Saturday, June 01, 2013

For my Computer Forensics class. I told you these things take time – this was a quick one.
Paul Bond and Frederick Lah write:
After nearly seven years of litigation, two class actions, and millions of dollars in legal and settlement fees, AOL hopes that it can finally put its infamous anonymization failure incident behind it. On May 24, 2013, a Virginia federal judge gave final approval to a class action settlement between AOL and a class of more than 650,000 AOL members whose search queries were disclosed to the public. The settlement agreement involves $5 million in cash payments to class members and nearly $1 million in attorneys’ fees.


Maybe I'm a little dense (okay, probably) but I had to see this better written article to understand what was going on – we're providing Iranians the tools for their own Arab Spring. Where does this fit on the CyberWar spectrum?
"A report at SF Gate notes that 'The United States has lifted portions of two-decades-old sanctions against Iran in an effort to bolster communication between the country's citizens — and potentially aid organization against a repressive Iranian government. Thursday afternoon the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control authorized the sale of hardware and software that pertain to the Internet, instant messaging, chat, e-mail, social networking, sharing of media, and blogging — basically, all things digital. The Treasury Department wrote, 'As the Iranian government attempts to silence its people by cutting off their communication with each other and the rest of the world, the United States will continue to take action to help the Iranian people exercise their universal human rights, including the right to freedom of expression.'"


There is “solving a problem” and then there is “solving a problem without creating more problems.” Let's keep trying for the second one... (and the tattoo is just Nazi creepy)
"In trying to solve the 'mechanical mismatch' between humans and electronics — particularly wearables — special projects chief Regina Dugan unveiled two new projects currently in development at Google's Motorola Mobility centered on rethinking authentication methodology, including electronic tattoos and ingestible pills. Of the pill, which Dugan called her 'first superpower,' she described it as an 'inside-out potato battery' that when swallowed, the acids in one's stomach serve as the electrolyte to power an 18-bit ECG-like signal that essentially turns one's body into an authentication token. 'It means my arms are like wires and my hands are like alligator clips [so] when I touch my phone, my computer, my door, I'm authenticated,' Dugan said. 'This is not science fiction.'"


I'm surprised none of this was in place. I wonder how common this is?
The Newtown Bee reports:
Twenty parents and spouses who lost loved ones at the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary on 12/14 gathered together at the Capitol in Hartford on Friday, May 31, to call on legislators to pass House Bill 6424, “An Act Concerning Fees for Searches of Accident and Investigative Reports of the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection.” They were joined by sisters, a brother, a son, a teacher, and others directly affected by what happened 5½ months ago.
[...]
Proposed by Senator John McKinney, the amendment to House Bill 6424 would:
*Prevent the release of any photos, videotapes, digital recordings or other depictions of any victim, without the permission of the victim’s immediate family. The adult victims who survived the shooting would also be able to grant permission to release the records;
*Allow any public agency to redact the identity of a minor witness to the shooting; and
*Require public agencies to transcribe 911 recordings and provide written transcripts upon request for a 50-cent-per-page fee, but not require them to provide audio recordings.
Read more on the Newtown Bee.
Although the bill may be well-intentioned, the events at Newtown are of public and national significance that go beyond curiosity and impacts policy discussions of gun control, mental health, and school security issues. As such, I think the First Amendment needs to trump to the understandable concerns of family members.


This seems to be much further along than I thought!
Report: 85 Percent of Educational Institutions Allow BYOD, Yet Security Lags Behind
Eighty-five percent of educational institutions allow instructors or students to use their own devices on institutional networks according to a new survey from Bradford Networks.
Based on responses from more than 500 IT professionals in higher education and K-12 districts in the United States and the United Kingdom, the "Impact of BYOD on Education" survey found that only six percent of respondents reported that their institution had no bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy and no plans to implement one.


As social networks qua social networks evolve into “Interest Networks” services like this might prove useful. For example: Law, teaching, science fiction
Social media keeps growing at an insane rate. It seems like there is a new social network, a microblogging platform or another kind of new site popping up every single day of the week. With that, it can be hard to decide on which sites you wish to spend your time.
… Ending the confusion is a site called Mamuna. It serves as a catalog and rating service for all different kinds of social media sites.

(Related) You still need to be careful! Another infographic.
A Visual Guide To Staying Safe On Social Media
Check out this handy visual for a bit of insight.
The guide runs through some handy tidbits you should know. For example, what can you post on Facebook, what’s allowed on Tumblr, and how often do people post their location? Should you actually post your location on social networks? The verdict is still out the but the facts are in: this guide shows about a quarter of all users attach their current location to posts. That’s a lot higher than I would have thought!


Something for my geeks (and the lost and found drawer)
… I invite you to gather up all of those so-called “useless” smartphones, and consider following through the steps in this article to transform them into wireless webcam devices that you can use to build your own home surveillance network for absolutely free.


For my Math students. You don't have to take my word. Read the Comments!
"I am currently pursuing a bachelor's in CompSci and I just spent three hours working on a few differential equations for homework. It is very frustrating because I just don't grok advanced math. I can sort of understand a little bit, but I really don't grok anything beyond long division. But I love computers, and am very good at them. However, nobody in the workforce is even going to glance at my direction without a Bsc. And to punish me for going into a field originally developed by mathematicians I need to learn all this crap. If I had understood what I was doing, maybe I wouldn't mind so much. But the double frustration of not understanding it and not understanding why the heck I need to do it is too much. So, how important is it?"


A tool for my “Students should create their own textbook” idea?
Host and Document Collaborative Brainstorming Sessions With Realtime Board
Realtime Board is a nice tool for hosting online, collaborative brainstorming sessions. I've featured the service a couple of times since its launch last fall. The service allows to work with any information and visual content on one board individually or with the team. You can work with images, videos, PDF-files, write notes and comment everything, use colorful post-it stickers and work with files from your Google Drive. Recently, Realtime Board added a free education version. The education version provides schools with all of the features of the Pro version for free. That means you can create unlimited private and public boards, have an unlimited number of collaborators, and 3GB of storage space.
Applications for Education
If you're looking for a free tool that your students can use to plan projects and create multimedia media mindmaps, Realtime Board is definitely worth giving a try. You can try it without creating an account.


...and what did you do this weekend? (“We found some government data that they didn't even know they shared!”)
White House, NASA Celebrate National Day of Hacking
The White House is hosting a hackathon dedicated to government data.
It happens this weekend, and it’s just one of the 93 hackathons organized across the U.S. as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking, a.k.a. June 1. During the two-day event, participants will work to build software applications that solve problems proposed by local, state and federal government organizations. The data sets and challenges were provided by 22 government organizations in total, including the White House, NASA, and the Peace Corps.
“It is an incredible feat that we have so many government agencies making data available. This is the largest ever collaboration across government agencies,” says Celestine Johnson of Innovation Endeavors. Innovation Endeavors — a venture capital firm founded by Dror Berman and Google chairman Eric Schmidt — organized the event with the non-profit organizations Code for America and Random Hacks of Kindness.

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