Identity Theft 101 Follow the Meter Maid... I suspect there is no legal requirement to put this information on the ticket, so shouldn't they have sued the Police Department?
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=23931
Federal Court OKs Personal Information on Parking Tickets
Here’s a follow-up on a case I mentioned on this blog in September 2010. The court issued its decision and although the court may (or may not) have made a correct ruling, the decision leaves anyone who gets a parking ticket in Palatine, Illinois at greater risk of identity theft:
The Village of Palatine, Illinois prints the personal information of vehicle owners — including their address, driver’s license number, date-of-birth and weight — on parking tickets left under the windshield wipers of their automobiles. In a ruling handed down last month, the Seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals found no problem with this procedure.
Motorist Jason Senne had filed suit against what he saw as an outrageous violation of privacy after he received a $20 parking ticket in August 2010. The information printed on the citation, and left open to anyone walking past his vehicle, could be used by an identity thief. Senne argued this was a violation of the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act which prohibits disclosure or otherwise making available the information found in motor vehicle records.
Read more on The Truth About Cars.
Their technology is managed by Dilberts, but their Security is controlled by the pointy haired manager...
Hard-Coded Password and Other Security Holes Found in Siemens Control Systems
A security researcher has uncovered a slew of vulnerabilities in Siemens industrial control systems, including a hard-coded password, that would let attackers reprogram the systems with malicious commands to sabotage critical infrastructures and even lock out legitimate administrators.
The vulnerabilities exist in several models of Siemens programmable logic controllers, or PLCs — the same devices that were targeted by the Stuxnet superworm and that are used in nuclear facilities and other critical infrastructures, as well as in commercial manufacturing plants that make everything from pharmaceuticals to automobiles.
Germany, that bastion of Privacy Rights?
Germany Says Facebook's Facial Recognition Is Illegal
"Although we think it's generally a pretty nifty feature, valid concerns over the misuse of Facebook's auto-recognition tagging have lead Germany to ban it entirely. That's right—Facebook in its current state is now illegal. The German government, which possesses perhaps the world's most adamant privacy laws as a result of postwar abuse, considers Facebook's facial recognition a violation of 'the right to anonymity.'"
There must be more than this. Otherwise, creating an account devoted to the wit and wisdom of Millard Fillmore would get me arrested.
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=23938
Posing as a different Facebook user can constitute identity theft, US court rules
A California Court of Appeal ruled that a school pupil had committed identity theft under Californian laws when he obtained a schoolmate’s email password, used it to gain access to her Facebook account, and posted sexually suggestive messages whilst posing as the girl.
Wilfully obtaining personal identifying information and using it “for an unlawful purpose” without the person’s consent is illegal under the provisions of California’s Penal Code.
The student, referred to as Rolando S in the ruling, had received the girl’s email password from an “unsolicited” text message, the Court ruling said. Because he had kept a record of the password and intended to use it later Rolando S had wilfully obtained personal identifying information belonging to the girl, the Court said.
“We conclude [Rolando S] wilfully obtained the victim’s password when he chose to remember the password from the text message, and later affirmatively used the password to gain access to the victim’s electronic accounts,” the Court said in its ruling (13-page / 39KB PDF).
Read more on Out-Law.com. There will undoubtedly be many who are unhappy with this ruling, but after reading it, it does seem that the California legislature was quite clear in its stated intent that they wanted to expand the application of identity theft law to cover situations that didn’t just involve financial fraud or the like. I wonder if those legislators have any second thoughts now that a young person has been charged and convicted. Might or could this case have been more appropriately handled as a case of harassment? Should account takeovers used for purposes of harassment really be viewed as identity theft?
Obvious over-reaction.
Missouri restricts social networking between teachers, students (podcast)
… The law states that "No teacher shall establish, maintain, or use a work-related Internet site unless such site is available to school administrators and parents," and further requires that "No teacher shall establish, maintain, or use a nonwork-related Internet site which allows exclusive access with a current or former student."
Think of it as the visual equivalent of wiretapping...
FAA Taking a Look At News Corp's Use of Drone
"The News Corp iPad newspaper has a drone they've been using for news gathering — mainly flying it over disaster zones in N. Dakota and Alabama. However, FAA regulations on drones are very restrictive at the moment, and they're not supposed to be used for commercial purposes (law enforcement is free to use them). The FAA is now examining The Daily's use of its drone. Could this set a precedent for how private businesses can use drones?"
Competition! What a concept! Perhaps it is time to drop our monopoly system?
