Incredible. Clearly, “We don't need
no stinking oversight!”
Obama
to meet privacy oversight board to try to reassure public on spying
Obama is
scrambling to show he has credibility on the issue after coming under
fire for the scope of surveillance conducted by the National Security
Agency, which was revealed in a series of disclosures by former
government contractor Edward Snowden.
The
president will hold talks with members of the Privacy and Civil
Liberties Oversight Board, a five-person independent agency that has
been largely dormant since 2008 and held
its first full-fledged meeting on Wednesday after the Senate
confirmed David Medine as its chairman last month.
The board's
purpose is to review actions the government takes to protect national
security, while balancing those steps with the need to protect
privacy and civil liberties.
Just in case you think the NSA missed
your call...
These days, almost everyone has a Skype
account. It has quickly become the default communication method for
long-distance calls and video chats as it is free and easy to use.
… There are so many great reasons
you may have to record a call with Skype. You may be taking
language lessons via Skype and want to listen to them again
later, you might be recording
content for a podcast, maybe you have a lot of business calls via
Skype and want to keep a record to make sure you get your tasks done,
or perhaps you need to keep records to share with other parties or
for posterity.
Whatever you need to record; here’s
how you do it.
Hey look! They've got rules!
(Following them is apparently a political decision)
NIST
– Security and Privacy Controls for Federal Information Systems and
Organizations
Security
and Privacy Controls for Federal Information Systems and
Organizations, Joint Task Force Transformation Initiative,
Computer Security Division Information Technology Laboratory –
National Institute of Standards and Technology. April 2013
This publication
provides a catalog of security and privacy controls for federal
information systems and organizations and a process for selecting
controls to protect organizational operations (including mission,
functions, image, and reputation), organizational assets,
individuals, other organizations, and the Nation from a diverse set
of threats including hostile cyber attacks, natural disasters,
structural failures, and human errors (both intentional and
unintentional). The security and privacy controls are customizable
and implemented as part of an organization wide process that manages
information security and privacy risk. The controls address a
diverse set of security and privacy requirements across the federal
government and critical infrastructure, derived from legislation,
Executive Orders, policies, directives, regulations, standards, and
/or mission/business needs. The publication also describes how to
develop specialized sets of controls, or overlays, tailored for
specific types of missions/business functions, technologies, or
environments of operation. Finally, the catalog of security controls
addresses security from both a functionality perspective (the
strength of security functions and mechanisms provided) and an
assurance perspective (the measures of confiden ce in the implemented
security capability). Addressing both security functionality and
security assurance ensures that information technology products and
the information systems built from those products using sound systems
and security engineering principles are sufficiently trustworthy.”
1) It is easier to ask forgiveness than
to get permission. 2) Congress was busy and never asked. 3)
Everyone else has one. 4) If you ain't FBI, you're a suspect. (Pick
4)
Jennifer Lynch writes:
Today we’re
publishing—for
the first time—the FBI’s
drone licenses and supporting records for the last several years.
Unfortunately, to say that the FBI has been less than forthcoming
with these records would be a gross understatement.
Just yesterday,
Wired
broke the story that the FBI has been using drones to surveil
Americans. Wired noted that, during an FBI oversight hearing before
the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Robert Mueller let slip
that the FBI flies surveillance drones on American soil. Mueller
tried to reassure the senators that FBI’s drone program “is very
narrowly focused on particularized cases and particularized leads.”
However, there’s no way to check the Director on these statements,
given the Bureau’s extreme lack of transparency about its program.
Read more on EFF.
Notice: This assume anyone would want
to be located in Montana...
Allie Bohm writes:
Montana just made
history. It recently enacted the
first state law in the nation(sponsored by Rep. Daniel Zolnikov
(R-Billings)) requiring law enforcement to obtain a probable-cause
warrant before
tracking an individual
based on his or her cell
phone location information, social networking check-ins, or via a
GPS tracking device in a criminal investigation. (A few states do
have laws pertaining only to GPS tracking.)
Read more on ACLU’s
blog.
I want the black box data. In fact, I
want to be able to call it up on the dashboard.
