This should not be
amusing, but I'll wager it is.
From the good folks at
EPIC:
EPIC
has filed a Freedom
of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Justice’s
Office of Legal Counsel for the secret legal analyses that justifies
the use of the NSA PRISM program. PRISM is a program that allows the
FBI and NSA to collect information – including the contents of
internet users’ communications – directly from internet service
providers, and without a warrant. Through this lawsuit, EPIC seeks
to clarify which, if any, legal authority would permit such extensive
domestic surveillance of personal activities. The secrecy of these
opinions is of increasing concern to Open Government advocates.
EPIC, joined by a coalition of FOIA organizations, recently filed an
amicus
brief in support of a New York Times lawsuit for opinions of the
Office of Legal Counsel. For more information, see EPIC
v. DOJ – PRISM.
Shared custody? Shared
ownership?
John Moore and Rob
Tholemeier write:
A
common and somewhat unique aspect to EHR vendor contracts is that the
EHR vendor lays claim to the data entered into their system. Rob and
I have worked in many industries as analysts. Nowhere, in our
collective experience, have we seen such a thing. Manufacturers,
retailers, financial institutions, etc. would never think of
relinquishing their data to their enterprise software vendor of
choice.
It
confounds us as to why healthcare organizations let their vendors of
choice get away with this and frankly, in this day of increasing
concerns about patient privacy, why is this practice allowed in the
first place?
Read more on
HealthcareITNews.
Of course, they take the position that the data belongs to the
healthcare organization (and maybe not the patient?), which may raise
some ire in some of this site’s readers, but at the very least,
entities should not be allowing EHR vendors to assume ownership of
data. Responsibility to protect data, yes. Ownership as in with all
the rights that go with ownership, no.
(Related) Is this a
first? I kind of doubt it...
WASHINGTON,
Nov. 20 – The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ Veterans
Health Administration issued the following directive:
1.
REASON FOR ISSUE: This Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Directive
establishes policy for approving and providing authorized users
access to VHA personally identifiable information (PII) in
Information Technology (IT) systems of the Department of Veterans
Affairs (VA).
2.
SUMMARY OF CHANGES: This is a new Directive.
Read more via Targeted
News Service here.
“We don't need no
stinking Internet!” It also makes a nifty stalking tool!
The
Internet of Things, Unplugged and Untethered
A
startup called Iotera wants to let you track your pets, your kids, or
your belongings without relying on commercial wireless networks.
… The system uses
GPS-embedded tags that can last for months on a single charge,
occasionally sending their coordinates over unlicensed wireless
spectrum to small base stations with a range of several miles.
Iotera expects
businesses to use its technology to track everything from tools on
construction sites to workers in dangerous places like oil rigs. Or
people might use it to keep an eye on their pets. Iotera’s founders
say two companies (which it won’t name) are trying it out. One is
using it to help parents monitor their children’s whereabouts, and
the other is tracking company-owned devices.
Interesting. Does
MakeUseOf.com know the story of Kim Dotcom (listed as 'principal
strategist')? Still, “50GB free” is an incentive.
– is a site for
uploading, downloading, and storing files. Your data is encrypted
and decrypted during transfer of the files, to ensure your privacy.
Your data is accessible anytime from whatever device you are using.
Only you control the keys to your files. Share folders with your
contacts and see their updates in real time. Online collaboration is
private and secure.
Seriously, did anyone
expect a rational strategy?
Newtown
report: Shooter Adam Lanza had no clear motive, was obsessed with
Columbine
Newtown shooter Adam
Lanza had no clear motive, but was obsessed with Columbine and
planned the rampage that took the lives of 20 children and six school
staffers at Sandy Hook Elementary, "including the taking of his
own life," according to a long-awaited report on last December's
shooting released Monday.
"Many people have
asked why the shooter did what he did on December 14, 2012,"
said the 48-page report, which
was published on the state's Division of Criminal Justice website.
Is it easier to allow
the “nattering nabobs of negativism” to make rules they can't
enforce – or even know when they have been violated. We'll be over
here doing what we think is important.
Colum Lynch reports:
The
United States, Great Britain, and its chief intelligence allies,
known as the Five Eyes, agreed late Friday to support a Brazilian and
German sponsored General Assembly resolution promoting an
international right to privacy, but only after thwarting
efforts to impose new legal constraints on foreign espionage that
could potentially restrain the U.S. National Security Agency,
according to diplomats involved in the negotiations.
Read more on
ForeignPolicy.com
(free reg. required)
For my Statistics
students, who may agree that Big Data is the future, but still hate
math...
I have no idea about
the privacy and security controls in place, but this
is fascinating stuff and demonstrates some of the good that can
come out of Big Data.
[From
the article:
“This study broadly
shows that we can take decades of off-the-shelf electronic medical
record data, link them to DNA, and quickly validate known
associations across hundreds of previous studies,” lead author Josh
Denny, M.D., Vanderbilt associate professor of biomedical informatics
and medicine, said in a statement. “And, at the same time, we can
discover many new associations.”
(Related) Those old
“rules of thumb” are crumbling...
Even today, most
organizations technically struggle to answer even the simplest 80/20
analytics questions: Which 20% of customers generate 80% of the
profits? Which 20% of suppliers are responsible for 80% of customer
UX complaints? What 20% of customers facilitate 80% of the most
helpful referrals? Indeed, even organizations where top management
keeps their eyes glued to KPI-driven dashboards have trouble agreeing
on what their Top Ten Most Important Customer/Client 80/20 analytics
should be.
That’s not good
because Big Data promises to redefine the fundamentals of the 80/20
rule.
Question: Is the speed
of adoption related to productivity improvements? Again I point to:
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~bhhall/e124/David90_dynamo.pdf
Many people suggest
that rates of new product introduction and adoption are speeding up,
but is it really, across the board? The answer seems to be yes. An
automobile industry
trade consultant, for instance, observes that “Today, a typical
automotive design cycle is approximately 24 to 36 months, which is
much faster than the 60-month life cycle from five years ago.” The
chart below, created by Nicholas
Felton of the New
York Times, shows how long it took various categories of
product, from electricity to the Internet, to achieve different
penetration levels in US households. It took decades for the
telephone to reach 50% of households, beginning before 1900. It took
five years or less for cellphones to accomplish the same penetration
in 1990. As you can see from the chart, innovations introduced more
recently are being adopted more quickly. By analogy, firms with
competitive advantages in those areas will need to move faster to
capture those opportunities that present themselves.
Something for my
website students. (Well, I thought it was fun.)
Welcome
To Revolver Maps 2.0
Revolver Maps
are real time visitor globes rendered by the Revolver Engine.
No comments:
Post a Comment