Sometimes it's “please
stay a bit further from my carrier.” Sometimes it's “stay out of
my ADIZ.” Sometimes it's “how far are you prepared to go?”
… The incident came as the USS Cowpens was operating near China's
only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, and at a time of heightened
tensions in the region following Beijing's declaration of an Air
Defense Identification Zone farther north in the East China Sea, a
U.S. defense official said.
Another Chinese warship maneuvered near the Cowpens in the incident
on December 5, and the Cowpens was forced to take evasive action to
avoid a collision, the Pacific Fleet said in its statement.
Scam du jour?
Dissent's checklist would make an interesting flowchart.
Over on
DataBreaches.net, a number of people are reporting that they have
received notification letters for the Maricopa
Community Colleges breach, but that they’ve never attended the
college and have no idea why they’re receiving letters.
Today, I got an email
about a breach reported on this site (phiprivacy.net). I’m
redacting it, but it says:
Dear
Dissent,
I
found your web site when I was investigating a letter from the above
doctor. In the letter, he claims that his laptop was stolen and “my”
records may be on his laptop. I don’t know this doc.
In
the meantime, the letter offers me free “” services.
This
looks like spam, but much classier. Do you know about this?
Thanks
for your diligence.
Under HITECH’s breach
notification rule, breached entities must include a phone number
where you can call for more information about what data a breached
entity held on you. If you ever receive a breach notification letter
and have no idea who the entity is or why they have data on you, call
them and ask. If
the phone number is for the credit monitoring service and they can’t
answer your question about how the doctor got your information, call
the doctor’s office directly and ask them to explain how/why they
have information on you. If they won’t tell you, remember that you
can file a HIPAA complaint with HHS using HHS’s online
complaint system.
And don’t hesitate to
google the name of any free credit monitoring service you are being
offered if you suspect spam or something evil. The service mentioned
in this correspondent’s email is a legitimate service, but if
you’re leery that you’re being sent to a site that could steal
your personal information, just check first to make sure they’re on
the up and up.
You may change your
mind, but Facebook never does. You have no privacy on Facebook.
Jennifer Golbeck
writes:
…We
spend a lot of time thinking about what to post on Facebook. Should
you argue that political point your high school friend made? Do your
friends really want to see yet another photo of your cat (or baby)?
Most of us have, at one time or another, started writing something
and then, probably wisely, changed our minds.
Unfortunately,
the code that powers Facebook still knows what you
typed – even if you decide not to publish it. It turns out the
things you explicitly choose not
to share aren’t entirely private.
Read more on The
Age.
Would a surveillance
video taken by a nearby business be an educational record? How about
a school video of students patronizing a nearby business?
Copies
of footage from surveillance cameras are not confidential educational
records, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Utah chapter
says. Canyons
School District didn’t
agree, but the SPJ hopes the Utah Court of Appeals will.
Last
week, the Utah
Headliners filed an amicus brief with the
court, seeking to prevent what it says could be a wrongful expansion
of FERPA privacy. FERPA,
the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act,
Read more on Student
Press Law Center.
[From
the article:
The
plaintiff, Roger Bryner, requested copies of surveillance footage
under Utah’s
open records law
to see if the footage showed his son in a fight with another student.
When his request was denied under FERPA, he filed a complaint in
district court and lost.
The school district
maintains the footage is protected because it is
maintained by the district and identifies the students.
The Utah Headliners argue the footage is not maintained by an
educational institution and is not, in fact, an educational record at
all.
“A
surveillance recording is used to maintain the physical security and
safety of an educational institution,” attorney David Reymann wrote
in the SPJ chapter’s amicus brief. “It is akin to a law
enforcement record, which is expressly excluded from the definition
of ‘education record’ under FERPA.”
… “If
a surveillance recording is held to be an education record merely
because it contains identifiable images of students, so might a
videotaped recording of a school play, or footage of a football game,
or a byline picture in the school newspaper, or even a yearbook
photograph,” Reymann wrote.
Oh goodie, a privacy
kerfuffle!
By Divonne Smoyer and
Aaron Lancaster write:
The U.S. Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) has understandably been the focus of much attention
in the data privacy world. The FTC is considered by many to be the
primary U.S. data privacy regulator, and this blog has gone so far as
calling the FTC the U.S.’s
de facto data
protection authority (DPA). We respectfully
disagree. The FTC is facing unprecedented challenges, while state
attorneys general (AGs), who have similar—and in some instances
greater—authority, are taking more and more steps to protect
the privacy of their citizens.