Lucas Mearian reports:
Those two privacy
issues are bubbling up in Congress, where lawmakers this week filed
bipartisan legislation that would give car owners
control over data collected in black box-style recorders
that may be required in all cars as soon as next year. The move
follows a separate proposal made earlier this month that would block
telecommunications companies from tracking viewer activity with new
digital video recorder (DVR) technology.
Read more on Computerworld.
Perhaps we should track these people
(or at least review their LinkedIn pages). They might be useful
resources or even speakers...
Former
Twitter laywer officially joins White House staff
The Office of Science and Technology
Policy confirmed Wong's new role as a deputy chief technology officer
in the Obama administration Thursday to The
Washington Post. CNET first reported in May that Wong was tapped
to be the White House's first privacy officer.
Wong, who worked as a vice president
and deputy general counsel at Google prior to working at Twitter...
(Related)
Facebook
promotes Colin Stretch to general counsel
… Stretch,
who joined Facebook in 2010, is the company's acting deputy general
counsel. He will replace current General Counsel Ted Ullyot, who
announced in May that he was leaving
the social network after five years with the company.
Trying to blog (and teach) in a 'TL;DR'
world
When
15 seconds is too long; welcome to the 'TL;DR' world
Instagram
has video now, a whole 15 seconds that can be recorded. That's
just over twice as long as Vine's 6 seconds. "Too long?"
some wonder. Maybe the bigger question is, how have we ended up in a
place where there can even be a debate
over whether a few seconds is too long?
TL;DR: "Too long; didn't read"
Yes, the TL;DR world continues to grow.
"TL;DR"? Too long; didn't read. I didn't even know the
acronym until about a year ago, when I began seeing it more and more.
The writer part of me, the curmudgeon part of me, wants
to say RTDT, "read the damn thing," to anyone who has a
TL;DR type of attitude.
Might be interesting to my statistics
students...
The
Measure of America 2013–2014
“In the era of “big data,” it
would seem that policymakers and regular people alike would have the
information they need at their fingertips to understand their world
and make it better. Unfortunately, that’s far from the case.
Though we know the country’s gross domestic product quarterly, its
retail sales monthly, and stock market numbers minute-by-minute, we
rarely hear statistics on our country’s people.
How long can a baby born today in
Missouri, New Mexico, or Minnesota expect to live? What proportion
of adults have completed high school in Houston as compared to
Dallas? What wages and salaries are typical of Latinos in the United
States, and how do they compare to those of whites or African
Americans?
Measure of America’s mission
is to use data points like these to tell the story of how people—not
just the economy—are doing. We do so using the global gold
standard for measuring well-being and access to opportunity: the
Human Development Index.
This third volume in the Measure of
America series measures well-being in three vital areas—health,
education, and earnings—that shape the opportunities available to
us and enable people to invest in their families and live to their
full potential. The
Measure of America 2013–2014 contains American Human
Development Index ranking for the 50 U.S. states, the 25 largest
metropolitan areas, and racial and ethnic groups within those states
and metro areas. It also looks at changes in well-being in states
since 2000 and in metro areas before and after the Great Recession.”
Another
tool for my website students.
Not being a coder, I’m always on the
lookout for easy ways to build beautiful websites
that require no coding skills, and just over a year ago I
discovered Breezi.
A new service at the time, Breezi caught my attention for both its
ease of use and abundance of features, and proved itself a reliable
and stable solution for building websites.
Easier
than lugging all my textbooks? I think I might break down and give
this one a try. (It's cheap enough even for me!)
Get
a Kobo Mini e-reader for $39.99
… here's one of the best deals I've
seen yet: For a limited time, you can get the Kobo
Mini e-reader for $39.99, plus $8 for shipping. That's $20 less
than the last time I wrote about it and $30 less than Amazon's
entry-level Kindle.
It's available in black or white.
The Kobo Mini has a touch screen,
whereas the $69 Kindle does not. It's a slightly smaller screen, too
(5 inches), meaning it's a bit easier to pocket. And at 4.7 ounces,
it's the lightest e-reader currently available.
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