What could possibly go
wrong? (Ethical Hackers, consider that the topic for this week's
short paper...)
Data
protector ‘cannot check police spyware’
September 12, 2012
by Dissent
Germany’s
top data protection official has complained he cannot
test how a spy computer program used by the police works –
because the firm that made it will not help him examine it and the
police do not have the source code.
Read more on The
Local (Germany).
So if the DPC cannot
evaluate the software to determine whether it violates constitutional
protections because DigiTask will not provide the source code without
fees and conditions that the DPC finds unacceptable, what should
Germany do? Will they continue to permit its use by police or will
they halt its use?
Evidence suggest you can
organize, equip and deliver a terrorist group without the drones
noticing. So what are they looking for?
U.S.
Drones Never Left Libya; Will Hunt Benghazi Thugs
The skies over Libya were
clogged with U.S. Predator drones during last year’s war. But just
because the war officially ended in October didn’t mean the drones
went home.
A Defense Department
official tells Danger Room that the U.S. has kept drone flights
flying over Libya, despite the conflict that initially brought them
to Libyan airspace ending
nearly a year ago.
“Yes, we have been
flying CAPs since the war ended,” says Army Lt. Col. Steve Warren,
a Pentagon spokesman. (CAPs is a military acronym for “combat air
patrols,” a term of art that typically refers to several planes
flying at once for a particular mission.) The drone
flights, done for surveillance purposes, occur with the consent of
the new Libyan government. [So we probably share the “take.” I
wonder what other countries have an arrangement like this? Bob]
Using social media for
anti-social purposes? Perhaps not the smartest faces in the book.
Facebook
becomes gang's stomping ground -- and demise
… The commissioner
said that the rival gangs would "friend" each other and
then post threats on each other's walls. One of the key Facebook
posts that helped bring down the gangs was when a member of the
Rockstarz posted "Rockstarz are up 3-0," referencing the
body count of gang members, according to the Village Voice.
In another incident,
after one VCG member was beaten to death, a Rockstarz member posted a
photo of himself wearing the victim's belt and watch with the
caption, "I can't give it back to you -- you can't walk no
more," according to WNYC.
This boastful gang member was shot in both legs just five months
later.
"Because of these
individuals' insatiable desire to brag about their murderous acts
these investigators were able to draw a virtual map of their
activities," Kelly said, according to WNYC.
Biosurveillance is not
just an FBI thing...
DHS
Should Reevaluate Mission Need and Alternatives before Proceeding
with BioWatch Generation-3 Acquisition
GAO-12-810, Sep 10, 2012
Interesting questions if
you have never considered the pros and cons before...
Domestic
surveillance during divorce results in federal lawsuits concerning
privacy
September 12, 2012
by Dissent
Dan Horn reports on a case
of domestic surveillance that is noteworthy for the issues it raises.
If you have a right to install surveillance systems – including
audio recording and monitoring online activity – in your own home
and on your own devices, what rights do your spouse
and visitors to your home have with respect to their privacy?
Although a Cincinnati
couple’s divorce is finalized, the surveillance uncovered during
their divorce proceedings resulted in two federal court lawsuits
involving friends and relatives, the husband’s defense attorney,
and a company that manufactures the computer monitoring software.
One of those suing is a Javier Luis, a Tampa man whose e-mail
communications with the wife were recorded without his knowledge or
consent.
Catherine
Zang’s suit lists several friends and relatives who claim their
privacy was violated while they were in the home. Luis’
suit claims Awareness Technologies, which makes the software that
copied the emails, knew its product could be used to violate privacy.
Both
suits say Joe Zang violated not only the law but the unspoken moral
and ethical rules husbands and wives should follow even when they
don’t entirely trust one another.
No criminal charges were
filed as a result of the revelations during the divorce proceedings,
but one of the issues in the civil lawsuits is
whether the husband’s divorce attorney engaged in improper, if not
illegal, conduct:
According
to her lawsuit, Joe Zang’s divorce lawyer, Mary Jill Donovan,
revealed she had obtained evidence that portrayed Catherine Zang in
“unflattering, embarrassing and private settings.”
The
objective was clear, the lawsuit says. Donovan hoped to use the
surveillance to strong-arm Catherine Zang into a favorable
settlement.
Donovan,
who is a defendant in both lawsuits, is a well-known Cincinnati
defense lawyer and wife of a Hamilton County sheriff candidate. Both
she and her lawyer declined comment.
In her response to the
lawsuit by Luis, Donovan either denies all allegations or claims she
has insufficient knowledge to respond. In some cases, she asserts
that to respond would be a violation of attorney-client privilege,
but she also claims that even if some of these things happened, they
were legal under federal and Ohio laws.
To complicate what is
already a complex case to begin with, Catherine Zang’s lawyer,
Donald Roberts, was removed as her counsel in the lawsuits because he
might be a witness if the case goes to trial. Donald Roberts is
married to Catherine Zang’s sister and represented Zang in the
divorce. But Joe Zang claims that Roberts advised him in 2009 to
install the surveillance system to keep an eye on his wife.
“Joe
took Donald’s advice,” Joe Zang’s lawyer wrote in a recent
legal brief. “The software worked as intended. It captured
inappropriate Internet and email communications by Catherine Zang.”
