Yesterday
this was a “mere” 2.4 million. Perhaps they stayed up all night
for a “recount?”
Elections
Ontario data loss victims could top four million
August 1, 2012 by admin
Howard Solomon reports:
The number of
Canadians who could be victims of one of the country’s biggest
losses of personal data could hit four million, according to a
privacy official.
Ann Cavoukian,
privacy commissioner for the province of Ontario, said Tuesday that
is the number of records that might be compromised in the loss of two
USB memory sticks earlier this year by the provincial elections
agency.
The initial number
of voter names, addresses and dates of birth on the sticks was
thought to be 2.6 million. The exact number isn’t
known. [Because if we had more votes than voters, we didn't want to
know... Bob]
Read more on ITbusiness.ca
How do you tell a really dumb
algorithm, from a really really smart algorithm?
Huh,
Another Rogue Algorithm May Have Thrown Off Trading in 148 Stocks
Add another entry to the Encyclopedia
of Weird Robot Trading Events. This morning, a poorly programmed
algorithm unleashed by Knight Capital Group went haywire, disrupting
the normal trading of up to 148 stocks including some of the most
heavily traded names in the country, according
to the New York Times.
Interesting
that getting kicked off the “approved” list apparently isn't the
same as being unapproved.
Global
Payments Takes Charge of $84 Million for Data Breach
Global Payments Inc. (GPN)
said Thursday a security breach that exposed potentially millions of
consumers' payment cards to fraudsters will cost it $84.4 million.
… The amount reflects
expected charges from payment networks such as Visa Inc. (V) and
MasterCard Inc. (MA) and expenses related to its investigation and
remediation of the matter.
… The company
disclosed the breach in late March, saying it
believed no more than 1.5 million card numbers were "exported"
[Translation: stolen Bob] or taken from its processing network.
Last month, though, it said it supplied a larger number of card
numbers to the payment networks for monitoring.
… Visa and
MasterCard also booted Global Payments from lists they maintain of
approved third-party vendors that meet the card companies'
security standards. While this hasn't prevented
Global Payments from processing transactions made with Visa and
MasterCard cards, it can cause apprehension for merchants
when deciding which company to hire for processing services.
A
variation of the Streisand Effect illustrated. It may help explain
why “Banned in Boston” was such a great marketing tool (before
Boston became so liberal they fear it would be politically incorrect
to ban anything)
The
Power of Internet Censorship, in 1 Chart
Sometime late in the evening of July
28, Twitter suspended
the account of journalist and NBC naysayer Guy
Adams. Earlier today, with apologies from Twitter's lawyer to
Adams, the service reinstated
his account.
There are many lessons to be learned
from this brief affair. But here is one of them: The suspension of
Adams's account, ultimately, wasn't much of a suspension. It
amplified Adams's message rather than minimizing it. Here is a
Topsy chart of the discussion surrounding the account of
journalist and NBC naysayer Guy Adams as it played out over the past
week.
This
should be generally accepted by now, but apparently it is “news”
to some. The process is called “traffic analysis” and it goes
back far before the invention of the Internet. (See: Army MOS 98C)
Your
Web browsing history is totally unique, like fingerprints
… in a new study from the French
public research institute Inria, (PDF)
researchers themselves did the browser sniffing and discovered that
most users have a completely distinctive history when it comes to Web
sites they regularly visit. Their results show that users' browser
history is akin to their fingerprints -- totally unique.
Titled "Why Johnny can't browse
the Internet in Peace: On the uniqueness of Web browsing history
patterns," the study's researchers examined the Web browsing
history of 368,284 Internet users who visited a site that tracks
their Web history and then looked at their search patterns and
frequency.
“Cause
were the TSA and you are merely a court. And we like irradiating
second class citizens. ”
Court
Orders TSA to Explain Why It is Defying ‘Nude’ Body Scanner Order
August 1, 2012 by Dissent
David Kravets reports:
A federal appeals
court Wednesday ordered the Transportation Security Administration to
explain why it hasn’t complied with the court’s year-old decision
demanding the agency hold public hearings concerning the rules and
regulations pertaining to the so-called nude body scanners installed
in U.S. airport security checkpoints.
The U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s brief order
came in response to the third request by the Electronic Information
Privacy Center for the court to enforce its order.
Read more on Threat
Level.
“We are not 'forgiving' people.”
Whistleblower,
Suspected of Leaking Warrantless Spying Program, Sues NSA
A former congressional staffer and NSA
whistleblower who the authorities suspected of exposing the George W.
Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program is suing the
government, saying her constitutional rights are being violated
because her computer seized five years ago has never been returned,
and the feds have refused to clear her name.
In a Wednesday telephone interview,
Diane Roark, 63, a former senior staffer at the House Intelligence
Committee, said she was privy to the warrantless wiretapping the
administration adopted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror
attacks.
“I found about it. I knew about it.
They knew I knew about it. I told everybody they needed to put civil
liberties protections on it or eliminate it,” she said from her
home outside Salem, Oregon.
But she emphatically denied she
divulged it to the press. “I have absolutely no idea who did
that,” said Roark, who retired in 2002. “My reputation has been
completely smeared.”
I
always liked building model airplanes. Anyone want to start a drone
rental business? It's pretty clear there will be a huge market.
