Local low-life
16
Indicted In Colorado ID Theft Ring With 100+ Victims
November 18, 2011 by admin
Wayne Harrison reports:
CENTENNIAL, Colo.
— Sixteen people have been indicted by a grand jury on 168 counts,
after law enforcement discovered that the group was responsible for a
statewide identity theft ring that victimized over a hundred
individuals and businesses across Colorado.
Read more on The
Denver Channel, but the coverage doesn’t give a
clue how they obtained the identity information they misused.
Will this agreement be available in the
US? (probably not without some FOIA lawsuits) What information
would be so onerous that our government would be reluctant to tell us
they collect and share it?
EU
parliamentarians speak out over gag order on data deal
November 18, 2011 by Dissent
Jennifer Baker reports:
A leading Member
of the European Parliament (MEP) has said that she will not be
silenced on the shortcomings of a new deal to pass European airline
travelers’ information to the United States.
Dutch Liberal MEP
Sophie In’t Veld made the comments on Friday after the European
Commission issued a press release extolling the virtues of the
Passenger Name Register (PNR) agreement. Parliamentarians have been
banned from talking about the content of the deal or making notes on
the document and may only read it in a “sealed room.”
In’t Veld
believes this is ridiculous. “This is highly unfortunate. MEPs can
read it, but citizens should also have access to what is decided
about their rights. I don’t feel particularly bound to any
confidentiality, especially as the Commission has been making public
statements, why should I be quiet about it? The whole situation is
not very confidence inspiring,” she said.
Read more on TechWorld
and a huge thumbs up to Ms In’t Veld.
I agree that once your data is captured
for someone's database, it is unlikely that removal will stop the
re-capture process.
‘Unenforceable’
right to be forgotten should not be included in new EU data laws, ICO
says
November 18, 2011 by Dissent
Giving individuals
the right to force organisations to delete the personal information
they store them about would be misleading, unenforceable and have
“implications” for free speech, the UK’s data protection
watchdog said.
“The framework
should strengthen individual rights to object to and block
processing, and to have their data deleted, and reverse the burden of
proof so the organisation has to provide compelling legitimate
grounds for continuing processing,” the ICO said in a briefing
(4-page / 113KB PDF) on what it would like revised EU data protection
laws to provide for.
Read more on Out-Law.com.
How quickly (non-US) out-of-office
politicians fall to “second class citizen” status... I doubt
anyone at TSA was fired, but it will be interesting to see if TSA
says anything.
Unconfirmed:
U.S. Officials Sacked for Frisking India’s Former President; Did
TSA Go Too Far?
November 18, 2011 by Dissent
Sanskrity Sinha reports:
Two Transportation
Safety Administration (TSA) officials involved in the recent frisking
incident of former Indian president Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam at a U.S.
airport have reportedly been sacked, according to an Indian national
daily.
Though there are
no confirmed reports of the lay-off either by TSA or U.S. Government,
the Hindustan Times reported Thursday that the U.S. authorities had
fired the executives for “exceeding their brief” as they made
former Kalam, who is also an eminent scientist, face security checks
a second time after he had boarded his aircraft.
Read more on IBTraveler.
Additional background on the incident can be found on The
Global Indian and Deccan
Chronicle.
From the IBTraveler
article:
"Appropriate procedures for
expedited screening of dignitaries had not
been followed," said the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi in a
statement.
… under existing US regulation,
Abdul Kalam does not fall into the category of persons exempt from
security screening.
U.S. dignitaries, in
contrast, are always exempt from security checks as a
gesture of courtesy and respect in India.
Perspective
November 17, 2011
Pew:
46% - Paying for Apps
"Just under half (46%) of cell
phone and tablet users who have downloaded apps say they have paid
for an app at some point, according to a survey
conducted July 25-Aug. 26, 2011 by the Pew Internet & American
Life project. That number is statistically equivalent to the 47% who
reported doing so in May 2010. However, the number of people who
have downloaded an application has grown, so only 16%
of all U.S. adults have ever paid for an app -- this
compares with 13% who said so in May 2010. This is a small but
statistically significant increase."
- Digital Trends: "What app developers might find interesting is that it appears owners of tablets are more likely to pay for an app than those downloading to a smartphone. Furthermore, those with tablets are more likely to spend a greater amount on an app than those who buy an app for use on a smartphone."
Perspective The second Infographic is
eye opening...
November 17, 2011
2011
Cisco Connected World Technology Report
News
release: "Demonstrating the increasing role of the network
in people's lives, an international workforce study announced today
by Cisco revealed that one in three college students and young
professionals considers the Internet to be as important as
fundamental human resources like air, water, food and shelter. The
2011
Cisco Connected World Technology Report also found that more than
half of the study's respondents say they could not live without the
Internet and cite it as an "integral part of their lives" –
in some cases more integral than cars, dating, and partying. These
and numerous other findings provide insight into the mindset,
expectations, and behavior of the world's next generation of workers
and how they will influence everything from business communications
and mobile lifestyles to hiring, corporate security, and companies'
abilities to compete."
Thanks to Gary Alexander, I didn't miss
this entirely. It is a bit pricy, but it's almost Christmas so I'm
sure the school will “Gift” me the registration fee...
2ND
ANNUAL CYBERSECURITY SUMMIT--WEST: Securing Cyber, Mobile and the
Cloud
Monday, December 5, 2011 from 7:00 AM
to 5:00 PM (MT) Denver, CO
Toys for Hackers. Boot from the USB
port and bypass all that password nonsense...
Tiny
USB Stick Brings Android to PCs, TVs
A question for my Ethical Hackers: How
come your hacker-wiki has 10X more entries than the government's?
The
Surveillance Catalog: Where governments get their tools
November 19, 2011 by Dissent
From the WSJ:
Documents obtained
by The Wall Street Journal open a rare window into a new global
market for the off-the-shelf surveillance technology that has arisen
in the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The techniques
described in the trove of 200-plus marketing documents include
hacking tools that enable governments to break into people’s
computers and cellphones, and “massive intercept” gear that can
gather all Internet communications in a country.
The documents—the
highlights of which are cataloged and searchable here—were obtained
from attendees of a secretive surveillance conference held near
Washington, D.C., last month.
Read more on The
Wall Street Journal. I haven’t had time to read this all yet,
but will definitely want to know what U.S. companies are enabling
oppressive regimes.
[From the article:
The documents fall into five general
categories: hacking, intercept, data analysis, web
scraping and anonymity.
For my Ethical Hackers. Should make an
interesting target...
"'Sometime early next year,
Ford will mail USB sticks to about 250,000 owners of vehicles with
its advanced touchscreen control panel. The stick will contain a
major upgrade to the software for that screen. With it, Ford breaks
the model in which the technology in a car essentially stayed
unchanged from assembly line to junk yard' — and Ford
becomes a software company. This shift
created a hot new tech job at Ford: human-machine interface engineers
— people who come from a range of backgrounds, from software
development to mechanical engineers, and who can live in the worlds
of art and science at once."
I'm always looking for ways to bring
good, relatable science into the classroom...
How
Many Sips in a Bottle of Beer?
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