So, does they does or does they
doesn't? That is the qustion. (Why take only SOME of the useful
stuff?)
NSA
chief drops hint about ISP Web, e-mail surveillance
The head of the National Security
Agency hinted Wednesday that logs of Americans' e-mails and Web-site
visits may be secretly vacuumed up by the world's most powerful
intelligence group.
… "It would be odd [for the
NSA] to focus entirely on telephony logs and exclude Internet
traffic," said Julian
Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato
Institute in Washington, D.C., who focuses on electronic
surveillance topics. "I would assume they're vacuuming up IP
logs and perhaps e-mail headers as well."
Amusing.
It used to be that the National
Security Agency and its ilk had to pay through the nose for the
latest in spying technology. The supercomputer specialist Cray
(CRAY),
for example, would receive government funds and come
out with a new multimillion-dollar machine specially tuned for
“pattern matching” and then sell the system to three-letter
agencies. The machines were anything but general purpose and came
with a premium price tag. Beyond that, the NSA has been known to run
its own chip manufacturing plant and to pay for custom software.
While that type of thing still goes on,
the NSA has another, much cheaper avenue for great spy technology at
its disposal: open-source software.
(Related) What metadata is available
from various sources and what it reveals.
A
Guardian guide to your metadata
Not the most flattering picture, but it
is worth reading.
The
Secret War
Inside Fort Meade, Maryland, a
top-secret city bustles. Tens of thousands of people move through
more than 50 buildings—the city has its own post office, fire
department, and police force. But as if designed by Kafka, it sits
among a forest of trees, surrounded by electrified fences and heavily
armed guards, protected by antitank barriers, monitored by sensitive
motion detectors, and watched by rotating cameras. To block any
telltale electromagnetic signals from escaping, the inner walls of
the buildings are wrapped in protective copper shielding and the
one-way windows are embedded with a fine copper mesh.
This is the undisputed domain of
General Keith Alexander, a man few even in Washington would likely
recognize. Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence
sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under
his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign, or the
depth of his secrecy. A four-star Army general, his authority
extends across three domains: He is director of the world’s
largest intelligence service, the National Security Agency; chief of
the Central Security Service; and commander of the US Cyber Command.
As such, he has his own secret military, presiding over the Navy’s
10th Fleet, the 24th Air Force, and the Second Army.
This is why I follow Pogo Was Right!
When Glenn Greenwald of The
Guardian published a FISC order requiring Verizon to turn over
to the NSA its call records for calls made both within the US and
between the US and other countries, I don’t think anyone at the
Privacy Law Scholar’s Conference was particularly shocked that this
was going on. If anything, we were somewhat pleasantly surprised
that we now had some proof that the government couldn’t deny.
The Verizon order was just the first of
a number of leaks last week, though, with leaks about PRISM, the
President’s cyberwar directive, and Boundless Informant each
grabbing the headlines until the next disclosure.
By the end of last week, it was clear
that for at least some members of Congress, this was a “We
authorized WHAT?” moment. It was also clear that the usual members
of Congress would start screaming that Eric Snowden and journalists
and publications involved in the leaks should be prosecuted for
treason, even though their actions really do not fall under
“treason.”
I did not expect to see vast swaths of
the public suddenly understand that this has nothing to do with
“having nothing to hide,” and was not disappointed to see the
usual “the government can surveill me to keep me safe” rhetoric.
And although at least one media source
claimed the real story was about the failure of journalism (after the
Washington Post did significant silent edits of its original story),
I think the real story is the massive failure of Congressional
oversight and how the Executive branch has shrouded so much in
secrecy and subverted Congress’s oversight obligations. And I
think the real story is the government going after leakers and
journalists instead of adhering to its promised policy of more
transparency.
If the government were more
transparent, there would be no issue of charging journalists or
leakers with espionage. Yes, I realize that some things may need to
be classified but the Bush and Obama administrations have run amok
with secrecy and surveillance. It’s time to rein in it. Congress
either needs to repeal Section 215 or amend it to make clear that
dragnet collection of domestic call records is not permitted and
existing databases must be destroyed. They also need
to enact legislation that undoes “third party doctrine” and
establishes that as citizens, we do have a reasonable expectation of
privacy in information held by service providers and telecoms.