Markey
Releases Discussion Draft of Drone Privacy and Transparency
Legislation
August 1, 2012 by Dissent
With the Secretary
of Transportation scheduled to develop a comprehensive plan for
non-government drones as soon as November 2012, Congressman Edward J.
Markey (D-Mass.) today released a discussion draft of legislation
that would ensure that privacy considerations are included in the
rulemaking process for licenses for “unmanned aircraft systems”,
commonly known as drones, and that the public is made aware of drone
licenses and times and locations of commercial drone flights.
Entitled the “Drone Aircraft Privacy and Transparency Act of 2012”,
the draft bill amends the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
Modernization and Reform Act to include provisions on FAA rulemaking,
data collection and minimization, enforcement, and disclosure.
The FAA estimates
that by 2020, there could be 30,00 drones in use over American skies.
Many drones are designed to carry surveillance
equipment, [Strange wording. Are other designed for weapons only?
Bob] including video cameras, infrared thermal imagers,
radar, and wireless network sniffers, with the capability of
collecting sensitive information from the skies above. The FAA has
already begun issuing limited drone certifications for government
entities.
“When it comes
to privacy protections for the American people, drones are flying
blind,” said Rep. Markey, senior member of the Energy and Commerce
Committee and co-Chair of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy
Caucus. “Drones are already flying in U.S. airspace – with
thousands more to come – but with no privacy protections or
transparency measures in place. We are entering a brave new world,
and just because a company soon will be able to register a drone
license shouldn’t mean that company can turn it into a cash
register by selling consumer information. Currently, there are no
privacy protections or guidelines and no way for the public to know
who is flying drones, where, and why. The time to implement privacy
protections is now. This discussion draft will help ensure that
pilotless aircraft isn’t privacy-less aircraft and the strongest
safeguards are put into place for Americans.”
A copy of the
discussion draft can be found HERE.
Specifically, Rep.
Markey’s legislation amends the FAA Modernization and Reform Act,
adding the following provisions:
- The Secretary of Transportation must conduct a study of privacy impacts of drone use in consultation with the Department of Commerce, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Homeland Security Privacy Office. A report must be issued to Congress.
- The FAA must include privacy considerations in its overall rulemaking process for drone licenses, using as the Federal Trade Commission report titled ‘Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change: Recommendations for Businesses and Policymakers’ as the standard.
- The FAA may not issue licenses unless the application includes a data collection statement that explains exactly what kind of data will be collected, how that data will be used, and how the licensee will protect privacy.
- Law enforcement agencies and their contractors and subcontractors must include an additional data minimization statement that explains how they will minimize the collection and retention of data unrelated to the investigation of a crime.
- The FAA must create a publicly available website that lists all approved licenses and includes the data collection and data minimization statements, any data security breaches suffered by a licensee, and the times and locations of drone flights.
[ ]
In April, Reps.
Markey and Joe Barton (R-Texas) sent a letter
querying about the potential privacy implications of non-military
drone use. The lawmakers are awaiting response from the agency.
Source: Rep.
Ed Markey
Is
it the word “consent?” Wouldn't that data be available to the
court without consent?
EFF
Asks Supreme Court to Reverse “Forced Consent” to Facebook
Disclosure
August 1, 2012 by Dissent
Cindy Cohn and Jon Eisenberg write:
When a judge
forces you to “consent” to a disclosure of your private
electronic communications, have you really consented? No.
EFF today asked
the California Supreme Court to review a decision of a lower court
that forced a juror to “consent” to allow the content of his
Facebook postings to be turned over to the parties to the case, after
it was discovered that he had been improperly posting about the case
on his Facebook wall during a trial. The case is called Juror
Number One v. Superior Court
Read more and the amicus letter on EFF.
A reminder for my gifted geeks – this
Kickstarter thing might be useful.
Virtual reality headsets have
historically been very disappointing. While the concept has been fun
and interesting, the technological realities never quite lived up to
expectations, and hardware developers largely gave up on research
into this kind of device. However, it's been long enough that
display technology has caught up to our ambitions. So, where are our
VR headsets? Well, hobbyist Palmer Luckey asked that same question,
and when he couldn't find a good answer, he decided to build one
himself. He and his team have built a prototype, and they just
launched a Kickstarter
campaign to distribute developer kits. The
campaign blew
past its $250,000 goal in hours. [As I post this, they are over
$800,000 Bob] What's interesting about this particular
campaign is that Palmer took the Oculus Rift to various development
studios and managed to get enthusiastic endorsements from some big
names, including Cliff Bleszinski, Gabe Newell, and John Carmack.
I wonder if our Graphic Design students
would be interested?
NASA
Wants Your Infographics
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has
a lot of information, acquired from telescopes, satellites, rovers,
spacecraft, and pretty much anything you can point at space. They
have so much, it’s almost unmanageable. So the lab collaborated
with CalTech to start JPL Infographics, a crowd-sourced
data-visualization
challenge. They’ll supply the info, you create the graphic.
It's
coming, ready or not.
Microsoft is finally looking to put
Hotmail to rest with the introduction of their new email service
called Outlook.com.
'cause
Free is good!
Google
Docs (AKA Google Drive)
The
future of education?
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