This data would be quite useful after
the fact, but absent any clear indication of interest from other
sources I don't see how it could be used to identify “persons of
interest.”
U. S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and
Mark Udall (D-Colo.) issued the following statement responding to
comments made by members of the Intelligence Community about the
value of certain NSA surveillance programs. Both Senators sit on the
Senate Intelligence Committee.
… Based on the
evidence that we have seen, it appears that multiple terrorist plots
have been disrupted at least in part because of information obtained
under section 702 of FISA. However, it appears that the bulk phone
records collection program under section 215 of the USA Patriot Act
played little or no role in most of these disruptions. Saying
that “these programs” have disrupted “dozens of potential
terrorist plots” is misleading if the bulk phone records collection
program is actually providing little or no unique value.
… The NSA’s
five-year retention period for phone records is longer than the
retention period used by some phone companies, but the NSA still has
not provided us with any examples of instances where it relied on its
bulk collection authority to review records that the relevant phone
company no longer possessed.
In fact, we have
yet to see any evidence that the bulk phone records collection
program has provided any otherwise unobtainable intelligence. It may
be more convenient for the NSA to collect this data in bulk, rather
than directing specific queries to the various phone companies, but
in our judgment convenience alone does not justify the collection of
the personal information of huge numbers of ordinary Americans if the
same or more information can be obtained using less intrusive
methods.
If there is
additional evidence for the usefulness of the bulk phone records
collection program that we have not yet seen, we would welcome the
opportunity to review it.”
SOURCE: Senator Ron Wyden
Please tell me that “be available to”
does not mean “duplicated by” DHS.
Josh Peterson reports:
Domestic spying
capabilities used by the National Security Agency to collect
massive amounts of data on American citizens could soon be
available to the Department of Homeland Security — a
bureaucracy with the power to arrest citizens that is not subject to
limitations imposed on the NSA.
Read more on The
Daily Caller.
[From the article:
Republican critics of the DHS believed
the department was too incompetent and inexperienced to conduct
meaningful cybersecurity oversight for the nation’s critical
infrastructure.
This looked scary, but what it is is
bad security – failure to follow Best Practices or to employ common
sense.
BuckleySander LLP writes:
On June 5, the
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio held
that emails the intended recipient opened but did not delete were
not covered by the Stored Communications Act because they were not
being kept for the purposes of backup protection. Lazette v.
Kulmatycki, No. 12-02416, 2013 WL 2455937 (N.D. Ohio Jun. 5,
2013). In this case, an individual alleged, among other things, that
her former employer and supervisor violated the Stored Communications
Act when the supervisor read numerous emails in the employees
personal email account, which the supervisor accessed
through the employer-issued mobile device the employee surrendered
upon leaving the company. [Never let your system enter your userid
and password for systems like email. Always change your passwords
when returning computers. Bob] Some of these emails
previously had been opened by the intended recipient, while others
had not.
Read more on JDSupra
Law News.
[From the article:
The court declined to dismiss the
intended recipient’s claim with respect to the emails which were
first opened by the supervisor. The court rejected several other of
the employer’s SCA-related arguments, holding that (i) the SCA was
not designed only to apply to computer hackers and generally does
apply to the supervisor’s actions, (ii) the mobile device was not
the “facility” under the SCA, rather the server for the personal
email service was the facility, and (iii) the employee did not
implicitly consent to having her emails read by not deleting or
logging out of the personal account before surrendering the
employer-issued mobile device.
Probably not a surprise to anyone with
a brain, but is this really the first time legislators have asked?
Michael McAuliff reports:
FBI Director
Robert Mueller revealed Wednesday that the bureau uses drones to
conduct surveillance on U.S. soil.
Asked by Sen.
Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) if the FBI was following in the footsteps of
the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms in pursuing the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, Mueller
said yes. The vehicles are used in very narrow circumstances for
surveillance, he said.
Read more on Huffington
Post.
“We don't have regulations, but we
demand that you follow them. By the way, we think you are making
money – shame on you!”
