Thursday, December 15, 2011


It is possible no one violated the law. This kerfuffle is entirely due to a failure to notify users about data capture. NOTE: Certain Computer Law experts (you know who you are) should not take this article as justification for remaining technological neanderthals...
You don’t have to be tech-savvy to recognize the perils
December 14, 2011 by Dissent
Criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield has an interesting commentary on revelations that the FBI may be availing itself of some of Carrier IQ’s “features” that its customers may be deploying:
… this doesn’t mean they already have their hands on your text messages, or even that there’s any cooperation on the part of Carrier IQ. Indeed, there may be a passel of issues surrounding any effort to gain access to every keystroke you ever tapped on your smartphone, though it would appear that since it’s in the hands of a third party, no Fourth Amendment right attaches. On the other hand, since no one knew this was happening, and it came as a huge, and scandalous surprise to the public, a court should be hard pressed to conclude that it passes scrutiny under Katz’s reasonable expectation of privacy test.
But now you do know. And so does the FBI. And as long as you continue to tap, tap, tap on that cute little qwerty keyboard, you can’t deny you took the risk of exposure to the government by Carrier IQ.
We’re inundated with the magic of technology, making our world easier, faster and perpetually more fabulous. Those who adore technology gush over every shiny new toy. And to a large extent, the toys are great fun and occasionally useful. But nobody wants to be serious about the perils. And there is no shortage of perils.
My deep understanding of all things technical precludes me from discussing the potential of evils that could stem from this rootkit. I don’t even know what a rootkit is. But I know too well that the government will have no qualms about using it to their advantage if they can get their hands on it.
[...]
By the time a court rules that some technology I’ve never heard of is so common and pervasive that no reasonable person could expect privacy, the cutting edge is already a thousand light years ahead of it. [I'm gonna have that printed on a T-shirt! Bob] I learn about it via some of the more technologically astute (and, naturally, younger) lawyers, like Keith Lee, but so does the government. If there’s data to be mined, they’ve got their pith helmets at the ready.
So enjoy those new, shiny toys. Tap to your heart’s content. Hang in the clouds. Eventually, we’ll find out whether you had some unexpected company with you, and by the time it reaches a circuit court and a decision is made about how unreasonable you were to expect that your private, personal communications and messages would remain private, it will be too late to worry about it. By then, you will be informed that everyone knows that there’s no privacy in the technological, digital, shiny toy world. But by then, it will be too late to worry about it.
I couldn’t agree with Scott more, which is why I have always been something of a technological dinosaur. Maybe it’s a genetic thing. My dad used to buy new clothes but then let them age in his closet for at least a few years before he’d wear them. I was never sure why he did it, but I seem to have inherited the reluctance to rush into new things. I wait years to see if something is really safe or valuable to use and I still use a Palm Pilot because I don’t like the idea of my patient scheduling calendar being up in some cloud where others might be able to access it. My new devices come with BlueTooth but I have no idea what I want to do with that. By the time I figure it out, BlueTooth will probably be passé.
On a positive note, I avoid all the weekly Facebook privacy worries by having had the foresight to never create a profile on most social media platforms (Twitter is the exception and there, I use a #noloc app to keep my tweets out of the Library of Congress).
Games? Apps? They sound great – and often free – but as I learned as a health care professional decades ago, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. And if the price of lunch is the government amassing tons of data on me without judicial oversight, well, thanks, but no thanks.

(Related) The benefits of a superior education system?
"Reuters reports that a quarter of the EU has yet to use the internet. Further, half of those in some of the southern and western states do not even have internet access at home. From the article: 'As well as highlighting geographic disparities across one of the world's most-developed regions, the figures underline the lack of opportunity people in poorer communities have to take part in advances such as the Internet that have delivered lower cost goods and service to millions of people.' The full report created by Eurostat can be found here."


...and since every employee has a cellphone camera...
I can just picture it….
December 14, 2011 by admin
Why risk getting caught downloading customer data when you can just take pictures of it?
Trilegiant Corporation in Stamford, Connecticut recently notified the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office that a call center vendor’s employee had been caught taking screen shots of customer data (names and debit or credit card numbers) with his phone camera.
The police are reportedly investigating and the firm is offering affected customers some free credit monitoring services.
Ironically, perhaps, Trilegiant describes itself as the “premier membership-based provider of travel, shopping, health, dental, entertainment, and consumer protection services.” [Hey! They caught the guy, didn't they? Bob]


What are we saying here? China's hackers rule? US security sucks? (Are we bragging or complaining?)
"Chinese-based hacking of 760 different corporations reflects a growing, undeclared cyber war. From giants like Intel and Google to unknowns like iBahn, the Chinese hackers are accused of stealing everything isn't nailed down. Simply put, it is easier and cheaper to steal rather than develop the legal way. China has consistently denied it has any responsibility for hacking that originated from servers on its soil, but — based on what is known of attacks from China, Russia and other countries — a declassified estimate of the value of the blueprints, chemical formulas and other material stolen from U.S. corporate computers in the last year reached almost $500 billion"


Interesting applications for facial recognition tech...
Across the Web and around the world, your face is being detected and recognized. Here are 6 of the more prominent examples.


