Saturday, July 27, 2013

A pawn sacrifice or Czar takes pawn?



U.S. tells Russia that Snowden won't face death penalty
   In a letter sent to Russia and obtained by CBS News, Holder wrote that Snowden, who faces charges of espionage by the U.S. government, would not be put up for the death penalty or be tortured if he were extradited to the U.S.


For my Computer Security students. 
From Verizon:
… Verizon is addressing this need by launching a new initiative to collect, organize and publish all publicly disclosed data breaches.  The data is coded into VERIS format and available in an interactive dashboard via Tableau Public as well as in individual files in JSON format in a GitHub repository.  Both can be reached from the VERIS Community site as well.
The VERIS Community Database goes live this week with more than 1,200 reported incidents from the last few years.  This initial batch of data comes from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) incidents, the sites of the various Attorneys General that provide breach notification source documents, media reports and press releases.  The goal is to continue to augment this dataset to capture as many incidents as possible so that others can benefit.
This data is provided as a resource to benefit the industry at large, as the ability to access and query data breach information improves everyone’s ability to protect their organizations and data.
Read more on Verizon.


New Jersey again.  The “Lower  Merion” incident was a while ago (2010), but at least New Jersey noticed.
John Mooney reports:
The provocatively named Anti-Big Brother Act arose out of a situation in Pennsylvania in which a school district was accused of spying on students through their school-issued laptops, including taking literally thousands of pictures.
New Jersey legislators seeking to prevent such incidents here passed the new law this past spring. It requires districts to notify students and their families that computers issued to them may be equipped to record their locations and use.  It also says that such information will not be used “in a manner that would violate the privacy rights of the student or any individual residing with the student.”
But that’s where things can get murky, so the state Department of Education this week released additional guidelines about what the law covers and what other policies should also be in place to cover extenuating circumstances.
Read more on NJ Spotlight.


One of those interesting “thought experiments.” 
Could the Government Get a Search Warrant for Your Thoughts?


Privacy is subjective.  Is that a new thought? 
What We Talk About When We Talk About Privacy
The past, present, and future of a public anxiety
In the video above, three prominent thinkers discuss the past and future of privacy in the United States.  Privacy, they point out, has always been contingent on the culture and the technology of the people who aim to preserve it -- and to violate it.   "Government intrusion was not a factor, I would say, until the turn of the 20th century," the law professor Robert Ellis Smith notes.


I would not have predicted this outcome. 
Derek Scally reports:
Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) has dismissed a complaint that the Irish subsidiaries of Facebook and Apple breached EU law by sharing data with US intelligence service via the Prism programme.
The DPC ruled there was “nothing to investigate” in a complaint filed by Austrian privacy campaigner Max Schrems, as Apple and Facebook had, in their view, acted within the terms of the EU-US data-sharing agreement, dubbed the “Safe Harbour” .
Read more on Irish Times.  TechCrunch has additional details.


Didn’t this used to be the other way round? 
Jacob Sullum of Reason writes:
The lead story in today’sNew York Times suggests that Chief Justice John Roberts has been stacking the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) with government-friendly conservatives. [Didn’t that used to be an oxymoron?  Bob]  Charlie Savage reports that “86 percent of his choices have been Republican appointees, and 50 percent have been former executive branch officials.”  The corresponding figures for Roberts’ two predecessors, William Rehnquist and Warren Burger, are 66 percent and 39 percent, respectively.  “While the positions taken by individual judges on the court are classified,” Savage writes, “academic studies have shown that judges appointed by Republicans since Reagan have been more likely than their colleagues to rule in favor of the government in non-FISA cases over people claiming civil liberties violations.”  He notes that critics troubled by the chief justice’s FISCal power have proposed changing the way the judges are appointed.
Although it is plausible that the shift Savage identifies has produced a court somewhat more deferential to the Justice Department’s requests, the effect may not be apparent in the day-to-day work of the court, where the government’s nearly perfect record probably is due to the weak standards created by Congress.
Read more of his opinion piece on Reason.


This sounds useful.
Casetext – freely available, annotated database of legal resources
Casetext is a freely available, annotated database of legal resources.  Researchers find relevant documents and immediately see analysis by other attorneys and paths for further research.  Contributors mark up documents in a simple, digital format and make their expertise widely known, all while helping to build a comprehensive public research tool.  Who are we?  Co-founders Jake Heller and Joanna Huey met in 2009, when Jake was president of the Stanford Law Review and Joanna was president of the Harvard Law Review.  After clerking together for the Honorable Michael Boudin, we both worked as associates at law firms before we joined forces to build Casetext.
Research - What is in your database?
Our database currently includes the following cases:
  • all U.S. Supreme Court cases,
  • federal circuit court cases from Volume 1 of F.2d,
  • federal district court cases published in F.Supp. and F.Supp.2d from 1980, and
  • Delaware cases published in A., A.2d, and A.3d from Volume 30 of A.
The database was last updated on June 14, 2013.”


Sometimes it’s good to have an “edu” email address…
The Best Educator Discounts Of The Summer
Most companies will offer some form of educational discount. Just ask and they will likely come up with at least some sort of offer to try and entice a sale.  Less common however is when products are offered for no cost at all.
Free Server Space:
Amazon currently offers grants for educational use of its extensive server network (one of the worlds largest). Teachers may apply to receive credits good towards server space rentals. As of this writing, the offer is for up to $100 credit for each student.
Free Project Management Software:
Teachers of more advanced classes (particularly those with a business or career focus) may be interested in LiquidPlanner’s offer for free educational use of their project management software for up to 15 ‘seats’.  Beyond being used by teachers to manage class workloads, students can also get this offer themselves to use in their own collaborative efforts (such as a senior project).
Free Mapping Software:
Direct from Google, the king of online mapping (and the rest of the Internet too…), comes this offer for free access to Google Earth Pro, as well as the Google Maps Engine.  Ideal for social studies, Google Earth can be a great interactive tool for lessons and projects, while fiddling around with the Google Maps Engine can provide good insights into the world of software development.
Free Engineering Software:
This offer is a great value for aspiring architecture and engineering students and is ideal for schools that are looking to improve their access to STEM education.  AutoDesk has made their leading engineering software available for free to secondary and post-secondary classrooms.  A standard in the engineering industry, early access to this software can be a great head start for students.
Miscellaneous Discounts:
While not pretty, or always relevant, the Freaky Freddy website is a good repository of random discounts for teachers and is updated quite regularly.

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