DW reports:
France’s data
protection watchdog on Thursday gave Google three months to bring its
practices into line with French privacy law or risk an initial fine
of 150,000 euros ($201,100).
CNIL president
Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin said by the end of July all of the six
countries within the [EU data protection] task force – formed in
April – will have begun coercive action against Google.
Read more on Deutsche
Welle
[From the article:
Proposed Europe-wide data protection
legislation is not expected until 2015.
… Regulators accuse Goggle of
creating a data goldmine.
I doubt many will bother to learn about
this, much less actually use it.
… The Cookie Clearinghouse will
develop and maintain an “allow list” and “block list” to help
Internet users make privacy choices as they move through the
Internet. The Clearinghouse will identify instances where tracking
is being conducted without the user’s consent, such as by third
parties that the user never visited. To establish the “allow list”
and “block list,” the Cookie Clearinghouse is consulting with an
advisory board that will include individuals from browser companies
including Mozilla and Opera Software, academic privacy researchers,
as well as individuals with expertise in small businesses and in
European law, and the advisory board will continue to grow over time.
The Clearinghouse will also offer the public an opportunity to
comment. With this input, the Clearinghouse will develop an
objective set of criteria for when to include a website’s cookies
on the lists.
For more details, please visit the
Cookie Clearinghouse: http://cch.law.stanford.edu
Lawyers have a sense of humor?
Brilliant!
Lawyer
brilliantly bites township trying to shut his client's site
Sometimes, cease-and-desist letters are
mere morsels of intimidation, their legal grounds swamps. One lawyer
decided that the accuser, West Orange, N.J., itself needed to shut up
and go away. His letter smacks of literary genius.
...but we still can't fix potholes as
quickly as they appear.
NPR
Series on Big Data
What
Big Data Means For Big Cities, by Adam Frank: “Cities are
created human environments. They are ecosystems of energy and matter
imagined into existence through human effort. Because cities are
essentially ideas transformed into action, they are creatures of
information and a Big Data problem. By breathing in the torrents of
data cities generate every second, Big Data
scientists and engineers believe they can make cities efficient,
effective and responsive to human needs in ways that will reshape
their very nature. In the most ambitious vision, the Big
Data of Big Cities will mean these dense hubs of human habitation,
where 85 percent of all people will live by 2050, might become
adaptive, almost self-aware. Given the need to create a sustainable
global human culture on a finite planet with finite resources, some
say the Big Data revolution can’t come fast enough for Big Cities.”
Do they have any idea how this will
help students learn?
L.A.
Unified awards Apple $30-million contract for iPads
Apple
Inc. won a $30-million contract Tuesday from the Los
Angeles Unified School District, paving the way for the company
to provide every student with an iPad
in the nation's second-largest school system.
… L.A. Unified will begin rolling
out the devices to 47 campuses. However, by choosing Apple as the
sole vendor, the district also made a de facto commitment to spend
hundreds of millions of dollars with the Cupertino, Calif.,
digital giant over the next two years.
The push for tablets came from schools
Supt. John Deasy, who made it his goal to close the technology gap
for the overwhelming majority of low-income district students. He
expects to pay for the tablets with school construction bonds,
a controversial source because they are repaid over decades.
… New state and national tests will
be taken on computers, and district officials don't want students to
lack the necessary experience with them.
… The district is paying $678 per
device — higher than tablets available in stores — but the
computers will be preloaded with educational software. The price
does not include a wireless keyboard, which may be necessary for
older students.
Something for my students?
It is always handy to have an English
dictionary
installed on your computer. But a dictionary is not enough – for
people who write often, having a thesaurus is equally important.
TheSage’s English Dictionary and
Thesaurus is a free to use desktop
application for Windows computers.
… Options in the right pane of the
application let you enable text to speech which lets you hear
the pronunciation of the word and that of the synonyms.
The app also offers browser extensions
for Chrome and Firefox for better accessibility.
Given
time and something that amuses you, this is an example of what can
result.
My
Kind of Town, Stink Onions
The literal meanings of places in the
U.S., mapped.
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