Dude! I was hanging with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet the other day and they kept bugging me for loans. Bummer dude!
"Betabeat's Adrianne Jeffries takes a look at the questionable young science of using social media to evaluate creditworthiness. As banks start nosing around Facebook and Twitter, Jeffries explains, the wrong friends might just sink your credit. 'Let's take a trip with the Ghost of Christmas Future,' she suggests. 'The year is 2016, and George Bailey, a former banker, now a part-time consultant, is looking for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage for a co-op in the super-hot neighborhood of Bedford Falls (BeFa). He has never missed a loan payment and has zero credit card debt. He submits his information to the online-only PotterBank.com, but halfway through the application process, the website asks for his Facebook login. Then his Twitter. Then LinkedIn. The cartoon loan officer avatar begins to frown as the algorithm discovers Mr. Bailey's taxi-driving buddy Ernie was once turned down by PotterBank for a loan; then it starts browsing his daughter Zuzu's photo album, 'Saturday Nite!' And what was this tweet from a few years back: "FML, about to jump off a goddamn bridge"?' So, could George piggyback his way to a better credit score by adding Larry and Sergey to his Google+ Circles?"


Not coincidence, but not clear what it really is...
Ca: Insider breach at Insurance Corporation of British Columbia linked to shootings, arson
December 14, 2011 by admin
This sounds like it might qualify as one of the worst – if not, THE worst – insider breach of 2011.
When people affiliated with the Justice Institute of British Columbia starting seeing their homes shot at or set on fire, the RCMP began an intensive investigation.
That probe has now culminated in the firing of an Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) employee who accessed information on dozens of people, including 13 people victimized by the shooting/arson incidents, RCMP said Wednesday.
“We can now state the investigation revealed a link to an ICBC employee, who allegedly accessed personal information of 65 individuals, including the 13 identified victims,” Chief Supt. Janice Armstrong of the Lower Mainland District Regional Police Service said in a statement. “That employee, along with other individuals, is under continued police investigation.”
Read more on Vancouver Sun.
The coverage doesn’t discuss what the employee’s motivation may have been, but QMI Agency reports that none of the victims, all of whom were students associated with the college, were harmed or appear to have been involved in criminal activity.
The Justice Institute of British Columbia provides training programs for the public safety sector as well as programs in community and social justice and health sciences. It is not clear which program the 13 victims or the other 52 individuals whose were accessed are enrolled in. Nor is it confirmed that the other 52 individuals are all affiliated with JIBC.
JIBC issued a statement on their web site today, but like the RCMP’s press statement, it offers no clue as to why an employee of ICBC would be involved in any attacks or arson. Nor is there any indication whether the employee accessed the information and passed it on to other(s) or used the information directly. None of the shootings or arsons occurred on JIBC campuses.
CKNW quotes Sergeant Peter Thiessen of the RCMP as saying:
“I’m not in a position to share what we believe some possible motives may have been. But we are looking at number of different scenarios.”
Thiessen says that ICBC employee and other people are under continued police investigation.


In theory, multiple (many, many) phones working together could broadcast HDTV images – but very few homes in the US still have the ability to receive them.
U.S.-Funded Internet Liberation Project Finds Perfect Test Site: Occupy D.C.
… If he has his way, Meinrath’s project will lead to low-cost, easy-to-use wireless connections around the globe, all lashed together in mesh that can withstand the whims of dictators willing to pull the plug on the internet to quash dissent. He and a team of software engineers are developing open-source software to turn cheap wireless access points and Android smartphones into nodes on the network, which could then be used by dissidents to evade censorship and to spread low-cost connections everywhere around the world. Proponents of the plan include the U.S. State Department, which has given Meinrath a $2 million grant to develop the code.


I'd be happy if we could agree not to arm them with Hellfire missiles.
Civil liberties group calls for privacy protections involving domestic drones
December 15, 2011 by Dissent
Jim Barnett reports:
A leading organization advocating individual rights is recommending new rules and limits to protect the privacy of Americans in advance of expected expanded use of domestic drones by police and other law enforcement agencies.
In a report released Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union recommends drones not be deployed indiscriminately unless there are grounds to believe the unmanned aerial planes will collect evidence about a specific crime, adding government power “needs to be subject to checks and balances.”
Read more on CNN.


