Your government at work odds.

VA routinely transmitted sensitive information over unencrypted network – OIG. No, we didn’t – OIT.

… So did the OIG get their findings wrong? If so, that’s a pretty big mistake that would make me question whether the OIG is competent to really investigate IT security.

You can read the full report here.

20,000 complaints from 180,000,000 texts... Why so few?

FTC Goes After Scammers Who Blasted Millions of Text Messages

"The Federal Trade Commission today said it has filed eight court cases to stop companies who have sent over 180 million illegal or deceptive text messages to all manner of mobile users in the past year. The messages — of which the FTC said it had received some 20,000 complaints in 2012 — promised consumers free gifts or prizes, including gift cards worth $1,000 to major retailers such as Best Buy, Walmart and Target."

Another case of “We haven't really thought about it...” Has anyone compiled “Best Practices?”

ICO: Companies Laissez Faire over BYOD personal data

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) says many employers “appear to have a laissez faire attitude” to allowing staff to use their personal devices for business, which may be placing people’s personal information at risk.

ICO commissioned YouGov to question 2,150 UK adults, which found that almost half (47 percent) now use their personal smartphone, laptop or tablet for work purposes.

But less than three in ten who do so are provided with guidance on how their devices should be used in this capacity, “raising worrying concerns that people may not understand how to look after the personal information accessed and stored on these devices”, said the ICO.

Read more on Computerworld UK. You can find the survey here and ICO’s guidance here.

We are not second class citizens, we are not the enemy, we are not al Qaeda... What kind of threat to the government are we?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57573183-38/house-orders-pentagon-to-disclose-domestic-drone-use/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title

House orders Pentagon to disclose domestic drone use

The U.S. House of Representatives voted yesterday to require the Defense Department to disclose whether military drones are being operated domestically to conduct surveillance on American citizens.

A requirement buried in a lengthy appropriations bill calls on newly confirmed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to disclose to Congress what "policies and procedures" are in place "governing the use" of military drones or other unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) domestically. The report is due no later than 90 days after the bill is signed into law.

Something to scare my Intro to IT students with...

Everything We Know About What Data Brokers Know About You

Data companies are scooping up enormous amounts of information about almost every American. They sell information about whether you’re pregnant or divorced or trying to lose weight, about how rich you are and what kinds of cars you have.

Regulators and some in Congress have been taking a closer look at these so-called data brokers — and are beginning to push the companies to give consumers more information and control over what happens to their data.

But many people still don’t even know that data brokers exist.

Here’s a look at what we know about the consumer data industry.

Read the report on ProPublica, then email it to all of your friends and family. Hell, print it out, take it to Staples, run a gadzillion copies, and hand it out to everyone you see. Maybe then people will wake up to what’s really going on.

Texas is doing this?

Texas proposes one of nation’s “most sweeping” mobile privacy laws

Privacy experts say that a pair of new mobile privacy bills recently introduced in Texas are among the “most sweeping” ever seen. And they say the proposed legislation offers better protection than a related privacy bill introduced this week in Congress.

If passed, the new bills would establish a well-defined, probable cause-driven warrant requirement for all location information. That’s not just data from GPS, but potentially pen register, tap and trace, and tower location data as well.

Read more on Ars Technica.

Oh look, a new pedophile facilitation bill! The bill requires “proper identification” so I'm sure we'd never hear, “Hello, I'm little Sally's Dad. Send me everything...”

Proposed California Bill Would Require Sites To Hand Over Private Info On Kids To Their Parents

California Assemblywoman Nora Campos proposed a bill a few weeks ago, AB 319, that would expand things so much that any sites that collect any information about anyone under the age of 18 would be required under law to reveal that personal information to parents if requested.

Now, think about that for a second. Since this is for any kids up to 18, we’re talking about most of the teenage years for most kids. These are the years in which many teens rebel against their parents, which is, in many ways, a natural part of growing up and becoming an independent adult. To think that parents should be able to find out information directly from various sites about their kids’ use of those sites seems incredibly problematic.

Read more on TechDirt while I debate whether I should add a category for “The road to Hell” legislation….

