I wonder if correcting
punctuation counts as a “modification?”
Annual
FISA Report Shows Decrease in Surveillance Orders, Questions About
Scope Remain
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on May 3, 2014
EPIC: “The Department
of Justice has published the 2013
FISA Report. The brief report provides summary information about
the government’s use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
In 2012 the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court granted 1,789
FISA orders and 212 “Section 215″ orders. In 2013, there were
1,588 requests to conduct FISA surveillance, with 34 modifications.
The FISC also granted 178 business record orders under Section 215,
with 141 modified by the court. The significant number of modified
orders indicates that the government’s initial applications are too
broad. For example, the controversial NSA Metadata program, was
authorized by the surveillance court under a modified
order. It is possible that in 2013 the court authorized other
bulk collection programs. For more information, see EPIC:
FISC Orders 1979-2014 and EPIC:
FISA Graphs.”
Very interesting
article. Shows just how smart Mark Zuckerberg is.
Inside
Facebook's brilliant plan to hog your data
Companies want to get
information about people -- their location, age, relationships,
interests, preferences and much more -- because when they have that
information they can offer more powerful, more monetizable apps and
services and can make money with high-priced personalized ads.
But people want to
prevent companies from getting their personal information for fear of
being exploited, surveilled, abused and sold out.
It's in the context of
this tension that Facebook
CEO Mark Zuckerberg this week announced
a new offering called Anonymous
Login. It's one of the most ingenious ideas
Facebook
has ever had.
Here's how it's
supposed to work: If you provide your personal data to Facebook, you
can then install and use apps that support Anonymous Login without
giving your personal data to the app maker, at least initially.
In other words, a
mobile app that supports Facebook Anonymous Login would allow
logged-in Facebook users to interact with the app as if they had
supplied their personal information, even if they hadn't actually
done so.
Facebook says the
feature provides "anonymity." But that's not accurate,
because you do have to tell Facebook who you are. And it's not
"pseudonymity," either, because you're not using a
surrogate identity.
… When he announced
Facebook Anonymous Login, Zuckerberg seemed to imply that people
wouldn't use apps indefinitely without ever divulging their personal
details. He implied that once you've decided to trust or use an app,
you'll be expected to agree to have personal information collected by
the app maker. "Even if you don't want an app to know who you
are yet," Zuckerberg said -- note the word yet -- "you
still want a streamlined process for signing in." It's a way to
"try apps without fear," he said -- note the word try.
… Why Anonymous
Login is brilliant
The future success or
failure of Facebook depends entirely upon the company's ability to
make increasing amounts of money on advertising.
In the past five years,
advertising-centric companies like Facebook made most of their money
by selling ads that would be seen inside desktop PC Web browsers.
Two
trends are changing all that. Users are spending far more time
with mobile devices like smartphones.
And when they use smartphones, they're spending nearly all of their
time using apps, not mobile Web browsers.
So if
Facebook is to keep growing its advertising revenue, it must sell ads
inside mobile apps.
… Meanwhile, you
can be sure that Facebook's own apps -- including the Facebook app,
Instagram, WhatsApp, Moves, Messenger, Facebook Camera, Paper and
others -- will be collecting
every scrap of user data possible.
… If mobile app
developers want to sell contextual ads, they'll have to come to the
companies that have all the data, as well as the ad network to serve
up highly personalized ads. And that will be Facebook (and a small
number of competitors, especially Google).
This might be the tool
I've been looking for. If it grabs data from market quotes for
example, I can analyze trends automagically. Get it while it's still
FREE!
– by using
Import.io’s desktop app you can turn any website into a table of
data or an API in just a few minutes without writing any code. What
can you do with that info? For a start, you can download it and
export it as JSON, CSV, HTML, or XLS. You can also mash it,
integrate it, mix it, store it, and share it.
This is a good one for
the tool kit.
– Windows 8 is slowly
becoming more and more accepted, but there are still pre-installed
programs which Microsoft thinks you need. Windows 8 App Remover
helps you remove the crud you don’t want, to make space for the
stuff you do want.
For my Statistics
students.
Call
Box: Reader wonders if long Census Bureau survey is legit
Dear Call Box: I
received an American Community Survey purporting to be from the U.S.
Census Bureau. It has a lot of personal questions, such as how many
times you’ve been married, how much you pay in utilities, how many
rooms are in your house, how long it takes to get to work and if
anyone living there has difficulty dressing or bathing. I was going
to throw it in the trash, but it says I am required
by law to fill it out and can be fined. Is it legitimate?
C.J.
Dear
C.J.: It is, indeed, legitimate, but you are not
alone in your reaction. Others have complained on Internet websites
that the 28-page survey is an invasion of
privacy and have signed themselves as incensed, indignant, shocked or
suspicious....
For all my students.
Standalone
Google Docs And Sheets Apps Launched On iOS And Android
While users could edit
documents and spreadsheets through Google Drive before, Google is now
carving that functionality out and splitting it into two separate
apps: Docs
and Sheets.
Drive is still used to
store, view, and organize your files, but Docs and Sheets will do the
editing and have improved offline support so that you can create
documents and spreadsheets without an Internet connection, and they
will simply sync up the next time you get a connection. Google says
that the a Slides
app is coming soon.
… You can download
these news apps on Google Play (Docs,
Sheets)
or the Apple App Store (Docs,
Sheets).
Just getting started
with Google Drive? You may want to check out our article on how
to use Google Drive to capture your great ideas and never lose them.
Perhaps my students
could get the Denver franchise! Commercial Drones!!!
– is a very peculiar
business where you pay them $5 and they will tell you to stand in a
certain location at a certain time. Then at that time, you will
receive a jafflechute. What is that? A sandwich on a parachute
floating down to you. We kid you not. Based in Melbourne, but
coming to the US.
My students probably
won't care, but I like to run these by them anyway, just to see what
sticks. Slideshow (for no apparent reason) with links.
Top
100 Tools for Learning 2013
Stuff to quote from so
you sound like you know what you're talking about? (Note that they
can't count)
3
Places To Get Free Full-Text Scientific Studies
PLOS
PLOS
stands for the Public Library of Science. They’re a non-profit
aimed at creating a library of open-access journals and other
scientific literature. Lots of awesome research can be found with a
quick search at PLOS.
PNAS
PNAS
(spell it, don’t say it!) is the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Science (of the US). Not all of the content on the site
is available for free, but there sure is a substantial portion that
you don’t need to pay for. See what
parts of the site are available to non-subscribers here.
eLife Sciences
eLife
is trying to approach science publishing with a fresh look. While
still peer-reviewed, their process is a little bit different than for
other scientific journals. They’ve chosen to make their journal
open-access as a part of their initiative to make science publishing
more effectively benefit science and scientists.
HighWire
HighWire is an
ePublishing platform for scientific research from Stanford
University. They offer a huge
list of free online full text articles on their site. Of note,
their list is limited to journals published online with the
assistance of HighWire Press, but they still have a TON of content
available for your perusal. As of this writing, they were assisting
with the online publication of 2,353,407 free full-text articles and
7,133,903 total articles. There are 40 sites with free trial
periods, and 104 completely free sites. 276 sites have free back
issues, and 1359 sites have pay per view.
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