Maybe Target wasn't the
only target?
Neiman
Marcus says hackers may have stolen payment card data
Luxury department store chain Neiman Marcus said on Friday that
hackers may have stolen customers' credit and debit card information,
the second cyber attack on a retailer in recent weeks.
The data breach comes after Target Corp on Friday said an
investigation found a cyber attack compromised the information of at
least 70 million customers, in the second-biggest retail cyber attack
on record.
Neiman Marcus does not know the number of customers affected by the
intrusion, company spokesperson Ginger Reeder said.
Neiman Marcus said its credit card processor alerted the retailer in
December about potential unauthorized payment card activities and the
U.S. Secret Service is investigating.
(Related) Another
downside of keeping quiet. ...and doing what is expected? (Also
lots of comments from knowledgeable people.)
Target:
Names, Emails, Phone Numbers on Up To 70 Million Customers Stolen
… the company still
has not disclosed any details about how the attackers broke in. This
lack of communication appears to have spooked many folks responsible
for defending other retailers from such attacks, according to
numerous interviews conducted by this reporter over the past few
weeks.
… The reason Target
is offering ID theft protection as a result of this breach probably
has more to do with the fact that this step has become part of the
playbook for companies which suffer a data breach. Since most
consumers confuse credit card fraud with ID theft, many will
interpret that to mean that the breached entity is somehow addressing
the problem, whereas experts tell me that this offer mainly serves as
a kind of “first response” to help the breached entity weather
initial public outrage over an intrusion.
Interesting way to
analyze their conclusions. Find several interested parties and ask
them for brief articles. Could be a way to collect Blog posts, I'll
have to consider it!
Just Security has
been holding a “mini forum” on the Report
of the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications
Technologies. The following list contains the current posts in this
series.
- Ryan Goodman, Thomas Earnest, Steve Vladeck, 10 Questions for the Review Group Members to Publicly Address at the Senate Hearings
- Julian Sanchez, Can We Do Without National Security Letters?
- Jennifer Granick, President’s Review Board Says: Protect Thy Neighbor’s Privacy
- Jennifer Granick, Foreigners and the Review Group Report: Part 2
- Julian Sanchez, How Limited is 702?
- Marty Lederman, The “Front-Page Rule”
The full article reads
like very “bad scifi” but consider just this snippet...
Rory Carroll describes
the future after attending CES 2014:
For
those who think the NSA the worst invader of privacy, I invite you to
share an afternoon with Aiden and Foster, two 11-year-old boys, as
they wrap up a Friday at school. Aiden invites his friend home to
hang out and they text their parents, who agree to the plan.
As
they ride on the bus Foster’s phone and a sensor on a wristband
alert the school and his parents of a deviation from his normal
route. The school has been notified that he is heading to Aiden’s
house so the police are not called. [Why would the school
call the police rather than Mom & Dad? It gets worse... Bob]
Read more on The
Guardian.
It allows anyone to
become an instant stalker. Instead of “Hey little girl!” now you
can say “Hey Sally Jones. Your dad asked me to take you to your
dance class.” (I'm sure the cop on the beat would like an App like
this.)
Stalker-friendly
app, NameTag, uses facial recognition to look you up online
… The makers of a
new app, "NameTag,"
say that their facial-recognition software is actually supposed to
make the world a much more connected place, but given that the
app can spot a face and wirelessly match it up to social media
profiles, all without giving people the option to opt out,
let's go with stalker-friendly.
According to the app's
developer, FacialNetwork.com:
NameTag
links your face to a single, unified online presence that includes
your contact information, social media profiles, interests, hobbies
and passions and anything else you want to share with the world.
… The reason
there's no opt-out or opt-in is going to sound familiar to those
who've read about other stalker-enabling apps such as
Girls Around Me.
Namely, NameTag is
drawing on publicly available information.
Oh, good. So far, the
government has been immune from such silly laws. Anyone giving odds
this will pass the Senate?
Pete Kasperowicz
reports:
The
House passed the Health Exchange Security and Transparency Act, H.R.
3811, in a 291-122 vote. Sixty-seven Democrats voted for the bill,
ignoring arguments from party leaders that the bill was a “messaging”
vote meant to discourage people from signing up for insurance.
The
one-sentence bill says that no later than two business days after any
security breach on an ObamaCare site is discovered, “the Secretary
of Health and Human Services shall provide notice of such breach to
each individual.” Republicans said that under current law, the
government is not required to notify people if their information is
put at risk.
Read more on The
Hill.
I don't see these as
competing Blogs, I see them as resources! This is the broad list of
nominees.
7th
Annual Blawg 100
Looks like the
broadcast TV guys are pushing hard.
Supreme
Court to hear case on Aereo's broadcast TV streaming
The U.S. Supreme Court
will hear a battle between TV broadcasters and Aereo, a startup that
streams television over the Internet, as the final step in a case
that could have broad implications for the future of online TV
services.
