Small but interesting. Being
vulnerable to undocumented threats is one thing. Randomly
distributing personal information is another (and takes some
non-trivial programming, so I doubt that's what actually happened)
By Dissent,
July 19, 2012
Leslie Bridgers reports:
A glitch in the
Department of Health and Human Services’ computer
system exposed the personal information of public assistance
applicants, including Social Security and bank
account numbers.
Information from
31 applications submitted online was sent out between December and
June to 39 random addresses in the
department’s system, said Dale Denno, director of the department’s
Office for Family Independence, which reviews public assistance
applications.
He said the
information came from 24 new applications for public assistance and
seven recertification forms, which recipients are required to submit
annually to continue getting benefits.
The personal
information of 79 people was exposed, as some applications included
multiple members of a household, Denno said. In some cases, he said,
the same information was sent to multiple addresses.
Read more on The
Morning Sentinel.
Consequences? What a concept!
NZ:
Winz staff fired over privacy breaches
July 19, 2012 by admin
Jared Savage reports:
Ten Work
and Income staff members have been sacked after two
inquiries into breaches of privacy for beneficiaries.
The national
review of the Ministry of Social Development was
launched last December after an investigation into staff at the
Manukau branch office.
Seven were
dismissed for “appalling” breaches of the code of conduct which
included improper use of private files belonging to family and
friends, as well as inappropriate email use. An allegation that a
staff member sold personal details of a client to a debt collection
agency was not proven.
Read more on The
New Zealand Herald.
Oh! I want one!
California
Starts Up a Privacy Enforcement Unit
California Attorney General Kamala
Harris announced Thursday she’s created a unit intended to actually
enforce federal and state privacy laws.
“The Privacy Unit will police the
privacy practices of individuals and organizations to hold
accountable those who misuse technology to invade the privacy of
others,” California’s top attorney said
in a statement.
So maybe your DNA is like your
fingerprints. The argument should be about why you were a suspect,
right?
Chief
Justice allows DNA samples from Maryland suspects
July 20, 2012 by Dissent
Sung Un Kim reports:
US Supreme Court
Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday temporarily
stayed a Maryland Court of Appeals ruling that police could not
collect DNA from individuals arrested for violent crimes and
burglaries. The appeals court struck
down the DNA collection law
in April, finding a violation of the arrestee’s Fourth Amendment
right to privacy. Roberts’ one-sentence decision will remain in
effect at least until July 25 when a response is due from the
defendant, Alonzo Jay King. The court may agree to hear the case
when it reconvenes in October.
Read more on JURIST.
Another “reality check” for those
not concerned with “all that Privacy stuff.”
"People are not going to, nor
should they have to, start walking around outside with a bag over
their head to avoid
security cameras capturing images of them. Yet 'face recognition
allows for covert, remote and mass capture and identification of
images — and the photos that may end up in a database include not
just a person's face but also how she is dressed and possibly whom
she is with. This creates threats to free association and free
expression not evident in other biometrics,' testified EFF Staff
Attorney Jennifer Lynch. There are 32 states that use some form of
facial recognition for DMV photos. Every day, Facebook happily
slurps up and automatically scans with facial recognition software
about 300 million photos that users upload to the social networking
giant. 'Face recognition is here to stay, and, though many Americans
may not realize it, they are already in a face recognition database,'
Lynch said. In fact, when you stop to
consider Facebook "at least 54% of the United States population
already has a face print." Now it purchased Face.com which had
31 billion face images profiled."
Fight the good fight?
"Twitter plans to
appeal a ruling to turn over the once-public tweets of an Occupy Wall
Street protester charged with disorderly conduct, a case the
company says threatens the First Amendment rights of its users. A
New York Criminal Court judge ruled last month that Twitter should
turn over the tweets of Malcolm Harris, since his messages were
public and are not the same as an email or a private chat, which
would require a search warrant."
“We have determined that you do not
need to call 911 at this time.”
Device
Jams Drivers’ Phone Signals, Alerts Police, Public and Passengers
There’s no shortage of devices that
supposedly prevent
drivers from talking or texting by blocking mobile phone signals
or that alert
parents and employers about the behavior. But the Cellphone
Accident Preventer (CAP) from a trio of researchers at an Indian
university takes preventing behind-the-wheel mobile phone use to a
new Orwellian level by making distracted-driving indiscretions public
– and automatically ratting them out to the police.