Here's a thought: Let's start the patent process on every Science Fiction idea that seems to be even vaguely technically feasible in the next 50 years.
"On Tuesday, Google was awarded U.S. Patent No. 8,078,349 for methods and devices for Transitioning a Mixed-mode Autonomous Vehicle from a Human Driven Mode to an Autonomously Driven Mode. From the fast-tracked patent application, which was filed last May and kept under wraps at Google's request: 'The autonomous vehicle may be used as a virtual tour guide of Millennium Park in Chicago. In the example embodiment, the vehicle may have an instruction to drive to the Cloud Gate (Silver Bean) sculpture at Millennium Park. When the vehicle arrives, the autonomous instruction may tell it to wait in the location for a predetermined amount of time, for example 5 minutes. The instruction may then direct the vehicle to drive to the Crown Fountain at Millennium Park and again wait for 5 minutes. Next, the instruction may tell the vehicle to drive to the Ice Rink at Millennium Park and wait for another predetermined amount of time. Finally, the vehicle instruction may tell the vehicle to return to its starting position.'"


Has a “Best Seller” list ever been about anything other than what sells best? It's not even a popularity contest – no free books made the list.
"Amazon's released their list of 2011's best-selling books, revealing that 40% of the best-selling ebooks didn't even make it onto their list of the best-selling print books. The #1 and #2 best-selling ebooks of the year weren't even available in print editions, while four of the top 10 best-selling print books didn't make it into the top 100 best-selling ebooks. 'It couldn't be more clear that Kindle owners are choosing their material from an entirely different universe of books,' notes one Kindle site, which points out that five of the best-selling ebooks came from two million-selling ebook authors — Amanda Hocking and John Locke — who are still awaiting the release of their books in print. And five of Amazon's best-selling ebooks were Kindle-only 'Singles,' including a Stephen King short story which actually outsold another King novel that he'd released in both ebook and print formats. And Neal Stephenson's 'Reamde' was Amazon's #99 best-selling print book of 2011, though it didn't even make it onto their list of the 100 best-selling ebooks of the year. 'People who own Kindles are just reading different books than the people who buy printed books,' reports the Kindle site, which adds '2011 may be remembered as the year that hundreds of new voices finally found their audiences.'"

(Related) A unique business model? What would his profit percentage have been if a more traditional DVD version had been released?
"Comedian Louis C.K., real name Louis Szekely, took a major risk by openly selling his latest stand-up special, 'Louis C.K. Live at the Beacon Theater,' for only $5 on his website and refusing to put any DRM restrictions on the video, which made it easily susceptible to pirating and torrenting. Four days later, Louis CK's goodwill experiment has already paid off: The 44-year-old comic now reports making a profit of about $200,000, after banking more than $500,000 in revenue from the online-only sale. The special, which has sold 110,000 copies so far, is only available on Louis CK's website."


For my geeks...
When you really stop to think about it, an Internet browser in its simplest form isn’t really that impressive an application. I mean, yes, the Internet is amazing by anyone’s standards. The concept of linking so many of the world’s computers and mobile devices within this massive network, that is epic. But the concept of transferring a text file with special code in it, and displaying that transferred text onto the computer screen – that’s really not a big deal.
… Using the approach below, you can use Word, Access or Excel to read HTML documents on the web, alter those documents, and then output whatever you want in a new browser window.


For my Math students
I am really getting fed up tired of having to explain Wolfram Alpha graphs to students. For some reason, the default in Wolfram Alpha is to graph everything with imaginary numbers. This results in bizarre-looking graphs and makes it near-impossible to use Wolfram Alpha as a teaching tool for undergraduate mathematics, a real shame. Now that Google has entered the online graphing fray, I have a wary hope that the programmers at Wolfram Alpha might finally (after two years of waiting) fix the problem.
Here are a few examples. I’ll show you the graph in Wolfram Alpha, on a TI-84 Plus emulator (TI-SmartView), from Google Search, and from Desmos Graphing Calculator. These are all the “default” looks. Wolfram Alpha consistently shows this confusing imaginary view as the default whenever working with graphs involving variables in radicals.


Quite a list of organizations to research.
A Look At The Organizations That Grabbed $115 Million In Grants From Google In 2011


Now this is truly strange...
Benny Hill Yourself, as the name suggests, is a web based tool that lets you replace Benny Hill with yourself in some of his video sequences. As you can see in the image below, the tool puts your picture on top of his face and then finalizes the video accordingly.

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