Intel is intel, no matter the source...
Taliban
said to use Facebook to gather info on soldiers
… According to Australia's
Department of Defense's new report on social media (PDF),
"the Taliban have used pictures of attractive women as the front
of their Facebook profiles and have befriended soldiers" as a
way to gather information.
These fake profiles are a cause for
concern, notes the report. The goal of the report is to be a
training guide and review for Australia's military in teaching its
soldiers how and when to use social media.
Can a neighborhood restrict parking on
public, city maintained streets? Can I declare you a second class
citizen because you don't live in my neighborhood?
TX:
Officials: Parking plan a ‘shot in the dark’
September 11, 2012 by Dissent
From the same state that is chipping
kids while complaining about smart meters, there is a new parking
plan that raises serious privacy concerns. Whitney
Hodgin reports on the Galveston plan. Here’s the part of her
report that raised @Privacyactivism’s
eyebrows and mine:
Seawall businesses
that choose to participate can choose to include a kiosk that allows
visitors to complete the same process, as well as pay cash, or store
employees can enter the customers’ information online themselves.
Parking will cost
$1 per hour for up to 8 hours. Unlike downtown public parking, there
will be no kiosks involved — just a phone and a credit card —
because visitors will register their license plate
numbers and pay for parking exclusively on a website.
“That’s
the only option you have — to enter your license
number,” Maxwell said.
Four Galveston
police cruisers will be outfitted with Automatic License Plate
Recognition equipment similar to the technology used to identify
license plates on interstate highways, and can read plates even if
the vehicles are parked end-to-end, Maxwell said.
In addition to
determining the parking status of each vehicle on the Seawall, police
will also use the Automatic License Plate Recognition technology to
see if there is an outstanding warrant on a vehicle, if the vehicle
is stolen or an Amber Alert connected to the owner, he said.
Police
will use the same approach to ensure that seawall visitors don’t
beat the system by parking for free in adjacent neighborhoods,
Maxwell said.
“What makes this
system really great for neighborhood enforcement is that residents
will register their license plates and the plates of their guests,”
so police can identify and fine vehicles that do not belong, he said.
Wow. Talk about Big Brother. So even
if you’re not using the parking but just live in the neighborhood,
the police will have your license plate number and your guests’
license plate numbers? For how long will they retain these data?
Can they be used as evidence in criminal prosecutions? What if a
resident doesn’t want to provide their guests’ info? Will the
guests then be ticketed even if they’re there legitimately?
And entering credit cards on a web
site? What could possibly go wrong there?
*Sigh.*
Win friends and influence people! No
attempt to encrypt or otherwise protect the user?
Activision
Blizzard Secretly Watermarking World of Warcraft Users
September 11, 2012 by Dissent
This is not a security breach per
se but I’m treating it as a privacy breach because WoW is
revealing users’ IDs and server IP addresses without their
knowledge or consent. On Slashdot, kgkoutzis
writes:
“A few days
ago I noticed some weird artifacts covering the screenshots I
captured using the WoW game client application. I sharpened the
images and found a repeating pattern secretly embedded inside. I
posted this information on the OwnedCore forum and after an amazing
three-day cooperation marathon, we managed to prove that all
our WoW screenshots, since at least 2008, contain
a custom watermark. This watermark includes
our user IDs, the time the screenshot was captured and the IP address
of the server we were on at the time. It can be used to track down
activities which are against Blizzard’s Terms of Service, like
hacking the game or running a private server. The users were never
notified by the ToS that this watermarking was going on so, for four
years now, we have all been publicly sharing our account and realm
information for hackers to decode and exploit. You can find more
information on how to access the watermark in the aforementioned
forum post which is still quite active.”
Read more on Slashdot.
Ah, the mighty enforcer of goodness
strikes again. “Let this be a warning. If you violate user
privacy we might insist that you promise not to do it again! You
have been warned!”
FTC
Finalizes Privacy Settlement with Myspace
September 11, 2012 by Dissent
From the FTC:
Following a public
comment period, the Federal Trade Commission has approved a final
order settling FTC charges
that Myspace misrepresented its protection of users’ personal
information. The settlement
bars Myspace from future misrepresentations about its privacy
practices, requires the company to implement a comprehensive
privacy program, and calls for regular, independent privacy
assessments for the next 20 years.
The Commission
vote approving the final order and letter to the public commenters
was 4-0-1, with Commissioner Maureen K. Ohlhausen not participating.
The FTC’s responses to commenters can
be found here.
Not much detail with the listed sites,
but lots and lots of sites!
September 11, 2012
New
on LLRX - Privacy Resources and Sites on the Internet
Via LLRX.com,
Privacy
Resources and Sites on the Internet - Marcus
P. Zillman's guide is a comprehensive listing of both free
and low cost privacy resources currently available on the
Internet. It includes associations, indexes and search engines, as
well as websites and programs that provide the latest technology and
information on Web privacy. This guide will help facilitate a safer
interactive environment for your email, your internet browsing, your
health records, your data storage and file sharing exchanges, and
internet telephony.
Perspective
"China's largest e-commerce
firm, Alibaba Group, expects to sell merchandise this year worth more
than that sold by Amazon Inc and eBay combined. The company is
aiming for 3 trillion yuan ($473 billion) in annual transaction value
from its Taobao e-commerce units in the next 5 to 7 years, rising
from the 1 trillion yuan of sales expected for 2012. 'From their
annual reports we did a rough calculation and we were similar last
year but we are growing faster than them this year, so this year we
are probably larger than them,' Zeng Ming, Chief Strategy Officer of
Alibaba, said of Amazon and eBay."
For my students...
September 11, 2012
New
on LLRX - Tutorial Resources on the Internet
Via LLRX.com
- Tutorial
Resources on the Internet - Marcus
P. Zillman's guide is a wide ranging and immediately useful
listing of tutorial resources and sites on the Internet. This guide
will assist you to discover, review and select the most relevant and
reliable sources for your requirements, on topics that include:
e-training, health sciences and biomedical research, educational
opportunities for unemployed workers, effective web searching,
statistical data mining, free college and university courses,
programming in various open source applications, and technical
support, user guides and repair services too!
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