Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Strange reporting. Has Bradley Manning had his sex change and is now Chelsea Manning? If someone is “wanted for questioning” can they leave the country?
New details in how the feds take laptops at border
Newly disclosed U.S. government files provide an inside look at the Homeland Security Department's practice of seizing and searching electronic devices at the border without showing reasonable suspicion of a crime or getting a judge's approval.
The documents published Monday describe the case of David House, a young computer programmer in Boston who had befriended Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, the soldier convicted of giving classified documents to WikiLeaks. U.S. agents quietly waited for months for House to leave the country then seized his laptop, thumb drive, digital camera and cellphone when he re-entered the United States. They held his laptop for weeks before returning it, acknowledging one year later that House had committed no crime and promising to destroy copies the government made of House's personal data.
… Border agents were told that House was "wanted for questioning" regarding the "leak of classified material." They were given explicit instructions: If House attempted to cross the U.S. border, "secure digital media," and "ID all companions."
… Because House had refused to give the agents his password and apparently had configured his computer in such a way that appeared to stump computer forensics experts, [Interesting claim Bob] it wasn't until June 2011 that investigators were satisfied that House's computer didn't contain anything illegal. By then, they had already sent a second image of his hard drive to Army criminal investigators familiar with the Manning case. In August 2011, the Army agreed that House's laptop was clean and promised to destroy any files from House's computer.


Believe what you will. I doubt the ISPs never noticed.
Phil Muncaster reports:
India’s authorities are carrying out wide-ranging and indiscriminate internet surveillance of their citizens thanks to secret intercept systems located at the international gateways of several large ISPs, according to The Hindu.
The Chennai-based paper claimed after an investigation that Lawful Intercept and Monitoring (LIM) systems had been deployed by the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT), in violation of the government’s own communications and privacy rules.
Read more on The Register.


Possibly innocent, but something smells here. Are any other AGs sending similar letters?
AP reports:
A West Virginia nonprofit has turned down a federal grant it received to help residents navigate new health insurance options under the Affordable Care Act after it received an inquiry from Attorney General Patrick Morrisey about how it would protect consumer information.
Read more on The Intelligencer.
[From the article:
Clarksburg-based West Virginia Parent Training Inc. did not respond to a letter it received from Morrisey directing it to answer 26 questions about the group's personnel and hiring practices, including employee background checks and employee monitoring programs.
"We've declined (the grant) because of unforeseen circumstances," WVPTI Executive Director Pat Haberbosch said.


If the FCC can't do it by regulation, would Congress risk their campaign contributions from Google, Amazon, et al?
Federal judges may be ready to rule against Net neutrality
… The Hill reports that judges in a federal court seemed unconvinced Monday of the Federal Communications Commission's arguments regarding the regulations during a landmark case involving Verizon.
… Two out of three judges on a panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals indicated that they agree with Verizon's position that the FCC doesn't have the authority to make the restriction, according to the article.


Perspective. A very interesting read.
The data factory revolution
"Today, more than half of the most valuable Internet companies are not in the US. It's never been the case for such a huge, abrupt shift in the nature of human work," Sequoia Capital's Michael Moritz said.
"Between San Francisco and San Jose something utterly remarkable is going on, something that has only occurred in one or two other places in the whole course of human history," said Sequoia Capital's Michael Mortiz, speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt conference on Monday.
He is talking about the shift from Industrial Age, which took root in places such as northwest England and Detroit and ushered in factories and centralized tools and distribution channels, to what he calls the "data factory." In the case of the data factories of Silicon Valley, increased bandwidth, storage, and computational power, as well as the explosion in apps, are transforming the nature of work. "There's never been anything like it in human history ... never before have people been empowered with tools like the smartphone," Moritz said.
The data factory doesn't just make tools accessible to the masses, it also does so for free or close to free
… At the center of the data factory revolution are the large scale companies, such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, LinkedIn, and Priceline, who attract hundreds of million or billions of users.


How the Pros do it!
New on LLRX – Competitive Intelligence: A Selective Resource Guide – September 2013
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on September 8, 2013
Sabrina I. Pacifici’s comprehensive current awareness guide focuses on leveraging a selected but wide range of reliable, topical, predominantly free websites and resources. The goal is to support an effective research process to search, discover, access, monitor, analyze and review current and historical data, news, reports, statistics and profiles on companies, markets, countries, people and issues, from a national and a global perspective. Sabrina’s guide is a “best of the Web” resource that encompasses search engines, portals, government sponsored open source databases, alerts, data archives, publisher specific services and applications. All of her recommendations are accompanied by links to trusted content targeted sources that are produced by top media and publishing companies, business, government, academe, IGOs and NGOs.


Serious question girls & boys: What else should we do this for? Shakespeare’s plays? Kipling's poems?
The Complete Works of Chopin, for Everybody, for Free
Frédéric Chopin passed away more than 160 years ago -- sufficiently long ago that today all of his compositions belong to the public domain.
Yet, despite this, if you wanted to make a movie with Chopin's Nocturne in C-Sharp minor playing in the background, chances are you'd have to pay royalties to do so. Why is that?
The reason points to a little wrinkle in the public domain, one that commonly plagues classical works: While the music is technically in the public domain (and you are free to play it, perform it, record it however you like), recordings of these public-domain works tend to be copyrighted.
A Kickstarter project, "Set Chopin Free," aims to do exactly what its name suggests: Release Chopin recordings from their copyright cell.
Here's how it works: If the project successfully meets its fundraising goal ($75,000 by Sunday, October 20), it will hire musicians (some of the best Chopin pianists in the world) to record and release to the public under a CC0 license the entirety of Chopin's life's work, some 245 pieces.


For my bargain hunting students.
Become A Boss On Craigslist With These Apps And Services
Don’t just browse Craigstlist from time to time – be notified every time something you want to buy is listed.
Sellers on Craigslist usually want to sell as quickly as possible, meaning if you find an item before anyone else you’re more likely to actually get it. Job searches, similarly, offer an advantage to the quick
Get Notifications Anywhere With IFTTT
Get Email Notifications With NotiCraig
Other Craigslist Search Engines

(Related) Speaking of IFTTT
5 Unusual IFTTT Recipes You May Not Have Thought Of
Get an SMS Alert on Craigslist Search Results


An Infographic that shows you how to create an Infographic.
How To Make An Infographic Using Piktochart


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