“Senators are just like normal
citizens except that none of those silly laws apply to us.” If
Martha Steward had been a Senator, she wouldn't have a felony record
now.
Senate
bans insider trading on Capitol Hill
The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly
passed a bill that makes it illegal for lawmakers and their staffs to
make Wall Street trades based on insider information.
Ubiquitous Surveillance. “We can,
therefore we must!” As “can” increases, “must” follows.
Yep,
Google Just Patented Background Noise
In 2008, Google applied to patent a
system that analyzes the environments surrounding mobile phones --
temperature, humidity, sound -- by way of sensors embedded in those
phones. The technology would be mainly used, Google said
in its filing, for (yes) "advertising based on environmental
conditions."
… There are huge privacy concerns
here, obviously, one of them being that the ability to track devices'
background noises would
seem to imply the ability to track all their noises.
… One wonders about the legality of
the hypothetical operation in the 12
states that require everyone recorded to consent to that
recording. The sound the phone picks up may just be an advertising
signal for an algorithm to Google, but the law could see it
differently.
(Related) The article made no mention
of the rate of successful identification of the faces.
Does this suggest the Army dos not
understand the “Streisand Effect?”
After
Massacre, Army Tried to Delete Accused Shooter From the Internet
The military waited six days before
releasing the name of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, accused of
killing 16 Afghan civilians earlier this month. One of the reasons
for the somewhat unusual delay: to give the military enough time to
erase the sergeant from the internet — or at least try to.
That’s according to several Pentagon
officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to McClatchy
newspapers about the subject. The scrubbed material included
photographs of Bales from the military’s official photo and video
distribution website, along with quotes by the 38-year-old sergeant
in the Joint Base Lewis-McChord newspaper regarding a 2007 battle in
Iraq “which
depicts Bales and other soldiers in a glowing light.”
The sergeant’s wife, Karilyn Bales,
and their two young children were also moved
onto Lewis-McChord, reportedly for their protection. Her
blog, titled “The
Bales Family” about her life as a mother and military spouse,
was removed although it’s not known how, precisely. [Perhaps the
Army has perfected the “right to be forgotten?” Bob]
The military’s reasoning for the blackout: protecting the privacy
of the accused and his family.
Something fishy here. The article
makes it seem that the Police send notices to those they find with
open WiFi. In fact, they send the notices to everyone in the area.
So why bother looking for WiFi?
"As a part of National Consumer
Fraud week, the Queensland
Police are going war driving in order to identify insecure WiFi
setups. From the press release: 'The
War Driving Project involves police conducting proactive patrols
of residential and commercial areas to identify unprotected
connections. Police will follow this up with a letterbox drop in the
targeted area with information on how to effectively secure your
connection.' While some people may like having an open WiFi AP its
interesting to see that the Police also feel that 'Having WEP
encryption is like using a closed screen door as your sole means of
security at home. The WPA or WPA2 security encryption is certainly
what we would recommend as it offers a high degree of protection.'"
[If you would like to
do it yourself: http://www.wardriving.com/code.php
(Related) Perhaps a strongly worded
letter from the police is required.
"A group of U.S. federal
cybersecurity experts recently said the Defense Department's network
is totally
compromised by foreign spies. The experts suggest the agency
simply accept that its networks are compromised and will probably
remain that way, then come up with a way to protect data on infected
machines and networks."
[From the article:
James Peery, director of Sandia
National Labs’ Information Systems Analysis Center, told the
committee. “We’ve got the wrong model here. … I think we’ve
got this model for cyber that says, ‘We’re going to develop a
system where we’re not attacked.’ I think we
have to go to a model where we assume that the adversary is in our
networks. It’s on our machines, and we’ve got to operate anyway.
We have to protect the data anyway."
I can see the young lawyer saying, “I
know how to stop all this fuss about our Privacy Policy. Let's not
have a Privacy Policy!”
Facebook
strips ‘privacy’ from new ‘data use’ policy
March 23, 2012 by Dissent
Laurie Segall reports:
A Facebook privacy
policy revision intended to make the site’s methods more
transparent is instead kicking up a fresh firestorm.
Facebook posted a
draft version of its revised terms on March 15 and gave the site’s
users a one-week comment period to weigh in with questions and
suggestions. The changes include many semantic tweaks, like
stripping the word “privacy” out of Facebook’s “privacy
policy,” which is now called a “data use policy.”
Read more on CNN.
One provision that drew a lot of flak
is mentioned in the report:
Facebook’s
current policy says: “When you use an application, your content and
information is shared with the application.” Its proposed revision
amends that line to: “When you or others who can see your content
and information use an application, your content and information is
shared with the application.”
I had tweeted something the other day
about one app, Swaylo,
that had that kind of provision: in authorizing the
use of their app, you have to basically grant them permission to
access your friends’ profiles as well – even without
your friends’ consent or authorization to the app. Frankly, if any
“friend” of mine ever gave some third party permission to access
my information, they wouldn’t be my friend for long. More to the
point, such consent or authorization is not acceptable. Heck, I
don’t even see how it’s legal. What if people
who never authorized an app sued for unauthorized collection of their
data? Would the app’s defense in court be, “Well,
their friend said it was okay.”?
To the extent that Facebook’s wording
changes makes it clearer to people what is going on, that’s a good
thing, but it shouldn’t be going on and Facebook should prohibit
apps from doing this without direct opt-in consent or authorization.
Saying that users can avoid this by granular privacy control settings
is not sufficient as the default is still to allow such nonsense and
unintended disclosure to apps.
Need any more proof that a “voluntary”
code of conduct is not an adequate solution? There ya go.