London Could Soon Get Free Wi-Fi Everywhere
"London could soon be covered with a free public WiFi network as Virgin Media moves to challenge BT's Openzone network. Virgin Media's network would be freely available to anyone at 0.5Mbps, and to subscribers to its home broadband at speeds up to a blistering 10Mbps. The proposals would see WiFi routers installed in each of the company's street-side cabinets, which distribute its cable network to homes and businesses"
Free is good!
http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/cloud-experience-online-data-backup-web-service/
CloudExperience: Gives You Free 10 Gb Of Storage On The Cloud
Cloud Experience is a website that lets you create online backups of your data. The site offers various paid and one free account; the free account provides the user with 10GB of free data storage. After you create an account on the site you can download its offline applications; there are different versions for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and BlackBerry. These applications quietly synchronize data from your computer or phone to your Cloud Experience online folders. The online interface gives you a clear view of the files you have uploaded along with their upload dates.
Similar tools: miMedia, Boxnet, Adrive, Boxstr, AllYouCanUpload and FrostBytez.
Also read related articles:
4 Best Sites To Get 10GB Free Online Backup & Storage
Online Storage Services with Free Account Option
Do I just imagine how amusing some of these were? I'll let you know.
Thousands of Old Time Radio Programs
Before televisions appeared in every household in the US, children like Ralphie were huddled around radios to listen to their favorite programs. Long ago those programs stopped being broadcast, but you can still listen to them. The Old Time Radio Network is an online collection of more than 12,000 old radio shows. The catalog is organized alphabetically by program title. Next to each program title you'll find the number of episodes available online. To get started have a listen to Hopalong Cassidy or Abbot and Costello.
For my Introduction to IT students...
Visualize the Effects of Search Operator Words
For the last two days I've facilitated a series of workshops about using Google products in the classroom. One of the workshops included using Google's advanced search features. During that session I was reminded of the Boolify Project, a handy resource for showing students how search operator words affect search results.
The Boolify Project provides a jigsaw-like template into which you can drag the search modifier pieces "and," "or," and "not." Each time a piece is added to the puzzle the search results at the bottom of the page will change accordingly.
For all my students. Can you imagine how much tuition will have to rise to replace bookstore profits?
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-websites-purchase-electronic-college-textbooks/
3 Websites To Purchase Electronic College Textbooks
Ecampus.com’s eTextbook Store http://www.ecampus.com/
CourseSmart http://www.coursesmart.com/
Textbooks.com’s eTextbook Store http://www.textbooks.com/
Also for all my students, who could stand to “rite gooder”
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-cool-word-sites-bit/
5 Cool Word Sites That Are A Bit Different
WordSift helps you to visualize the vocabulary structure of text by creating a tag cloud of important words. The bigger the word, greater is its frequency. You can sort the words and move them around with the mouse. Visual Thesaurus, the Google Images and video searches, and also the sample sentences help students create word associations.
The beautiful face behind the site belongs to Marina Orlova, a former model and now a linguist (more specifically, a philologist). Her YouTube series here she traces the origins of everyday English words is an internet sensation. The website complements her YouTube channel. The downside is that the site may not be suitable for kids.
You can contribute and earn ‘Karma points’ to move up the value chain on the site. The site is trying to build a free, community powered dictionary of English idioms, buzzwords, and catch phrases from around the world.
Tag Galaxy is another cool word site that is more about visual representation of data than about words. But you can use it in some cool ways because every word you enter here becomes a keyword surrounded by related words. Oh yes, it’s all in a 3D-like photosphere with photos drawn from Flickr. The central word becomes the sun, and the related words turn into planets.
Corpus of Contemporary American English
The 425 million word strong collection is the largest currently available. The words have been collected from diverse sources – spoken, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, and academic journals. It is constantly updated and has powerful search features which allow you to wade through the extensive collection. You can search using word, phrase, related words, substring, part of speech, synonyms etc. Word comparisons across different genres can be made for usage differences and context. Here’s a YouTube video that shows you how to get started with the corpus.
If you missed our previous collection of websites on words and vocabulary, fret not. Here are some:
8 More Word Games You Can Play To Sharpen Your Language Skills
8 Quick Online Word Games To Play With Your Vocabulary
10 Spelling Bee Game Websites That Help Your Children Spell Words Right
10 Websites To Learn A Word A Day & Enrich Your Vocabulary
10 Online Synonym Dictionaries To Help You Find A Similar Word
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