Thursday, March 21, 2013

Unfortunately, I fear we may need this sooner rather than later...
March 20, 2013
Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare
"The Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare, written at the invitation of the Centre by an independent ‘International Group of Experts’, is the result of a three-year effort to examine how extant international law norms apply to this ‘new’ form of warfare. The Tallinn Manual pays particular attention to the jus ad bellum, the international law governing the resort to force by States as an instrument of their national policy, and the jus in bello, the international law regulating the conduct of armed conflict (also labelled the law of war, the law of armed conflict, or international humanitarian law). Related bodies of international law, such as the law of State responsibility and the law of the sea, are dealt within the context of these topics. The Tallinn Manual is not an official document, but instead an expression of opinions of a group of independent experts acting solely in their personal capacity. It does not represent the views of the Centre, our Sponsoring Nations, or NATO. It is also not meant to reflect NATO doctrine. Nor does it reflect the position of any organization or State represented by observers."
… The Tallinn Manual is available in both paper and electronic copies from Cambridge University Press (© Cambridge University Press 2013). We have also made the book available for reading and research below.

(Related) ...and apparently, I'm not alone. What would the attacker be thinking?
Tone Down the Cyberwarfare Rhetoric, Expert Urges Congress
As the nation spent this week pondering the wisdom of its decision to invade Iraq a decade ago, a witness urged Congress on Wednesday to consider more carefully how the United States will respond to a cyber 9/11 should one occur and to weigh carefully the use of strong statements that could force the nation to respond forcefully to a cyberattack, whether doing so is wise or not.
Referring to last week’s announcement by the U.S. director of national intelligence that cyberattacks were the biggest threat the nation faced, Martin Libicki, senior management scientist at the RAND Corporation, told the House Homeland Security Committee that making strong statements about cyberattacks “tends to compel the United States to respond vigorously should any such cyberattack occur, or even merely when the possible precursors to a potential cyberattack have been identified. Having created a demand among the public to do something, the government is then committed to doing something even when doing little or nothing is called for.”
Put in perspective, cyber attacks might disrupt life, but they cannot be used to occupy another nation’s capital or force regime change. [Oh? Bob] No one has yet died from a cyberattack either, he noted. Therefore, a cyberattack in and of itself, “does not demand an immediate response to safeguard national security,” Libicki said during a hearing on cyberthreats against critical infrastructure from China, Russia and Iran.
… By wailing about the damages of an attack in order to drum up outrage, we’re inviting more attacks, Libicki suggested. [Didn't you just argue that was better than bombs? Bob]


Inevitable...
Today, the ACLU of Northern California filed suit against the City and County of San Francisco and San Francisco Police Chief Gregory Suhr on behalf of a civil rights activist, Bob Offer-Westort, whose cell phone was searched by the San Francisco Police Department without a warrant after he was arrested while engaging in peaceful civil disobedience.
The suit charges that warrantless cell phone searches at the time of arrest violate the constitutional rights not only of arrestees but also of their family, friends, co-workers, and anyone whose information is in their phones. This practice violates the right to privacy, and the right to speak freely without police listening in to what we say and who we talk to.
“Our mobile devices hold our emails, text messages, social media accounts, and information about our health, finances, and intimate matters of our lives. That’s sensitive information that police shouldn’t be able to get without a warrant,” said Linda Lye, staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. “The Constitution gives us the right to speak freely and know that police won’t have access to private communications in our cell phones unless there is a good reason.”
… This is the first civil suit in California to challenge warrantless cell phone searches at arrest. In 2011, the California Supreme Court ruled in People v. Diaz that the police can search the cell phone of arrestees without violating the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This suit brings a challenge under the California Constitution’s stronger guarantees of privacy and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, as well as a challenge under the U.S. and California Constitutions’ guarantees of freedom of speech and association.
The lawsuit, Offer-Westort, et al. v. City and County of San Francisco, et al., was filed in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. The law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP is providing pro bono assistance in the suit.
Source: ACLU


Interesting concept. The government will likely adopt it.
What would you say if your employer told you it needed your height, weight, body fat percent and other personal information for health insurance purposes?
That’s what CVS is beginning to do. The company is telling workers who use its health insurance to have a wellness review done or pay up.
CVS says the information will go to a third party administrator of CVS’s benefits, not CVS itself.
The idea is to incentivize healthy living. CVS says the idea is nothing new.
Read more on My Fox Tampa Bay.