Post hoc ergo propter hoc? Even if they were involved in 4% of all Internet traffic, this is quite difficult to believe. But the source of the study is above reproach, isn't it? Note that they did not look at data from before the shutdown. Was revenue growing that fast before? Is it still growing that fast? If 15,000 out of 50,000,000 users (0.03%) were sharing movies, does that justify the shutdown? Also: This doesn't read like a WSJ article. The writing isn't as good as normal. What's going on here?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57573195-93/megauploads-closure-boosts-movie-rentals-and-sales/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title

MegaUpload's closure boosts movie rentals and sales

… A new study by Carnegie Mellon's Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics shows that after MegaUpload's closure online movie revenue increased by between 6 percent and 10 percent, according to the Wall Street Journal. The study researched two major movie studios and the results were measured in 12 different countries, including the U.S.

"We conclude that shutting down MegaUpload and Megavideo caused some customers to shift from cyberlocker-based piracy to purchasing or renting through legal digital channels," the study's researchers told the Wall Street Journal.

… MegaUpload was one of the most popular video destinations on the Web, with reportedly 50 million users per day that shared and streamed files.

… The Carnegie Mellon study looked at digital transactions in the four months after the cyberlocker was shut down. What it found was that the weekly digital sales of movies from the two studios grew by between 10,500 and 15,300 units, according to the Wall Street Journal. Additionally, rentals also increased by between 13,700 and 24,000 units a week.

[From the WSJ Article:

Information from the two studios came through Carnegie Mellon's Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics, which Mr. Smith co-directs and which receives unrestricted funding from the Motion Picture Association of America. However, the researchers didn't receive any funding for their study from the Initiative or the MPAA.

[The paper:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2229349

A business model to emulate? Combining two legal services to drive the RIAA and the MPAA over the edge...

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/03/aereo_tv_barely_legal_by_desig.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29

Aereo TV: Barely Legal By Design

In a post yesterday, I mentioned Aereo TV, a new Barry Diller-backed business launched last year, calling it an example of a start-up that is "barely legal by design." Since the courts are about to make a ruling that will profoundly affect its prospects, it might interest you to learn more about how its entire business is engineered to exploit existing copyright law.

First, this service takes full advantage of unchallenged U.S. law that makes over-the-air television free to anyone who puts up an antenna and connects it to a receiving device. Unlike countries such as the U.K., for example, the U.S. has no television license tax. Broadcasters in the U.S. make their money based on advertising, plain and simple.

Second, it relies on the seminal 1984 Sony Betamax case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that using a home videocassette recorder to "time shift" programming received over the air for later viewing did not violate copyright law. Even though the VCR was technically making a copy of the program without a license to do so, the Court found that copying fit into a narrow exception to the otherwise exclusive rights of the copyright holder — an exception known as a "fair use."

Only n California. “No one wants to use the local post office, so we should implement a national tax to support it!”

City Councilman: Email Tax Could Discourage Spam, Fund Post Office Functions

"The Berkeley, CA city council recently met to discuss the closing of their downtown post office, in attempt to find a way to keep it from relocating. This included talk of 'a very tiny tax' to help keep the U.S. Post Office's vital functions going. The suggestion came from Berkeley City Councilman Gordon Wozniak: 'There should be something like a bit tax. I mean a bit tax could be a cent per gigabit and they would still make, probably, billions of dollars a year And there should be, also, a very tiny tax on email.' He says a one-hundredth of a cent per e-mail tax could discourage spam while not impacting the typical Internet user, and a sales tax on Internet transactions could help fund 'vital functions that the post office serves.' We all know an e-mail tax is infeasible, and sales tax for online purchases and for digital purchases are likely unavoidable forever, but here's hoping talk of taxing data usage doesn't work its way to Washington."

Something for the reading pile... Another view of the pending “Cyber Pearl Harbor?”

Cybersecurity - A Better Defined and Implemented National Strategy Is Needed to Address Persistent Challenges, GAO-13-462T, Mar 7, 2013

My day is made!

http://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2013/03/breakfast-beer-causes-controversy/

Breakfast beer causes controversy

Brewed by the Black Isle brewery in Ross-shire, Scotland, the beer has been defended by the brewery owner, David Gladwin, as being for “people who appreciate what they are drinking.”

The brewery described the beer on its website: “We think everyone can agree that good beer should have good flavour, aroma and body.

… The brewery stressed that the name “breakfast beer” was more to suggest its suitability for drinking at any time and not specifically breakfast.