(Related) We already read your email,
so what's the big deal? No doubt they developed the software with
the NSA and have it available in all but a few languages. “They
look for “bomb” we look for “bargain.”
Google
looks to patent tech that listens to calls to promote ads
Must be what makes Napoleonic law
different... Or perhaps a diet of frogs and snails poisons the mind?
Idiotic
Idea of the Day: Jailing Lurkers of Terror Websites
French President Nicholas Sarkozy means
well. In the wake of horrific
antisemitic murders reportedly pulled off by a Qaida-trained
killer, Sarkozy is proposing to lock up frequent visitors to
pro-terrorist websites. However understandable, the move would
cripple open source attempts at understanding terrorism trends
without stopping terrorists.
“Anyone
who regularly consults internet sites which promote terror or hatred
or violence will be sentenced to prison,” Sarkozy argued to a
political rally in France on Thursday. “What is possible for
pedophiles should be possible for trainee terrorists and their
supporters, too.”
(Related) In Pennsylvania the poison is
scrapple.
ACLU
of PA Sues Solanco School District Over Student Drug Testing Policies
The American Civil Liberties Union of
Pennsylvania and Dechert LLP filed a lawsuit in state court yesterday
on behalf of a Solanco School District (Lancaster County) sixth
grader and her parents to stop the school district from requiring
students who participate in extracurricular activities, including
athletics and academic competitions, to submit to suspicionless,
random drug testing.
The ACLU of Pennsylvania believes the
school’s policy violates a 2003 Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling
requiring schools to justify suspicionless drug testing programs with
evidence of a widespread drug problem among students. This is the
third lawsuit the ACLU of PA has filed in the past 13 months against
school districts with unconstitutional drug testing policies.
… The ACLU of Pennsylvania and
Dechert are representing sixth-grader M.M. and her parents, Mika and
Christopher McDougall, of Peach Bottom, Pa. Because M.M. and her
parents have refused to consent to the school’s drug testing
policy, M.M. was removed from orchestra and chorus at the beginning
of the 2011-2012 school year and is currently ineligible to join any
school athletic or academic teams.
A top math student in her class,
eleven-year-old M.M. was also recently asked to join her school’s
“MathCounts” academic competition team next year. But because
she and her parents will not consent to a policy they feel is
invasive and unconstitutional, she will be unable to participate.
… According to the complaint, the
Solanco School District has provided no evidence of a drug problem
among its students to justify its policy.
Studies have repeatedly shown that
random drug testing does not reduce student drug use. The largest
national student study conducted by the U.S. government’s own
program, Monitoring the Future, found in 2002 that random, mandatory
drug testing had no impact on students’ rates of drug use. This
study covered three years and included over 76,000 students
nationwide in eighth, tenth, and twelfth grades. These researchers
confirmed these findings again in 2003.
More information about the case,
including a copy of the complaint, is available at:
http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/mmvsolancoschooldistrict.htm
Combination Search Engine and
Pinterest, by people who have read “Stranger in a Strange Land”
instaGrok
is a very promising new search service that I learned about from
Joyce
Valenza during my time at Discovery's Beyond the Textbook forum.
At first glance instaGrok appears to be a new version of Google's old
Wonder Wheel service. But after investigation you'll see that
instaGrok is more than just web of suggested search terms.
You can use instaGrok to search a topic
and quickly get lists of facts on that topic, links to information on
that topic, videos, images, and quizzes on the topic. If you want to
refine or alter your search, just click on another term in the web of
search terms. If the results that you are getting are too difficult
to comprehend or are too basic, use the difficulty slider to change
the results.
When you find materials that are useful
for your research you can pin them or add them to your instaGrok
journal. You can add notes to those links in your journal as well.
Tools & Techniques
The award winning open source audio
recording and editing program, Audacity,
which runs on Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux and other
operating systems, was released last week with a 2.0 upgrade.
Audacity, developed by a group of
volunteers and distributed under General
Public License, allows you to record audio from your computer’s
microphone, CDs, USB turntables/tape decks, streaming
audio, and iTunes, as well as the ability to import and edit
existing audio files. Audio files can be saved in various formats
including MP3, podcast, ringtones, and iTunes.
Now I can reorganize my “Math videos”
into “Fraction videos” “Decimal videos” “Log videos”
You can add videos from multiple video
sites like YouTube and Vimeo into a single playlist and then embed
the playlist anywhere on the web.
The video sites currently supported are
YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, PhotoBucket and SlideShare. However,
the best part is that you can also use a Yokto Video Collector tool
to collect videos from all other video sites or even simple webpages
that have a video embedded. Just drag the icon to your favorites bar
and then whenever you see a video that you want to add, simply click
on the icon and choose the playlist you want to add it to.
“Quotes is good!” Bob
With several hundred websites devoted
to quotations, looking for a particular one isn’t too easy.
QuoteCoil helps by letting you search for hundreds of thousands of
quotes within seconds. Their instant search box lets you search by
quote, author or any keyword. The results appear even before you
press enter and change as you type.
Similar tools: QuoteSecret,
Quotables,
Daily
Motivator, NumberQuotes,
Subzin,
Quotegasm,
QuoteStumbler
and In
Quotes.
Back in Ye Olde Days, we only worried
about what language the book was written in...
EPUB’s are awesome because they are
the most open format for eBooks, but if you use a Kindle, then you
will need your books in MOBI format. Some other readers also don’t
support EPUB, so if you want to use your DRM-free eBooks on these
readers, having an easy way to convert them is crucial.
It is a free, easy to use program that
can even batch convert multiple files at once.
Also read related articles:
How
to Actually Make Money Selling eBooks
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