Paper versions of government documents brand you as a throwback luddite. Get with the 21st century!
March 20, 2013
Annual Report of the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO)
GPO 2012 Annual Report: "The Government Printing Office (GPO) is transforming itself from a traditional ink- on-paper operation to a digital information platform. While producing the official printed products of the Government remains an important part of our business, we are using technology to move away from a print-centric business model and toward a content-centric focus, which today serves as the foundation for an increasing variety of digital and secure products and services. GPO’s federal Digital System (), our one-stop, no-fee Web site providing public access to the official information products of all three branches of the Government, continues to grow. Today we have more than 800,000 individual titles accessible via FDsys, and we are seeing more than 37 million documents retrieved each month. By the end of the year FDsys surpassed its 400 millionth document retrieval.


Interesting. The CIA couldn't steal the technology?
March 20, 2013
Federal Computer Week: Amazon and CIA ink cloud deal
"In a move sure to send ripples through the federal IT community, FCW has learned that the CIA has agreed to a cloud computing contract with electronic commerce giant Amazon, worth up to $600 million over 10 years. Amazon Web Services will help the intelligence agency build a private cloud infrastructure that helps the agency keep up with emerging technologies like big data in a cost-effective manner not possible under the CIA's previous cloud efforts, sources told FCW."


Here's how the Big Boys do it...
March 20, 2013
Forrester - Big Data Predictive Analytics Solutions
  • "Predictive analytics enables firms to reduce risks, make intelligent decisions, and create differentiated, more personal customer experiences. But predictive analytics is hard to do without the right tools and technologies, given the increasing challenge of storing, processing, and accessing the volume, velocity, and variety of big data. In Forrester's 51-criteria evaluation of big data predictive analytics solution vendors, we evaluated 10 solutions from Angoss Software, IBM, KXEN, Oracle, Revolution Analytics, Salford Systems, SAP, SAS, StatSoft, and Tibco Software. This report details our findings about how well each solution fulfills the criteria and where they stand in relation to each other, and it helps application development and delivery professionals select the right big data predictive analytics solution."

(Related) And here's one for my Statistics students
Plugging data into a spreadsheet is simple. It might be a little tedious, and it is certainly not fun, but it’s a job anyone can figure out how to do in a relatively short amount of time. However, generating meaningful insights from that data is a much more difficult thing to do. There is always plenty of information that can be extrapolated from data, but just looking at it and trying to find correlations is tough.
That’s where the website Statwing comes into play. It looks at data uploaded and find useful correlations from it.
To use Statwing, all you need to do is upload a spreadsheet or csv, and it will scan the data for you. From there, it will take you to a screen where you can explore the data in a way you just cannot do with a simple spreadsheet. You can look for connections between different pieces of data. Statwing offers a demonstration based on data from travelers on the Titanic. You can easily see how powerful it is when you look for ways different pieces of data connect.


Save it for later... It's not everywhere, yet.
Amazon’s ‘Send to Kindle’ Button Takes Aim at Read-It-Later Services
Sending longreads to your Kindle just got easier.
When your job gets in the way of reading something on the internet, read-it-later services like Pocket and Instapaper will let you download a story to their apps for offline access at your leisure. Now Amazon is entering the read-that-really-long-story-later market with a Send to Kindle button that will push content directly to Kindles and devices with the Kindle app. The button has already launched on Boing Boing, Time and The Washington Post. More will likely follow shortly, as Amazon has created a WordPress plugin and a site to help developers place the Send to Kindle button on their sites.
Sending web articles to the Kindle is nothing new. A Send to Kindle extension for Firefox and Chrome has been available since August 2012.
The first time you use the button, you’re prompted to sign into your Amazon account. A settings window determines which Kindle or device with the Kindle app installed to send articles. After a few minutes the article appears on your device ready to read. The saved articles offer text-to-speech on devices that support the feature


Dilbert provides a perfect introduction to my lecture on Social Media in my Intro to IT class.

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