And they need to protect journalists who, in the best traditions of
journalism, inform the public on issues of national significance.
“We have met the enemy and he
is us.”
Pogo was right. Our checks and
balances failed, subverted by the Executive branch. It’s time to
restore the balance and to stop blaming those who tell us what our
government should have told us so that we can have had a meaningful
national debate. President Barack “I Was Against It Before I Was
For It” Obama has said he welcomes a debate. Just tell us when and
where, Mr. President, because massive domestic surveillance cannot
stand.
One of these days, someone at this
hospital will notice that unencrypted files is probably not the smart
way to go.
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital is
no stranger to stolen equipment containing PHI. In January, 2010,
they self-reported a breach involving a stolen
desktop computer with PHI on 532 patients, and as recently as
January, they notified
57,000 patients after a laptop was stolen from a physician’s
car. Now the hospital is notifying patients about another breach
involving the theft of hardware with unencrypted PHI.
From a statement
on their web site:
Lucile Packard
Children’s Hospital at Stanford is notifying patients by mail that
a password-protected, non-functional [...but the hard
drive still worked? Bob] laptop computer that could
potentially contain [We don't know. Bob]
limited medical information on pediatric patients was stolen from a
secured, badge-access controlled area of the hospital sometime
between May 2 and May 8, 2013. This incident was reported to Packard
Children’s on May 8. Immediately following discovery of the theft,
Packard Children’s launched an aggressive and ongoing investigation
with security and law enforcement.
To
date, there is no evidence that any pediatric patient data has been
accessed by an unauthorized person or otherwise compromised. [Nor do
we have any evidence that Aliens have landed in Grover's Mill, New
Jersey. Bob]
“We're the government. We don't
follow no stinking laws!”
And speaking of outrageous breaches,
Elise Viebeck reports:
A top House
committee launched another probe of the Internal Revenue Service
(IRS) Tuesday after a lawsuit alleged that the agency improperly
seized millions of personal medical records in California.
In a letter,
Republican leaders on the Energy and Commerce panel asked the IRS to
explain how it handles confidential medical information.
“While [federal]
privacy rules restrict the ability of a covered entity to release
protected health information, those rules appear to impose no
restrictions on the IRS’s ability to use such information after it
is obtained,” the lawmakers wrote.
Read more on The
Hill.
The letter requests a response from the
IRS by June 21.
If this is true, shouldn't the judge be
a bit angry with the DoJ?
Apple
fires back at DOJ with actual e-mail from Jobs
After the Justice Department presented
an e-mail Wednesday that appeared to undermine Apple's e-book
antitrust defense, the company submitted the actual e-mail as sent by
then-CEO Steve Jobs to Eddy Cue, showing content and tone that
differed from the draft version.
Get a sample at birth, own the
'citizen' for life.
Joseph Goldstein reports:
Slowly, and
largely under the radar, a growing number of local law enforcement
agencies across the country have moved into what had previously been
the domain of the F.B.I. and state crime labs — amassing their own
DNA databases of potential suspects, some collected with the donors’
knowledge, and some without it.
Read more on NYTimes.
Note that it is not just suspects whose DNA is being
amassed, but crime victims, too. And SCOTUS’s decision
in King will only encourage more of this.
Why I'm FROM New Jersey... “He
hit me right after he glanced up from his phone, officer. Then he
swallowed it. Can I watch while you conduct your cavity search?”
Bill
would force you to give police phone after accident
… State legislators in New Jersey
would very much like to make it easier for the police to go through
your cell phone, should you be in any way involved in an accident.
The wording of their proposal -- Bill
S 2783 (PDF) -- is quite precise in its breadth:
Whenever an
operator of a motor vehicle has been involved in an accident
resulting in death, bodily injury or property damage, a police
officer may confiscate the operator's hand-held wireless telephone if
the officer has reasonable grounds to believe that the operator was
operating a hand-held wireless telephone while driving.
