Tuesday, May 13, 2014

A tie-in to my “How to Lie with Statistics” lecture. Perfect timing.
Ukraine favors Europe over Russia, new CNN poll finds
… Two out of three (67%) people in Ukraine approve of economic sanctions against Russia, while one out of three (29%) disapproves, the poll by ComRes for CNN found.
Ukrainians tend to see Russian President Vladimir Putin as dangerous and a strong leader, while they consider U.S. President Barack Obama friendly.
More than half (56%) said they felt a stronger sense of loyalty to Europe than to Russia, while 19% said they felt more loyal to Russia and 22% said neither. Three percent said they didn't know.
… The findings, by the London-based agency ComRes for CNN, come from a nationally representative telephone poll of 1,000 Ukrainians conducted by telephone in Russian and Ukrainian from May 7-11. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.


Things and stuff. Security gets more generic as we “progress.”
The Massive Challenge of Securing the Internet of Things
If the buzz last year was all about software defined networking (SDN), this year’s buzz is about the Internet of Things – everyday devices that are IP-enabled, can communicate over the Internet and can transmit what may be very confidential and important data. In fact, according to data from Cisco, there are now more “things” connected to the Internet than there are people on Earth, and these “things” are not just smartphones and tablets. For example, a Dutch startup, Sparked, is using wireless sensors on cattle so that when one of them is sick or pregnant, it sends a message to the farmer.
Massive number of devices means massive ways to target an organization - Gartner estimates that the number of IP-enabled devices will reach 26 billion while IDC projects 212 billion installed devices by the end of 2020. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC)’s chairwoman, in a conference on the Internet of Things last year, predicted 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020.


How specific must the “request” be? “Delete document 806-b” or “Delete stuff related to my bankruptcy?”
Alan Travis and Charles Arthur report the stunning ruling:
A European court has backed the “right to be forgotten” and said Google must delete “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” data from its results when a member of the public requests it.
The test case ruling by the European Union’s court of justice against Google Spain was brought by a Spanish man, Mario Costeja González, after he failed to secure the deletion of an auction notice of his repossessed home dating from 1998 on the website of a mass circulation newspaper in Catalonia.
Read more on The Guardian.
This is huge.
[From the article:
In technical terms the ruling establishes that a search engine such as Google must be regarded as a "data controller" under the data protection laws in those EU countries where it establishes a branch to promote and sell advertising.

(Related) How would this judge request removal of data?
Cammy Clark reports:
Judge David Audlin was serving as Monroe County’s chief circuit judge in late April when he announced via an open letter to friends and colleagues that he was retiring with four years left in his second six-year term.
The well-respected Audlin, 56, who was elected in 2006 and again in 2012, did not give a reason at the time for his sudden and unexpected departure from his $145,000-per-year judgeship with the 16th Judicial Circuit Court.
On Friday, his last day as a judge, Audlin said his voluntary decision was based on an “inappropriate invasion of my privacy.”
Read more on Miami Herald.


Interesting enough to watch?
From PBS:
How did the government come to spy on millions of Americans? In United States of Secrets, a two-part series airing May 13 and 20, FRONTLINE goes behind the headlines to reveal the dramatic inside story of the U.S. government’s massive and controversial secret surveillance program—and the lengths they went to trying to keep it hidden from the public.
Part one, from Michael Kirk (League of Denial, Bush’s War), goes inside Washington to piece together the secret political history of “The Program,” which began in the wake of September 11 and continues today—even after the revelations of its existence by Edward Snowden.
Then, in part two, Martin Smith (The Untouchables, To Catch a Trader) explores the secret relationship between Silicon Valley and the National Security Agency: How have the government and tech companies worked together to gather and warehouse your data? Part political thriller and part spy novel, United States of Secrets is FRONTLINE’s definitive history of domestic surveillance in a post-9/11 world.


Stuff you can use.
John E. Dunn reports:
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is burnishing its credentials as a centre of best practice by publishing a hit-list of the top security weaknesses it says are the root cause of many of the data breaches it investigates.
Protecting Personal Data in Online Services: Learning from the Mistakes of Others serves as an outline of the top issues, each of which is accompanied by an analysis with recommendations on remediation. The ICO doesn’t order the security vulnerabilities in terms of their seriousness, but some are so basic the point is that simple failings are often the most accommodating to attackers.
Read more on TechWorld.


Food for thought, lawyer guys. Is he right?
The Importance of Cybersecurity to the Legal Profession and Outsourcing as a Best Practice – Part One
Cybersecurity should be job number one for all attorneys. Why? Because we handle confidential computer data, usually secret information that belongs to our clients, not us. We have an ethical duty to protect this information under Rule 1.6 of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct.
… The threat is now increasing rapidly because there are now criminal gangs of hackers, including the Chinese government, that have targeted this ESI for theft. These bad hackers, knows as crackers, have learned that when they cannot get at a company’s data directly, usually because it is too well defended, or too risky to attack, there is often a back door to this data by way of the company lawyers.


I'm confused. Is AT&T looking for TV subscribers or the Wi-Fi spectrum they own?
AT&T Courts Satellite TV With an Eye on Growth
AT&T is in talks to buy DirecTV for at least $50 billion, and the two sides are actively working toward an announcement, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.
If completed, a deal would give AT&T, the country’s second-largest wireless carrier, control of the country’s largest satellite television provider, further reshaping the rapidly changing telecommunications and television industries.
… AT&T has refocused its attention on the United States market, believing it has an opportunity to expand its footprint in the pay-television business. DirecTV has about 20 million subscribers in the United States.
… But several people in the industry said they believed that the ideal target for AT&T would be not DirecTV but its main competitor, Dish Network. Dish, run by the billionaire Charles W. Ergen, has amassed a trove of spectrum that could be valuable to AT&T as it seeks to build out its wireless network.


For my students. (Infographic)
9 Ways To Be More Productive


Dilbert illustrates “Digital Attention Deficit Disorder”

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