Is your bad programming automatically
fraud on my part? If not, I'm moving to Reno.
Feds
Drop Hacking Charges in Video-Poker Glitching Case
They know when to fold ‘em. Las Vegas
prosecutors targeting two men who took
advantage of a software bug to win a small fortune at video poker
have dropped all hacking charges from the case, cashing out an
18-month legal battle over the applicability of the 1986 Computer
Fraud and Abuse Act.
“The United States of America, by and
through the undersigned attorneys, hereby moves this Court to dismiss
Counts 2 and 3 of the Indictment,” wrote(.pdf)
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Chu yesterday, in a terse motion
immediately granted by U.S. District Judge Miranda Du.
Du had asked prosecutors to defend
their use of the federal anti-hacking law by Wednesday, in light of a
recent
9th Circuit ruling that reigned in the scope of the CFAA.
The dismissal leaves John Kane, 54, and
Andre Nestor, 41, facing a single remaining charge of
conspiracy to commit wire fraud — another federal law
that generally criminalizes fraudulent schemes that use wire
communications. Trial is set for August 20.
… Prosecutors had argued that the
complex sequence of button presses needed to activate the bug made it
a form of hacking. But defense lawyers argued that
Kane and Nestor only played by the rules imposed by the machine.
“The case never should have been
filed under the CFAA,” says Kane’s lawyer, Andrew Leavitt. “It
should have been just a straight wire fraud case.
And I’m not sure its even a wire fraud. I guess we’ll
find out when we go to trial.”
Failure to verify your customers in
this case means you could be selling to an Identity Thief. I wonder
how the letters were worded? “Please stop breaking the law or
we'll have to send you a much firmer warning...”
Grant Gross reports:
More than 20 percent of data brokers checked by the U.S. Federal
Trade Commission allegedly violated a U.S. privacy law when sharing
personal data with agency workers posing as companies wanting to
purchase information.
This week, the FTC
warned 10
data brokers, most with a significant online presence, that they
may be violating the Fair
Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).
The FCRA requires
consumer reporting agencies to reasonably verify the
identities of data customers and to ensure that these
customers have a legitimate purpose for receiving the information.
Read more on Computerworld.
Is the data required or merely 'easily
available?'
Robyn Greene writes:
Last week served
as yet another reminder of the threats posed to Americans’ privacy
by the post-Patriot Act surveillance state. According to the
Department
of Justice’s annual report, FISA applications to the
secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in 2012
revealed a continued increase in the FBI’s surveillance of
Americans. The report covers the Bureau’s requests for electronic
and physical surveillance, secret court orders under Section 215 of
the Patriot Act, and National Security Letters (NSLs).
Over the last four
years, the government’s requests for electronic and physical
surveillance have steadily
increased after a brief decline in 2008 and 2009, with a
total of 1,856 applications in 2012. However, the truly shocking
number is how many times it applied for Section 215 orders, also
known as business records requests, which as far as we know give the
government extremely broad authority to access “any tangible
thing,” including sensitive information such as financial records,
medical records, and even library records.
Read more on ACLU’s
Blog.
(Related) “Give us access to
everthing and we'll probably find something.”
Charlie Savage reports:
The Obama
administration, resolving years of internal debate, is on the verge
of backing a Federal Bureau of Investigation plan for a sweeping
overhaul of surveillance laws that would make it
easier to wiretap people who communicate using the Internet
rather than by traditional phone services, according to officials
familiar with the deliberations.
Read more on the NY
Times.
[From the article:
I think the F.B.I.’s proposal would
render Internet communications less secure and more vulnerable to
hackers and identity thieves,” said Gregory T. Nojeim of the Center
for Democracy and Technology. “It would also mean that innovators
who want to avoid new and expensive mandates will take their
innovations abroad and develop them there, where there aren’t the
same mandates.”
Can't tell the players without a
scorecard...
May 07, 2013
EPIC
- Senate Confirms Chairman of Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight
Board
EPIC: "Today the Senate voted
to confirm David Medine as the Chairman of the Privacy
and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), an agency
established to review executive branch actions and to protect privacy
and civil liberties after 9/11. EPIC urged
the creation of an independent privacy agency after 9/11. At the
first meeting of the agency in 2012, EPIC set out several priorities
for PCLOB, including (1) suspension of the fusion center program,
(2) limitations on CCTV surveillance, (3) removal of airport body
scanners, (4) establishing privacy regulation for drones, (5)
updating data disclosure standards, and (6) ensuring Privacy Act
adherence. For more information, see EPIC:
The 9/11 Commission Report and EPIC:
The Sui Generis Privacy Agency."
For my Intro to IT class...
… today you an rest assured that
anyone who wants to know anything about you has already typed your
name in Google. But what did they find when they did that? Did they
actually find information about you? Was it information you
really wanted them to have? And who are those people who might be
searching for your name on Google?
For my Statistics class. Can we
determine why?
May 07, 2013
BJS
- Firearm Violence, 1993-2011
Michael Planty, Ph.D., Jennifer L.
Truman, Ph.D. May 7, 2013. NCJ 241730. "Presents trends on the
number and rate of fatal and nonfatal firearm violence from 1993 to
2011. The report examines incident and victim demographic
characteristics of firearm violence, including the type of firearm
used; victim's race, age, and sex; and incident location. The report
also examines changes over time in the percentages of nonfatal
firearm crimes by injury, reporting to the police, and the use of
firearms in self-defense. Information on homicide was obtained
primarily from the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) National Vital
Statistics System. Nonfatal firearm violence data are from the
National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which collects
information on nonfatal crimes reported and not reported to the
police against persons age 12 or older from a nationally
representative sample of U.S. Households. Highlights:
- Firearm-related homicides declined 39%, from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011.
- Nonfatal firearm crimes declined 69%, from 1.5 million victimizations in 1993 to 467,300 victimizations in 2011.
- Firearm violence accounted for about 70% of all homicides and less than 10% of all nonfatal violent crime from 1993 to 2011.
- From 1993 to 2011, about 70% to 80% of firearm homicides and 90% of nonfatal firearm victimizations were committed with a handgun.
Since I spend too much time working
with students who aren't ready, this is interesting...
May 07, 2013
Report
- What Does It Really Mean to Be College and Work Ready?
"Today the National Center on
Education and the Economy (NCEE) released What
Does It Really Mean to Be College and Work Ready?, a study of the
English Literacy and Mathematics required for success in the first
year of community college. During a day-long meeting with key
education and policy leaders, NCEE will discuss the results of the
study and its implications for community college reform, school
reform, teacher education, the common core state standards, and
vocational education and the workplace."
Helpful Links:
Have an idea for a MOOC?
George
Veletsianos (an Associate Professor in the School of Education
and Technology at Royal Roads University in Victoria, BC) and I have
submitted an application for Iversity’s MOOC
production fellowship program. If funded, we will co-teach a
course titled “Foundations
of Educational Technology.” (If not funded, we’ll figure
something else out…)
… The recipients of the Iversity
MOOC fellowship will be chosen through a combination of peer review
and public voting, and George and I would love your support for the
latter. To vote
for our proposal, you do have to register on the platform (ugh)
first. You can also read more about the class there.
George has more details on
his blog too, including an awesome list of other friends,
colleagues, professors, and grad students who’ve volunteered to
help.
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