So, does this signal an opportunity to
give ASCAP some competition?
Pandora
to buy radio station to piggyback onto cheaper costs
… Pandora ... agreed to purchase
KXMZ-FM, a Rapid City, S.D., terrestrial radio station. Its first
foray into traditional radio broadcasting, the move has little to do
with strategic shift and everything to do with royalty costs.
Pandora pays two royalty streams, one
for actual sound recordings and another to composers for publishing
rights. The sound recording fees make up the lion's share of its
content costs. But by buying a terrestrial station, Pandora
piggybacks onto a settlement that gives better rates on that smaller
fee stream.
… The preferential royalty rates
are expected to snag savings worth less than 1 percent of its revenue
versus the rates it is currently paying. Based on last year's top
line, that equates to less than $5 million.
Perspective: Facts and factoids from
PEW
Pew
– Understanding the Social Media and Technology Landscape
Data
to Live By: Understanding the Social Media and Technology Landscape
– “New technologies and social media have had a major impact on
the way we communicate and live life. Senior Researcher Mary Madden
delivered the keynote address for the Lawlor
Symposium’s summer seminar, sharing “data to live by” to
aid in understanding this new social media and technology landscape.”
Perspective: Big data is BIG!
WhatsApp
sets new record with 27 billion messages in a day
WhatsApp, the mobile service that has
established itself as a free alternative to texting, has reached new
heights.
The company announced
on its Twitter page on Wednesday that in the previous 24-hour period,
it had set a new one-day record of handling 27 billion messages.
According to the company, its users sent over 10 billion messages
during the period, and received 17 billion messages.
For those, “I want to read this, but
not now” moments.
If you use Evernote
on your iPad or iPhone, you may have found it difficult to get
copies of articles, snippets of text, or photos from you device into
your Evernote account without having to copy content from one
application and paste it into another.
… Thanks to a handful of
third-party developers, there are several apps which enable you to
export content directly to your Evernote account without having to
open the app. If you use Evernote with your iOS device then the apps
I am about to recommend could replace your news and RSS feed reader,
text editor or notes app and even plain old mobile Safari.
Danny has also shared other useful
tools
that integrate with Evernote.
Perspective: and a bit depressing.
Infographic
For my graduating students (and the
rest of them too)
That little sheet of paper that you
send off to potential employers? Yeah, it isn’t your
resume. Nowadays, your resume
is the entirety
of your web presence.
… However, with websites like
LinkedIn, Facebook,
Twitter, Google, WordPress, and more, all an employer really has to
do is type in your name. Honest. With LinkedIn, you have
endorsements – something that was typically always achieved with
references. As for Facebook, employers can get a snapshot of your
personality through text updates and photos. With Twitter, they can
see what parts of the industry that you are interested in.
Meanwhile, Google gives a general history of your work-life, and
WordPress serves as a decent portfolio.
For my fellow teachers...
Problem-Attic is a useful resource
mainly aimed at teachers and educators to help them in preparing
teaching materials such as tests, worksheets and flashcards.
Currently it lists over 80,000 questions from different sources, all
available for free. Questions are sorted by topic (i.e., Math,
Social studies, Science ) and by released exams, meaning that you can
look up a past Math exam from the year 2009 etc. To use the service
you have to sign up on their website and follow a 4-step process
(Select, Arrange, Format, Print) to create your teaching materials.
For my fellow website teachers...
… Running in the browser as a web
app, DivShot lets you drag and drop elements, text, boxes and more
onto your page as you build your site. Everything you see on the
page is HTML
and CSS, with the correct markup added as you go. The best thing
about DivShot from a coding point of view is the fact that the code
comes out looking like it was written by hand, complete with tidy
indentations to keep your inner coder happy.
With a responsive and straightforward
UI, DivShot immerses you in the process of creating beautiful
websites from within your browser. All the tools, element controls
and preferences you need are found around the edge of your screen,
just as if you were using a desktop editor. DivShot
is currently in beta, and free to sign up and use (though the usual
“beta beware” advice applies).
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