“Is
not really Russian tank. Is one-to-one scale model printed on 3D
printer.”
Ukraine
accuses Russia of letting rebels bring in tanks
After
two days of investigation, what did they find? They don't know
where, or when it started – what do they know? Do they have any
idea what they are looking for?
P.F.
Chang’s confirms credit and debit card breach
…
The company says it learned about the security breach on Tuesday
from the U.S. Secret Service and began investigating the breach with
the agency and a team of forensics experts. It found that credit
card and debit cards were exposed, but it doesn’t know yet when it
started happening and which stores were affected.
The
company didn’t say how many cards were affected.
(Related)
It couldn't be this, could it?
Cybercriminals
Targeting Cloud-Based PoS Systems via Browser Attacks
…
The malware, called POSCLOUD by IntelCrawler, targets cloud-based
PoS software commonly used by grocery stores, retailers, and other
small businesses, the company wrote in a report released Wednesday.
…
The
full report from IntelCrawler is available
online in PDF format.
Another
“We have no clue!” beach. If they really have unprotected
computers, who should be fired?
Terrence
T. McDonald reports:
The Jersey City school district is investigating how a Sherman Avenue
charter school obtained personal information about district students,
data that parents believe the charter school used to mail the
students and their parents registration forms last month.
Schools Superintendent Marcia V. Lyles revealed some details of the
investigation at a citywide meeting with parents last night, with
attendees telling The Jersey Journal that Lyles said METS Charter
School obtained students’ names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of
birth and possibly even social security numbers.
METS may have accessed the
information via district computers that weren’t safeguarded to keep
outsiders from obtaining student data, Lyles said,
according to parents who attended the meeting.
“We are currently trying to determine what happened,” district
spokeswoman Maryann Dickar told The Jersey Journal in an email. “We
have had conversations with METS Charter and we expect resolution
early next week.”
Read
more on NJ.com
At
least this could give Facebook some Privacy feedback – if they
bother to look.
Facebook
Is Expanding the Way It Tracks You and Your Data
There'a
a key nugget buried in this
morning's New York Times story about how Facebook is
going to give its users the ability to see why certain ads are
targeted to them. Starting
this week, the Times
reports, "the
company will tap data it already collects from people’s smartphones
and other websites they visit to improve its ad targeting.
Users can opt out of such extended tracking, but they will have to
visit a special ad
industry website and
adjust their smartphone settings to do so."
In
other words, Facebook is giving users a glimpse of what marketers
already know about them, but it is also going to give marketers more
information about users—which makes sense, given that Facebook's
business model is largely built on the data you provide.
“It's
time we stop ignoring this troublesome law and overturn it!” Is
wasting money on cases you know you can't win the best strategy these
bozos can think of?
Mary
Pat Gallagher reports:
The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office is asking county
prosecutors statewide for their help in overturning a 32-year-old
state Supreme Court precedent that requires a warrant to obtain
telephone billing records.
Assistant Attorney General Ronald Susswein wants them to bring test
cases where they will likely lose at the trial and Appellate Division
levels, in the hope that the issue will eventually percolate up to
the high court, according to his June 10 memo, obtained by the New
Jersey Law Journal.
Read
more on New
Jersey Law Journal.
(Related)
Here's how dumb is done in Canada.
Justin
Ling reports:
OTTAWA — The Harper government’s new cyberbullying legislation
includes little-noticed provisions that would allow police to
remotely gain entry to computers and track cellphone users’
movements, privacy experts warn.
As a result of the revelations of the vast foreign and domestic
surveillance programs run by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA),
the U.S. Congress is at least trying to rein in some of the NSA’s
powers. Unfortunately, despite all we know about the Canadian
government’s involvement in the NSA’s mass surveillance programs,
this country is moving in the opposite direction by making it easier
for government officials to gather information about Canadians’
online activities.
Bill C-13, colloquially known as the cyberbullying bill, is currently
being studied by a parliamentary committee. The term
“cyberbullying,” however, is a bit of a misnomer. In a stunning
display of political opportunism, the government has trotted out
parents whose children have tragically taken their own lives after
being bullied online. But nowhere in the bill do the words “cyber”
or “bully” actually appear.