Read more on IAPP
Privacy Perspectives.
Any record of students
talked out of this type of psychotic event? For my statistics
students.
Active
Shooter Events 2000-2013 – ABC Action News
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on December 15, 2013
“The FBI defines
‘active shooter’ events as incidents where a gunman arrives on a
scene intending to commit mass murder. They can include events that
result in no fatalities. The data
on this page represents the most complete
compilation of events tracked by Texas
State University’s Dr. Peter Blair that
have been publicly released. [Does this suggest there are some that
have not been “publicly released?” Bob] To select
data sets – mapped and sortable [Active Shooter Map, Details,
Shooting Location, Total Victims Shot By Year, Active Shooters by
Age, Increase by Years, Active Shooter Search, Active Shooter
Analysis] use the drop down menu for details.”
(Related) For my
Criminal Justice students
Paper
– Firearms and suicides in US states
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on December 15, 2013
Firearms
and suicides in US states, International
Review of Law and Economics, Volume
37, March 2014, Pages 180–188. Justin Thomas
Briggs and Alexander Tabarrok. Department of Economics, George Mason
University, Fairfax, VA.
- Empirical study of firearm possession and suicides at the state-level over 2000–2009.
- Firearms are found to be very strongly related to firearm suicides, as expected.
- Firearms are also found to be strongly related to overall suicides, despite evidence for substantial substitution in method of suicide.
- There is evidence for a diminishing effect of guns on suicides as ownership levels increase.
- The results hold using instrumental variables estimation, a variety of measures of gun ownership, and across a variety of sets of controls.
“Firearms play a unique role in public discourse. The US
Constitution protects the right to bear arms. For some, this right
represents an important safeguard against tyranny. For hunters and
sportsmen, firearms enable a vibrant recreation. Firearms
also play an important but largely unknown role in self-defence.
[You would think the NRA (if no one else) would gather statistics on
self defense... Bob] Yet in 2010, the latest year for
which there are complete figures, there were 19,392 suicides, 11,078
homicides, and 606 accidental deaths by firearm, in addition to
73,505 non-fatal injuries by firearms (Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, 2012).
Unfortunately, even basic information such as how many households own
firearms is irregular and partly as a result there is little
scientific consensus on how firearms influence violent injuries.
Although the effect of firearms on homicides has been a topic of
recurring debate, less attention is often given to suicide, despite
there being more deaths attributable to suicide than to homicide.
This may be in part because people view suicide as a private decision
only affecting friends and family of the deceased, although this
impact should not be minimized. But many psychological studies find
that suicides are frequently impulsive decisions [as
are most school shootings? Bob] (e.g. Simon
et al., 2002), and that less than 10% of
suicide survivors go on to successfully re-attempt suicide over the
long term (Owens
et al., 2002). Few suicides appear to be
considered choices. In this study we specifically explore the
relationship between firearm ownership rates and rates of suicide,
using a newly constructed dataset covering US states from 2000 to
2009. We utilize all data from the first state-level representative
survey of gun ownership, as well as four other proxies thereof,
including one new to the literature. In addition, we will develop
instruments for firearm ownership rates.”
My competition?
CreativeLIVE
Launches Unique 24/7 Live Education Broadcast For Free Classes
CreativeLIVE
is taking a lead with its 24/7 live online education broadcast
network. What’s more noteworthy about the classes on offer is that
they will be completely free. CreativeLive will host live classes on
five free channels: Art & Design, Business & Money, Maker &
Craft, Music & Audio and Photo & Video. The round-the-clock
classes, seven days a week, will help you switch on your learning
wherever you are in the world.
Live broadcasts of
instructor led classes is just a step away from prominence. Google
recently launched Helpouts
with live video as the instructional medium; Google’s offering is a
mixed bag with both free and priced classes. CreativeLIVE already
has an engaged community with 2 million students in 200 countries
worldwide who together have consumed 1 billion minutes of free
education. The educational site says an average student watches more
than 3 hours of content.
The company also has a
freemium model – those who miss the live broadcasts can purchase
the recorded courses.
A quick way to create a
“Here's how” GIF. NOTE: Source code available!
– allows you to
record a selected area of your screen and save as a animated GIF.
Two versions are available (both included in a single .exe) –
Legacy and Modern. The languages are English, Spanish, and
Portuguese. If you choose to record with the cursor, remember that,
in the editor, the cursor will not appear. Just move the window
around to record what you want.
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