If
President Obama was a Republican, would he say, “I am not a crook?”
Read about Charlie Rose’s interview
with President Obama on NSA spying on BuzzFeed
or watch it on Huffington
Post. Are you reassured?
For
those who need to catch up.
NSA
Leak Catch-Up: The Latest on the Edward Snowden Fallout
It's been two weeks since the
Washington Post and Guardian newspapers began to
publish their stories based on leaks and interviews with former NSA
contractor, Edward Snowden. The leaks have continued, counterleaks
have bubbled up, tech companies have responded, and debate about the
man at the center of it all continues to rage.
Three big stories -- one from the
AP, one from NPR,
and another from the
Post -- came out this weekend that mined the details of Snowden's
disclosures, refining them with more extensive reporting. The New
York Times contributed a deep profile of Snowden himself, who
continues to provoke
strong reactions, especially after he revealed some details about
U.S. spying on China
and Russia.
Following, we attempt to bring you up
to speed with the most recent disclosures and best reporting on the
hurlyburly.
Follow-up on a May 31st
story, 'cause it just keeps getting better.
School
iris-scanned students without telling parents
… Peculiarly, no one at the schools
district seems entirely sure how a security company called Stanley
Convergent Security Solutions was allowed to install and operate
the scanners without parents being told. Or, indeed, without
a contract being signed.
Rob Davis, a Polk County district
administrator, admitted to the Ledger that several mistakes were
made. He said that he had no idea who (if anyone) had ultimately
authorized Stanley Convergent to insert the iris scanners, which the
company says have an accuracy rate of 200 times
that of fingerprints. [Huh? Bob]
… It seems as if not one school
lawyer looked through the proposed contract and approved it.
This has left some parents suspicious.
Connie Turlington, parent of an 11-year-old, told The Ledger: "It
sounds like a simple case of it's better to ask forgiveness than
permission."
Interesting
background summary (for us non-lawyers) leading to another
“exception”
… The Supreme Court divided 5-4 on
the question, with the majority dividing 3-2. The controlling
opinion under a Marks analysis is the plurality opinion by
Justice Alito joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy.
Justice Alito concluded that it did not violate Salinas’s Fifth
Amendment right to comment on his silence because he never formally
asserted his Fifth Amendment right.
A resource for Big Data research and an
interesting process for quantifying “Open.”
New
certificates launched to help everyone discover, understand, and use
open data
“The Open Data Institute (ODI) is
today launching Open Data
Certificates to help everyone find, understand
and use open data that is being released. The new
certificates are being announced by CEO Gavin Starks at a G8 Summit
event: Open for Growth. The certificates have been created in
response to business, government, and citizen needs to bring rigour
to the publication, dissemination and usage of open data. Over the
last six months, ODI has been collaborating with dozens of
organisations around the world to define the certificates. Today
sees their first Beta release… Certificates are created online,
for free, at http://certificates.theodi.org/.
The process involves publishers answering a series of questions,
each of which affect the certificate generated at the end.”
(Related)
The market for Big Data analysts is growing...
Data
is Worthless if You Don't Communicate It
There is a pressing need for more
businesspeople who can think quantitatively and make decisions based
on data and analysis, and businesspeople who can do so will become
increasingly valuable. According to a McKinsey
Global Institute report on big data, we'll need
over 1.5 million more data-savvy managers to take advantage of all
the data we generate.
But to borrow a phrase from Professor
Xiao-Li Meng — formerly the Chair of the Statistics Department
at Harvard and now Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences —
you don't need to become a winemaker to become a wine connoisseur.
Managers do not need to become quant jocks. But to fill the alarming
need highlighted in the McKinsey report, most do need to become
better consumers of data, with a better appreciation of quantitative
analysis and — just as important — an ability to communicate what
the numbers mean.
Perspective:
Another era slides beneath the waves?
India's
Last Telegram Will Be Sent in July
In 1850, the British inventor William
O'Shaughnessy -- who would later become famous for his early
experiments with medical cannabis -- sent a coded message over a
telegraph line in India. His telegram would usher in a new age of
communication in and for India, connecting the country in a way that
had never before been possible.
Now, sometime on July 14, 2013, someone
in India will have a dubious honor: he or she will send the
country's last telegram. The Bharat
Sanchar Nigam Limited, India's state-run telecom company, will
shutter its telegram service, bringing the long era of Indian
telegraphy from a dash ... to a full stop.
The shuttering comes seven
years after Western Union ended its telegram service -- and
nearly 170 years after Samuel
Morse sent the United States's first telegraphic messages,
between Washington and Baltimore, in 1844.
I
have nothing (left) to hide.
… If the thought of the
occasionally overzealous government official isn’t enough reason to
encrypt your smartphone, then all the identity thieves and scammers
out there ought to be. Think of how much of your personal
information a bad guy could get, if they found your phone. Names,
addresses, passwords, account numbers, and goodness knows what else.
For a different take on Internet monitoring, check out James Bruce’s
article, about
how Internet monitoring laws will make criminals harder to catch.
It’s very timely, all of a sudden.
Today, I’m going to show you a few
things you can do to make that information a bit more secure.
No surprise here...
People
joining the US workforce today are less educated than those leaving
it
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