastructure.
Statistics (graphic)
http://www.billshrink.com/blog/7807/mobile-phones-worldwide-by-the-numbers/
Mobile Phones Worldwide – By the Numbers
Statistics (graphic) US is 30th behind places you couldn't find on a map.
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/7914/ltl2010050601314150096.jpg
Top Countries Ranked by Speed
Statistics (article) Probably not a complete list
http://www.focus.com/fyi/operations/10-largest-databases-in-the-world/
Top 10 Largest Databases in the World
Tool for extracting slides from PDFs
PDF to PowerPoint in Two Steps
“Oh what a wicked web we weave when first we practice to deceive Mother Nature.” “Fix” one problem, cause two?
http://www.livescience.com/environment/Whatever-Happened-to-the-Hole-in-the-Ozone-Layer-100505.html
Whatever Happened to the Hole in the Ozone Layer?
… First, the good news: Since the 1989 Montreal Protocol banned the use of ozone-depleting chemicals worldwide, the ozone hole has stopped growing.
… Now the bad news: The ozone layer has also thinned over the North Pole. This thinning is predicted to continue for the next 15 years due to weather-related phenomena that scientists still cannot fully explain, according to the same UN report.
… Scientists now understand that the size of the ozone hole varies dramatically from year to year, which complicates attempts to accurately predict the hole's future size.
Interestingly, recent studies have shown that the size of the ozone hole affects the global temperature. Closing the ozone hole actually speeds up the melting of the polar ice caps, according to a 2009 study from Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.
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