“Can we block your connections?”
"The
Federal Communications Commission is reviewing whether
or when the police and other government officials can intentionally
interrupt cellphone and Internet service to protect public
safety. A scary proposition which will easily become a First
Amendment issue. Does the FCC have the authority to [regulate local
or state authorities' decision to] take down cellular networks if
they determine there is an imminent threat? The FCC is currently
asking
for public input (PDF) on this decision."
According to the article, "among
the issues on which the F.C.C. is seeking comment is whether it even
has authority over the issue. The public notice asks for comment on
whether the F.C.C. itself has legal authority over shutdowns of
wireless service and whether it can pre-empt local, state or federal
laws that prohibit or constrain the ability of anyone to interrupt
service." Maybe they just don't like being upstaged
by BART.
Ubiquitous surveillance. Think of the
Lower Merion High School flap (students being photographed in their
bedrooms) only now everyone can be watched on any video/photo enabled
device.
"The little cameras in your
home are multiplying. There are the ones you bought, perhaps your
SLR or digital camera, but also those that just kind of show up in
your current phone, your old phone, your laptop, your game console,
and soon your TV and set-top box. Varun Arora, founder of startup
GotoCamera in Singapore, wants
you to turn them all on and let his company's algorithms analyze what
they show, then sell the results as marketing data, in a sort of
visual version of what Google and other firms do with search results
and free email services."
(Related) We like surveillance enough
to pay for it!
Highlight,
the people discovery app that could change the world
… Highlight is a mobile app that
helps you learn more about the people around you. If you are
standing near me and you also have Highlight installed, your profile
will show up on my phone. I can see your name, profile photo, all of
the friends we have in common, and all of the other things we have in
common--like if we went to the same school or are from the same
hometown. I can also see a history of the times we have crossed
paths before. If I am walking down the street and Highlight sees
someone particularly interesting crossing my path, it will notify me.
I find it hard to believe they could
summarize bio-ethics in 15 pages, let alone translate that into
something technology researchers will understand. But I'm not sure
it won't become a worthy supplement to the legal framework
eventually.
EPIC
Urges DHS to Abide by Privacy Laws When Conducting Technology
Research
March 3, 2012 by Dissent
From EPIC:
Earlier this week,
EPIC submitted comments
to the DHS on “The
Menlo Report: Ethical Principles Guiding Information and
Communication Technology Research.” DHS sought public views on
the privacy implications of ethical human subject research in
information and communication technology research. EPIC said that
many federal privacy laws, such as the Privacy
Act of 1974, set out legal standard for how government agencies
should protect personal data. EPIC strongly urged DHS to abide by
federal privacy laws rather than adopt non-binding principles, which
are not enforceable and provide few rights for individuals. For more
information, see EPIC:
Privacy and The Common Rule
Alice Lipowicz reports on the letter on
Federal
Computer Week.
[This
is part of the report they object to:
Respect
for public interest can often be addressed by obeying relevant laws.
If applicable laws conflict with each other or with the public
interest, and a decision is made to not comply with legal obligations
that are viewed as unethical, researchers should have ethically
defensible justification and be prepared to accept responsibility for
their actions and consequences.
I think it's a great idea we don't
(yet) know how to make secure...
A few countries, like Estonia, have
gone for internet-based voting in national elections in a big way,
and many others (like Ireland and Canada) have experimented with it.
For Americans, with a presidential election approaching later this
year, it's a timely issue: already, some states have
come to allow at least certain forms of voting by internet.
Proponents say online elections have compelling upsides, chief among
them ease of participation. People who might not otherwise vote —
in particular military personnel stationed abroad, but many others
besides — are more and more reached by internet access. Online
voting offers a way to keep the electoral process open to them. With
online voting, too, there's no worry about conventional absentee
ballots being lost or delayed in the postal system, either before
reaching the voter or on the way back to be counted. The downsides,
though, are daunting. According to RSA panelists David Jefferson and
J. Alex Halderman, in fact, they're overwhelming. Speaking Thursday
afternoon, the two laid out their case against e-voting. [Much
more follows Bob]
I'll look for the transcript (or the
video) since the slides are merely suggestive.
March 02, 2012
Pew
- The emerging information landscape - 8 realities of the "new
normal"
"Pew Director Lee Rainie gave a
keynote at the NFAIS annual conference about the way the internet and
mobile connectivity have transformed the worlds of networked
individuals. He discussed how normal life has changed in the past
decade because of three revolutions in technology:
1) the spread of
broadband;
2) the rise of
mobile connectivity; and
3) the emergence
of technological social networks.