Read
more on The
National Post.
Other
than having strangers parked near the house like those moochers at
Starbucks, I'm not sure this is such a bad idea. My Ethical Hackers
should be able to “discover” a way past the two hour limit, so I
should be able to use my non-techie neighbor's wifi for free.
Comcast
to turn your home into WiFi hotspot
Thousands
of cable internet customers in Colorado will soon be helping Comcast
provide wireless internet to the public - whether they know it or
not.
…
The company says it's already done so with one million customers and
counting.
…
Comcast said its free for its cable service customers. [This
means you must identify yourself wherever you use their service.
Bob]
…
9news spoke with Jefferson Graham, a tech columnist for USA Today.
For him, the concept raises more questions than answers over privacy.
"By
making so many WiFi signals out there more available, of course it's
making it available to hackers, although of course Comcast would say
no it's not," Graham said.
It's
a fear echoed by University
of Denver law professor John Soma. After studying
privacy law for more than three decades, Soma says security is rarely
certain.
"I'm
very confident that at least a middle schooler or high school kid
somewhere in the world will be able to [hack into your router],"
Soma said.
This
Thing could really rat you out. “Your cup has testified that you
had three Harvey Wallbangers before you tried to drive home...”
(If you have to ask your cup what you are drinking, you should have
stopped drinking several drinks ago.)
Vessyl
smart cup can tell Coke from Pepsi
…
Their cup -- a slim, slightly hefty thermos-looking receptacle --
will not only identify and track what you drink and how much of it,
but can do so on the fly as it senses the liquid type and breaks it
down to its most vital components as soon as it interacts with the
cup's sensor-filled interior. The ultimate utility with Vessyl is
not to provide novelty, but to transform how we consume every ounce
of liquid throughout the day.
Caffeine
and sugar amounts, alongside calorie count and a proprietary metric
for hydration called Pryme, are tracked
through an app on your phone, and bits of that information
are also displayed on a
screen embedded within the cup itself. The display
glimmers to life only when new liquids are poured in to notify you
that, yes, you are drinking coffee -- and here's how much caffeine
that particular brew will put into your system. A small pillar of
light also tells you how drinking that particular amount of that
particular liquid will hurt or help your level of hydration as well.
Interesting.
The
ACLU has created a map that tracks “what we know, based on press
reports and publicly available documents, about the use of stingray
tracking devices by state and local police departments.” Following
the map is
a list of the federal law enforcement agencies
known to use the technology throughout the United States.
Read
more on ACLU.
The
Fourth Amendment Third-Party Doctrine – CRS
by
Sabrina I.
Pacifici on June 12, 2014
The
Fourth Amendment Third-Party Doctrine, Richard M. Thompson II,
Legislative Attorney. June 5, 2014.
“In
the 1970s, the Supreme Court handed down Smith v. Maryland and United
States v. Miller, two of the most important Fourth Amendment
decisions of the 20th century. In these cases, the Court held that
people are not entitled to an expectation of privacy in information
they voluntarily provide to third parties. This legal proposition,
known as the third-party doctrine, permits the government access to,
as a matter of Fourth Amendment law, a vast amount of information
about individuals, such as the websites they visit; who they have
emailed; the phone numbers they dial; and their utility, banking, and
education records, just to name a few. Questions
have been raised whether this doctrine is still viable in light of
the major technological and social changes over the past several
decades. Before there were emails, instant messaging, and
other forms of electronic communication, it was much easier for the
courts to determine if a government investigation constituted a
Fourth Amendment “search.” If the police intruded on your
person, house, papers, or effects—tangible property interests
listed in the text of the Fourth Amendment—that act was considered
a search, which had to be “reasonable” under the circumstances.
However, with the advent of intangible forms of communication, like
the telephone or the Internet, it became much more difficult for
judges to determine when certain surveillance practices intruded upon
Fourth Amendment rights. With Katz v. United States, the Court
supposedly remedied this by declaring that the Fourth Amendment
protects not only a person’s tangible things, but additionally, his
right to privacy. Katz, however, left unprotected anything a person
knowingly exposes to the public. This idea would form the basis of
Smith and Miller. In those cases, the Court held that a customer has
no reasonable expectation of privacy in the phone numbers he dials
(Smith) and in checks and deposit slips he gives to his bank
(Miller), as he has exposed them to another and assumed the risk they
could be handed over to the government.”