Roberts,
who did not return calls, has said in court he gave no such advice.
The crux of the legal
issue is that both federal and Ohio wiretapping laws are based on
single-party consent. Joe Zang didn’t need his wife’s or guests’
or anyone’s permission to record conversations in his own home
using concealed audio recording. But did he need consent to
intercept or copy e-mail communications?
And does constant
surveillance raise this to a new level and different set of rules?
Does your right to install monitoring devices in your own home or on
your own equipment trump your spouse’s expectation of privacy in
their own home and on a shared computer? And what about the privacy
of those who communicate with the spouse via shared computer or
phones?
Read more on USA
Today.
These are two cases
I’ll be watching. One is Zang v.
Zang, in U.S. District Court Southern
District of Ohio, Case #: 1:11-cv-00884-SJD. The related case is
Luis v. Zang: 1:12-cv-00629-SJD-KLL.
“$1,000,000,000 – it's
the new normal.” Apple sets the bar or we really don't like these
guys.
Feds
demand $1B from LCD maker for price-fixing
The U.S. Department of
Justice has reined down hard on a Taiwanese LCD screen maker in
court, demanding $1 billion in fines and significant jail time for
two former executives.
Since I only join
anti-social networks, I should be immune...
"Brace
yourself for a tidal wave of Facebook campaigning before November's
U.S. presidential election. A study of 61 million Facebook users
finds that using online social networks to urge people to vote has a
much stronger effect on their voting behavior than spamming them
with information via television ads or phone calls."
If we don't tell you what
we're doing, you can't criticize...
September 12, 2012
OpenTheGovernment.org
- Secrecy 2012 Report
News
release: "The 2012
Secrecy Report released today by OpenTheGovernment.org
— a coalition of more than 80 groups advocating for open and
accountable government — reveals that positive changes from the
Obama administration’s open government policies nevertheless appear
diminished in the shadow of the President’s bold promise of
unprecedented transparency. Ultimately, though, the public needs
more information to judge the size, shape, and legitimacy of the
government’s secrecy... Efforts
to open the government continue to be frustrated by a governmental
predisposition towards secrecy,
especially in the national security bureaucracy. Among the troubling
trends: the National Declassification Center will not meet its goal
for declassifying old records on time; the government continues to
use the state secrets privilege in the same way it did prior to
release of a new procedural policy; and the volume of documents
marked “Classified” continues to grow, with little assurance or
reason offered for the decision that the information properly needs
such protection. The report also indicates some
of the Administration’s openness policies are having a positive
effect. The federal government
received and processed significantly more public requests for
information than in previous years. The Office of Special Counsel is
also on track to deliver an all-time high number of favorable actions
for federal employees who have been victims of reprisal, or other
prohibited personnel practices, for blowing the whistle on waste,
fraud, abuse, or illegality. Even in the national security field,
there is some progress: most notably, the total amount of money
requested for intelligence for the coming year was formally
disclosed. This is a tremendous success because such disclosure was
resisted by government officials for so long. Additionally,
the number of people with the authority to create new secrets
continued to drop." [Huh? Bob]
(Soon to be Dr.) Peralez
suggests this one. Lots of useful information and free code!
Database
Answers
We
Answer Database Questions.
We
have developed a
Libary of free Kick-Start Database designs. These take the form
of Data Models
For
my literate friends...
OpenCulture,
an online website committed to curating free media, has recently
compiled a collection of 375
free eBooks — in formats that can be read on Apple’s iBooks
and Kindle apps for the iPad/iPhone, the Kindle and Nook readers, and
on your PC. Open Culture
also collects audio books, free online courses, free movies, and free
language lessons.
… The book list
also contains an embedded YouTube
video on how to load these ebooks on to the Amazon Kindle.
(Related)
Worth
a look. It might be a place for my handouts...
Clipboard
Is Digital Scrapbooking for Your Life
Between Pinterest,
Evernote, Dropbox, and Basecamp you might think that all our
social-bookmarking, note-saving, and collaboration prayers have been
answered. Clipboard,
a 5-month-old bookmarking tool, is making the argument that they
haven’t. The company, founded by Microsoft veteran Gary Flake, is
fusing some of the most useful things about Evernote, Pinterest, and
Basecamp with additional features of its own, in an attempt to create
the only collaborative
content-saving tool you’ll ever need.
…
Boards can have four types of members: an owner,
administrators, writers, and readers. Owners and administrators have
control over who can contribute to a board, writers can add content,
and readers can simply view the clips. Owners and admins can also
tweak the privacy of a board, hiding it from anyone who isn’t a
member, or making it visible to any Clipboard user.
For
my students
… Power Searching is a
free program from Google designed to teach users how to use its
advanced features to become better at finding things on the Internet.
This is especially useful for people who need to search for things
for school projects and the like. In these situations, not just any
results will do, and advanced tactics are required.
Power
Searching starts on September 24th. Interested
users can sign
up for the free classes right now.
It is a community-based course that features six 50-minute classes
and plenty of interactive activities designed to improve overall
Google searching prowess. The classes are available over a two-week
period and upon completion, all students will receive a certificate.
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