He discussed trends and likely future
developments in technology that will shape the way people learn,
share, and create information. The slides in PDF are here."
Are there lessons here for other media?
"In March 2011,
personalized-magazine startup Zite got a cease-and-desist letter from
a group of 11 media giants outraged by the way Zite's popular iPad
app 'misappropriated' their news articles. By August 2011, Zite had
become part of CNN, which is owned by Time Warner, one of the
organizations behind the C&D letter. Zite's brief clash with the
media establishment, followed by its swift assimilation into the same
establishment, is emblematic of a
larger story unfolding in the media business: the grudging
acknowledgement by publishers that readers want to access their
content in new ways. In this article Zite CEO Mark Johnson explains
how the startup mollified publishers (by presenting articles in 'Web
view' mode rather than a stripped-down 'reader mode'), why CNN bought
the company, and how it strives to make reading more enjoyable while
still respecting publishers' business models."
[From the article:
Old-line media companies have spent the
last 25 years coping with the digital fragmentation of their content,
starting with CompuServe and AOL in the 1980s and exploding in recent
years across the Web, RSS, Google News, Flickr,
YouTube,
Facebook,
Twitter,
Tumblr,
and all the rest. Just as they’ve started to figure out how
to make money in this radically altered world—not as much as they
did in the print era, but something above zero— a new technology
trend comes knocking: apps like Zite, Flipboard,
and Pulse
that hoover up publishers’ content fragments and put them back
together in the form of tablet- and smartphone-based “magazines.”
(See “The
10 Social News Apps You Need to Try,” 1/20/12.)
For my Data Mining & Data Analysis
students...
"The ACM's Queue magazine has a
new, comprehensive taxonomy
of visualization techniques, drawing from the theories of Edward
Tufte and citing examples from academia, government, and the
excellent NYT visualization team. This list contains 12 steps for
turning data into a compelling visualization: Visualize, Filter,
Sort, Derive, Select, Navigate, Coordinate, Organize, Record,
Annotate, Share, & Guide. 'For developers, the taxonomy can
function as a checklist of elements to consider when creating new
analysis tools.' The citations alone make this an article worth
bookmarking."
Would the average police department
know how to use Facebook this way?
The website Criminal
Justice Degrees Guide posted an interesting infographic today
about how Facebook played a pivotal role in solving 20 different
criminal cases. Police are finding ways to use the social networking
site to track down cyberstalkers, pranksters gone awry, and
inappropriate posting of information. The UK police have reported a
sharp rise in Facebook-related crimes in the past few years.
Should this be on my Ethical Hacking
wish list?
The
Little White Box That Can Hack Your Network
… Built by a startup company called
Pwnie Express, the PwnPlug is pretty much the last thing you ever
want to find on your network — unless you’ve hired somebody to
put it there. It’s a tiny computer that comes preloaded with an
arsenal of hacking tools. It can be quickly plugged into any
computer network and then used to access it remotely from afar. And
it comes with “stealthy decal stickers” — including a little
green flowerbud with the word “fresh” underneath it, that makes
the device look like an air freshener — so that people won’t get
suspicious.
The basic model costs $480, but if
you’re willing to pay an extra $250 for the Elite version, you can
connect it over the mobile wireless network. “The whole point is
plug and pwn,” says Dave Porcello, Pwnie Express’s CEO. “Walk
into a facility, plug it in, wait for the text message. Before you
even get to the parking lot you should know it’s working.”
Porcello decided to start making the
PwnPlug after coming across the SheevaPlug,
a miniature low-power Linux computer built by Globalscale
Technologies that looks just like a power adapter.
Definitely for my Ethical Hackers...
… Windows Phones come locked by
default, with users only able to install apps from the Windows Phone
Marketplace on a region-specific basis. This can result in some
disparity between users based in different territories and also
prevents amateur developers from testing their apps on the platform.
Fortunately, two unlock methods are
currently available across all Windows Phone devices. The first
option is to register your Windows Phone as a
developer device, enabling access to a wealth of
development options – for a fee. If you
don’t have resources for this, however, a much cheaper but limited
choice also exists.
Freebies for my students!
"VALO-CD
is an open source software collection similar to The
Open CD. Version 8 is now available in
English. The open source collection has been
available in Finnish for several years, but now it has been
translated into English and is available internationally as well.
The collection contains pretty much everything a typical end user
would need: LibreOffice, Inkscape, Firefox, Audacity and many other
programs. The main goal is to increase knowledge about open source
software. The programs are for Windows since most Linux
distributions already contain most of the programs, and Linux users
obviously are already aware of open source. The CD is developed
collaboratively in a wiki. It is freely
available as a torrent
download."
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