Abdul Shabeer and two of his colleagues
at India’s Anna University of Technology primarily developed CAP to
combat the 20 percent of fatal road accidents
involving trucks and other heavy vehicles caused by driver mobile
phone use. [Interesting statistic Was there a massive increase in
accidents when cellphones were introduced? Bob] Like
other systems, CAP jams phone signals, using a small antenna above
the driver seat, which the researchers claim only disables the
driver’s phone, while passengers are free to call, text, tweet and
Facebook at will.
But by using RFID
technology, CAP can also alert the police, the general public or
other passengers in the car if a driver is trying to discreetly check
his phone when his hands should be on the wheel. If CAP detects that
driver is using a cellphone, “The vehicle license plate
information, which is already stored in the system, will be
transmitted to a receiver placed on the traffic signal post, which in
turn displays the license number in an LCD display so that police can
take legislative action against the driver,” Shabeer told Wired.
“At the same time, a warning message or sound will be given to
passengers sitting inside the vehicle indicating that the driver is
using a cellphone.”
Is this technology for those who text
but can't read? (Is this their “save the company” idea?)
RIM
Wants Your Friends to Know When You’re Rage Texting
… A just-surfaced patent
application from Research in Motion (RIM) details a smartphone
feature that determines
a sender’s emotional state while texting. The smartphone would
be able to determine the sender’s state of mind using internal
sensors, and the tapped-out text would be presented differently to
indicate a particularly emotional moment.
Fly Nude! (I proposed that back at the
inception of TSA) I'll need to check with my lawyer friends, but
there seems to be no clear ruling that allows me to stand around a
TSA checkpoint and laugh...
Judge
OKs Nudity at TSA Checkpoint
An Oregon man was cleared of indecent
exposure charges Wednesday when a local judge said his protest of
Transportation Security Administration screening procedures was
constitutionally protected speech under state law.
OH MY GAWD! It's the end of the world!
Or at least the end of the PC Era.
Microsoft’s
First-Ever Loss Doesn’t Faze Wall Street
(Related) Maybe it is time for PC Era
investors to panic.
AMD
has scary things to say about the PC market
… "For the first time since
2001, client PC shipments have declined sequentially for three
consecutive quarters-and have been below historical averages for the
last seven quarters," AMD CEO Rory Read said during the chip
supplier's second quarter earnings conference call.
A new form of business for the
Education Age?
Singularity
University Converging Into Capitalist Machine
Singularity University was established
in 2008 to “prepare humanity for accelerating technological
change.” At the time, this seemed like a charitable mission, but
today university overseers see room to make money too. The
University’s leaders are drawing up plans to convert the non-profit
university into a for-profit corporation under a new category of
socially responsible business. Some believe it will happen by the
end of the year.
The corporation has already been
formed, according to state records, under the name Singularity
Education Group. Key trustees say what remains is a delicate legal
process to transfer the university’s assets from a 501(c)3
non-profit into a brand new type of California
entity, the benefit corporation, a socially-conscious
business framework only available since the start of this year. The
benefit corporation framework was designed to allow corporate
executives more freedom to pursue objectives beyond maximizing
investor returns.
… The argument in favor of a
for-profit conversion, according to Simpson and other trustees, is to
make it easier for Singularity University to share some of the money
some students and faculty trace back to projects they create for
classes, as well as to reward longtime faculty and
staff with equity or options in the university and its spinoffs. [I
like it! Bob]
Global Warming! Global Warming! These
are facts (interesting facts) but they really prove nothing going
forward.
Does
New Tree Ring Study Put the Chill on Global Warming?
… The tree rings "prove [the]
climate was WARMER in Roman and Medieval times than it is now,"
the British newspaper the Daily Mail reported last week, "and
[the] world has been cooling for 2,000 years."
For my Students
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Readcube
is a desktop tool (available for Mac and Windows) that aims to help
students and teachers search and organize their research
more effectively. I wrote this
review of Readcube last month. This week Readcube launched
Readcube
Boot Camp to help users use Readcube better. Right now the Boot
Camp has four video tutorials offering tips for
searching, annotating, and organizing.
For my earphone wearing students...
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Sound
Gecko is a free service that turns text articles into MP3 files.
Using Sound Gecko you can take an article from a
website, paste its URL into Sound Gecko, and then listen to a reading
of that article. The conversion isn't instantaneous, but
it is relatively quick. You do have to enter an email address in
order to get the MP3 file. To remove the copy and paste part of the
process you can install the Sound
Gecko Chrome extension.
Sound
Gecko does offer an iPhone app that you can use to organize and
listen to playlists of the articles you've converted into MP3
recordings.
No comments:
Post a Comment