How
does this work? The FBI “leaks” your name to several newspapers
when you had no involvement and then “clears” you. If he was
never involved, how was his name connected to the investigation? The
FBI still lives in the Hoover “publicity seeking” culture.
New
York Times Walks Back the Phil Mickelson Insider-Trading Story
Even
people leaking information to the press about sensitive government
investigations make mistakes. The golf pro Phil Mickelson, who was
implicated in an insider trading-investigation in articles in the
Wall
Street Journal and the New
York Times on May 30, may not be a target of the
investigation.
According
to both news organizations, the FBI in New York and the Security and
Exchange Commission have for two years been investigating well-timed
trades in Clorox (CLX)
involving Carl Icahn, Mickelson, and professional gambler Billy
Walters. Mickelson was said to have traded Clorox, possibly based on
tips about Icahn’s investing activities that were transmitted
through Walters, a sometime golf and poker partner and friend to both
men. But as the Times reported
on Thursday:
Although Mr. Icahn and Mr. Walters remain under investigation over
Clorox, the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission have found
no evidence that Mr. Mickelson traded Clorox shares. The overstated
scope of the investigation came from information provided to The
Times by other people briefed on the matter who have since
acknowledged making a mistake.
…
The events highlight the devastating impact of such leaks on
everyone involved. For Icahn, Walters, and Mickelson—all of whom
deny wrongdoing—the story causes distraction and serious
reputational damage, which can have an immediate impact on an
athlete’s endorsement deals. For FBI and SEC
investigators doing the work of assembling evidence and trying to put
cases together, media exposure can shut inquiries down and derail
lines of investigation. They
can no longer deploy covert methods [Did they say that? I call that
statement BS! Bob] such as wiretaps and confidential
informants, which have been powerful tools in such cases, and there
is potential for evidence to be destroyed.
Why
the surprise? Did they think beer was made with the livers of
endangered species? It's beer! I imagine Budweiser thought the
ingredients were obvious.
Budweiser
finally reveals what's in its beer
...
A popular blogger known as the "food babe" started a
petition
asking major brewers to list their ingredients. The petition picked
up steam, gathering more than 40,000 signatures in 24 hours.
The
company responded surprisingly fast, listing its ingredients on the
website tapintoyourbeer.com.
It turns out Bud and Bud
Light have only five ingredients: water, barley malt, rice, yeast and
hops.
Perhaps
we could smuggle a few back to the US for my students?
Mozilla
to sell '$25' Firefox OS smartphones in India
For
my Mac using students.
Scrivener
2 For Mac On Sale Now, 55% Off Until June 15
When
it comes to writing on Mac OS X, there’s no comparison —
Scrivener is the best app for the job, hands down. And now, it’s
available for just $20 (55% discount) from StackSocial.
…
We believe it in so much that we’ve
published an entire guide to walk you through its main features.
For
my “I hate Microsoft” students.
Presentations
Evolved: 4 Alternatives To PowerPoint & Keynote Compared
Even
though you can create
effective PowerPoint presentations with ease and do
some cool things with Keynote, these apps are passé (not to
mention relatively expensive), and it’s time to try something new.
For
my techie students. Online courses and free programming books!
The
Best Websites to Learn Coding Online
For
all my students...
Complete
These Free Courses to Become a Better Researcher
A
couple of summers ago Google offered a MOOC about search skills. The
content of that course is still available online for anyone to use at
his or her own pace.
Power
Searching With Google provides six units of study on search
strategies. Each unit includes slides, videos, and text. Examples
of how each strategy works in practice are provided by Daniel
Russell, Google's search anthropologist.
Advanced
Power Searching With Google is full of challenges through which
you can test your power searching skills. The challenges include
helpful videos and texts to consult when you get stuck on a
challenge. When you think that you have successfully completed a
challenge, you can check your answer before moving to your next
challenge.
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