The TV networks and
broadcasters asked the Supreme Court to take the case after a federal
court in New York ruled
last year that Aereo’s service wasn’t breaking copyright law.
… The broadcasters
are asking the Court to deny consumers the ability to use the cloud
to access a more modern-day television antenna and DVR. If the
broadcasters succeed, the consequences to consumers and the cloud
industry are chilling,” he
wrote.
At present, Aereo is
available in New York, Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Salt Lake City,
Houston, Dallas, Denver,
Detroit and Baltimore. It has plans to expand its US$8-per-month
service to additional cities in 2014. The video recording service is
available for an additional $4 per month.
(Related) How LA see's
the world.
Supreme
Court and Aereo: A Betamax ruling for the 21st century?
Having ducked the question once, the Supreme Court on Friday agreed
to decide whether the principles outlined in the landmark 1984 Sony
Betamax ruling apply when devices in the home give way to services in
the cloud.
One of my students just
wrote a similar paper, with very different conclusions.
Paper
– The Shooting Cycle – A Study of Mass Shootings in America
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on January 10, 2014
The
Shooting Cycle - Josh Blackman, South Texas College of Law;
Shelby Baird, Yale University, January 5, 2014. Connecticut Law
Review, Vol 46, 2014.
“The pattern is a
painfully familiar one. A gunman opens fire in a public place,
killing many innocent victims. After this tragedy, support for gun
control surges. With a closing window for reform, politicians and
activists quickly push for new gun laws. But as time elapses,
support decreases. Soon enough, the passions fade, and society
returns to the status quo. We call this paradigm “the shooting
cycle.” This article provides the first qualitative and
quantitative analysis of the shooting cycle, and explains how and why
people and governments react to mass shootings. This article
proceeds in five parts. First, we bring empirical clarity to the
debate over mass shootings, and show that contrary to popular
opinion, they are fairly rare, and are not occurring more
frequently. Second, relying on cognitive biases such as the
availability heuristic, substitution effect, and cultural cognition
theory, we demonstrate why the perception of risk and reaction to
these rare and unfamiliar events are heightened. Third we chronicle
the various stages of the shooting cycle: tragedy, introspection,
action, divergence, and return to the status quo. During the earlier
stages, emotional capture sets in, allowing politicians and activists
to garner support for reform. But, after the spike, soon support for
reform fades, and regresses to the mean. Fifth, with this framework,
we view the year following the horrific massacre in Newtown through
the lens of the shooting cycle. We conclude by addressing whether
the shooting cycle can be broken.”
For my Math students
(and fellow Math teachers)
Wolfram
Alpha Examples for Students and Teachers
Colleen Young's
Mathematics,
Learning and Web 2.0 is a good blog to subscribe to for
practical, do-now mathematics instruction ideas. When you visit her
blog make sure you click the "Wolfram Alpha" tab under
which you will find seven slideshows containing examples of how
students can use Wolfram Alpha. The examples correspond to questions
posted on her mathematics
blog for students.
If you haven't used
Wolfram Alpha before or you're trying to introduce it to people who
have not used, take a look at the following Planet
Nutshell explanation of how Wolfram Alpha works and what makes it
different from Google search.
[Be sure to check the
slideshows
which illustrate many examples. Bob]
The school already has
a 3D printer. But I want one of these!
– 3D printing
describes a host of technologies that are used to fabricate physical
objects directly from CAD data sources. In 3D chocolate printing,
chocolate is melted, tempered and deposited into 2D cross-section on
a substrate like a printer printing a 2D image onto paper. The
substrate is then lowered by a layer thickness and the deposition
process repeats layer-by-layer to form a solid 3D chocolate product.
The perfect website!
– is a simple site
which features a button entitled “Make Everything OK”. If you
are having a particularly bad day or feeling not so well, just click
the button, and the site will inform you that it is in the process of
“making everything OK”. It is a fun website with no real other
use than to amuse if you are not in the best of moods.
News for those of us
who are easily amused.
… The Obama
Administration issued guidelines
for student discipline, urging schools to use law
enforcement as a “last resort.” The guidelines, reports
The New York Times, are “a response to a rise in zero-tolerance
policies that have disproportionately increased the number of
arrests, suspensions and expulsions of minority students for even
minor, nonviolent offenses.”
… The California
Institute of Technology has adopted
an open access policy for its faculty’s scholarship.
… The LAUSD
iPad saga continues! According
to KPCC, “only 208 of the district’s 800 schools have the
network capacity to support every student and teacher having an
iPad.” A great example of the 7
Ps.
… “Here’s
Exactly How Much the Government Would Have to Spend to Make Public
College Tuition-Free”: $62.6 billion dollars.
The
New America Foundation says
that the federal government spent a whole $69 billion in 2013 on its
hodgepodge of financial aid programs, such as Pell Grants for
low-income students, tax breaks, work study funding. And that
doesn't even include loans.
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