Interesting that Syria has time (and technical expertise) to devote to hackers...

Syrian Hackers Deface Anonymous' Social Network

"After the hacking gang Anonymous took credit for defacing Syria's Ministry of Defense website, a Syrian group retaliated on Monday byposting gruesome photos on Anonymous' embryonic social network. The defacement of AnonPlus — the site Anonymous set up last month when it was booted off Google+ — did not include the name of the group responsible. The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, however, credited the AnonPlus defacement to the 'Syrian Electronic Army' in a message posted to Twitter. 'In response to your hacking to the website of the Syrian Ministry of Defence, the Syrian people have decided to purify the internet of [y]our pathetic website,' the defacement read."

What's the difference between an Arab Spring and a London Summer?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20089801-71/social-networking-fanning-londons-flames/

Social networking fanning London's flames?

… I'm reading headlines suggesting that BlackBerry's free Messenger system is the prime choice for those who choose to wrap their Mom's hankies above their noses and raid Armani stores and burger joints in order to show what they're made of.

BlackBerry's U.K. arm immediately took to Twitter to distance itself, at least slightly, from its own alleged customers.

"We feel for those impacted by the riots in London. We have engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can," the company said on its Twitter feed.

… Messenger communication is encrypted and the Guardian says BlackBerry had declared in the past that it is unable to unencrypt BBM messages.

(Irony alert!) Of course the US is different – this could never happen here!

http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=23982

Most Canadians Can Be Uniquely Identified From Their Date Of Birth And Postal Code

There are increasing pressures for health care providers to make individual-level data readily available for research and policy making. But Canadians are more likely to allow the sharing of their personal data if they believe that their privacy is protected. A new report by Dr. Khaled El Emam, the Canada Research Chair in Electronic Health Information at the University of Ottawa and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, suggests that Canadians can be uniquely identified from their date of birth, postal code, and gender. This means if this triad of data exists in any database, even if it has no names or other identifying information, it would be possible to determine the identity of those individuals. The report is now available in BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making Journal.

Read more on RedOrbit.

(Related)

http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=23984

Give me back my data! The curse of personal information brokers

Scott Raymond writes:

Recently on Reddit, regular contributor LawyerCT presented a list of top sites that collect, store and sell access to your personal data, and provided the methods for removing yourself from these databases.

[...]

It gets worse. While LawyerCT did yeoman’s work collecting the methods of removing yourself from these “services”, there are a number of drawbacks. For one thing, information is currency to them. They don’t want to let go of your data without a fight.

The methods they use are not only draconian in the way they make it difficult to get unlisted, they also require information about you that gives them exact confirmation and correction of the information they already have on you. It smacks of the methods spammers use to confirm your email address: they pretend to let you unsubscribe, when in fact you are confirming a legitimate email address where they can send even more junk.

Read more on ZDNet.

Note that Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has compiled a listing of almost 200 data brokers with links for instructions on how to 0pt-out or remove yourself if it is permitted. You can see their resource here.

If true, this could be HUGE!

Microsoft Demonstrates Practical Homomorphic Computing

"Homomorphic computing makes it possible to compute with encrypted data and get an encrypted result, something that could make cloud services more secure. Such systems have so far been mathematical proofs, but researchers at Microsoft now say that stripped down versions able to only compute certain mathematical functions are efficient enough to be used today. They built prototype software capable of calculating statistical functions using encrypted data and say it could be used for processing medical data while protecting privacy."

You would think they had never heard of the “Streisand Effect”

Law School Amplifies Critics Through SLAPP Suit

"Michigan's Thomas M. Cooley Law School recently filed a lawsuit that appears to be boomeranging in the worst possible way. A little-noticed pseudonymous blogger respectfully disagreed with Cooley's self-awarded number-2 ranking, nationwide (well, perhaps not so respectfully), and had a few other choice things to say. So, Cooley went ahead and hired some lawyers (who had graduated from Georgetown and the University of Michigan) to file a lawsuit to unmask the blogger. And EFF cooperating attorney John Hermann got involved. "

Infographic for my students...

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390620,00.asp

Infographic: 5 Ways You Can Lose a Job on Facebook

This June, the Federal Trade Commission approved the creation of a "Social Intelligence Report" that lets private companies archive your social media activities for up to seven years, for "compliance" reasons. A human resources manager can hire consultants, like those at the Social Intelligence Corporation, to compile a report of what you've posted across all your social networks (kind of like how a landlord checks your credit score). Social Intelligence Corporation's CEO Max Drucker told Social Media Today that they generally flag four types of posts in their reports: racially insensitive remarks, sexually explicit materials, flagrant displays of weaponry, and other demonstrations of clearly illegal activity. Getting fired over Facebook for trigger-happy posts can't be all that difficult, especially if you're one of the 250 million members who access Facebook through a cell phone app.

For my Math students (and everyone else) If you haven't tried WolframAlpha, you are definitely missing something great.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 7, 2011

Wolfram Alpha for Your Desktop

A couple of weeks ago I gave a short live demonstration of the computational search engine Wolfram Alpha. As I was wrapping-up the demonstration someone in the audience reminded me that there are some desktop widgets and browser extensions that put Wolfram Alpha at your fingertips. Acting on that reminder I installed the Wolfram Alpha desktop gadget for Windows 7. The entire collection of gadgets and browser extensions includes gadgets for Windows and Mac desktops, an iGoogle gadget, and browser extensions for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Opera.

Not sure what makes Wolfram Alpha different from Google or Bing? Watch this short video introduction to Wolfram Alpha.