Similar
to my concern that no one is looking at logs. Managers must
“control!” not just produce analysis reports that they don't
bother to read.
T-Mobile
charged customers for 'hundreds of millions' of dollars in bogus fees
- FTC
The
Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit Tuesday alleging that
T-Mobile (TMUS)
earned a windfall in recent years from third-party merchants offering
bogus text message subscriptions for things like flirting tips,
horoscopes and celebrity gossip. Those charges frequently weren't
authorized by customers. The charges were allegedly concealed on
customers' monthly bills.
As
many as 40% of those customers hit with these monthly charges sought
refunds, a fact that the FTC says should have been "an obvious
sign to T-Mobile that the charges were never authorized." The
complaint alleges that the charges took place between 2009 until
December of last year, and T-Mobile had documentation of high
complaint levels as early as 2012.
Perhaps
this kerfuffle has legs. Releasing it on a weekend doesn't seem to
have buried it.
Facebook
Lawyer: That Emotion-Manipulation Study Was About Customer Service
During
a session on freedom of speech at the Aspen
Ideas Festival, [Another
year without an invitation – and it's only a few miles up in the
hills. (sigh) Bob]
hosted by the Aspen Institute and The
Atlantic,
Facebook's Head of Global Policy Management, Monika Bickert,
was asked about the
emotion-manipulation study that has been a subject of controversy
over the past few days.
"Do
you see some regulation about this," an audience member asked,
"and how free speech might be influenced by what users of social
networks are shown?" What if, he continued, governments began
asking Facebook to do that kind of manipulation not for science, but
for politics—to affect, essentially, the moods of their citizens by
asking the company to influence the content those people are shown?
(Related)
Data
Science: What the Facebook Controversy is Really About
Facebook
has always “manipulated” the results shown in its users’ News
Feeds by filtering and personalizing for relevance. But this
weekend, the social giant seemed to cross a line, when it announced
that it engineered
emotional responses two years ago in an “emotional
contagion” experiment, published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Since
then, critics have examined many facets of the experiment, including
its design,
methodology, approval process, and ethics. Each of these tacks
tacitly accepts something important, though: the validity of
Facebook’s science and scholarship. There is a more fundamental
question in all this: What does it mean when we call proprietary data
research data science?
This
will change when dumpsters are added to the Internet of Things.
John
Wesley Hall writes:
New Mexico adopts the Greenwood
dissent and holds that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy
in trash left out for collection in an opaque bag, even in a communal
dumpster. City ordinances
on trash collection help create the expectation of privacy by
regulating it. State
v. Crane, 2014 N.M. LEXIS 245 (June 30, 2014)
Read
more on FourthAmendment.com
(Related)
CBS
News reports:
While more people and places are switching to energy-saving LED light
bulbs, a California company has found a way to turn them into smart
networks that can collect and feed data. However, the new
technological opportunities are also raising privacy concerns,
reports CBS News’ Bill Whitaker.
[...]
A building in Silicon Valley is one of the few places in the country
where a smart light network has been installed. They’re used
primarily for security. The 40 lampposts in the parking lot holds 83
LED lights, and they’re connected to seven cameras in a seamless
grid that tracks and records people’s moves.
“We do use the license plate recognition, and we also can detect
people,” said Kevin Kirk, chief engineer for the Shorenstein
Company, which owns the building.
The company plans to install smart lights at its properties across
the country.
Read
more on CBS.
Joe
Cadillic, a frequent contributor to this blog, reminds us that he has
been blogging about streetlamp surveillance since last year:
Concern
about surveillance of US citizens. Surveillance starts with the
overseas end, but if I called Evil McBadguy (or he called me),
wouldn't they want to know a bit about me?
On
Tuesday evening, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
(PCLOB)—an independent body within the Executive Branch—released
a major report concerning the National Security Agency’s electronic
surveillance program under section 702 of the Foreign Act
Surveillance Act. (The full text of the report entitled, “Report
on the Surveillance Program Operated Pursuant to Section 702 of the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” is available
here).
…
The Executive Summary of the Report contains a section on “Legal
Analysis,” a section on “Policy Analysis,” and 10 specific
recommendations.
(Related)
Ha! Let me repeat that for you, HA!
In a
provocatively entitled essay, Are
National Security Lawyers a National Security Threat? Marshall
Erwin, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and former “lead
intelligence specialist” at the Congressional Research Service,
asks if national security lawyers are a “security threat”
because, as he claims, they “distract us from important questions
about national security and intelligence community efficacy,” and
“this hurts America’s national security bottom line.”
…
Neither Mr. Erwin nor anyone else should be especially surprised
that lawmakers concerned about the adequacy of the law
would want to hear from lawyers. Given that the key issues
in the post-Snowden era mostly relate to privacy and civil liberties,
subjects about which lawyers – not intelligence specialists –
have real expertise and experience, congressional interest in what
lawyers have to say hardly should be unexpected.
How
should we market our students? Perhaps a Blog titled, “Sooner or
later...”
Sooner
or Later You'll Get Hacked and Hire a CISO
I
always thought the marketing campaign for AAA was genius; sooner or
later you’ll breakdown and join AAA. A few wise individuals will
hand over the cash when they proactively decide to curb their risk,
and the rest will find themselves trying to sign up while stranded on
the side of the highway. We’re seeing a similar storyline play out
in the world of security. In our case, not only do we have a few
insightful leaders recognizing the risk and others experiencing
security system breakdowns – we are also seeing immense pressure
from customers, regulators and shareholders.
My
Computer Security students know all about encryption. This article
is for the (really smart) CEO that hires them.
PGP
Me: Pretty Good Privacy Explained
If
you’re concerned about online and electronic privacy, encryption is
the best thing to set your mind at ease. By using strong encryption
protocols, you can make sure that your data is safe from prying eyes,
and that only the people who you decide should see your information
have access to it. One of the most common methods for encryption is
called PGP, and this article will guide you through what it is, what
it’s good for, and how to use it.
…
How Secure Is PGP?
While
it’s impossible to say that any particular encryption method is
100% secure, PGP is generally regarded as being extremely safe. The
two-key system, digital signatures, and the fact that PGP is
open-source and has been heavily vetted by the public all contribute
to its reputation as one of the best encryption protocols. Bruce
Schneier once called PGP “the closest you’re likely to get to
military-grade encryption,” and PGP.net says that there are “no
practical weaknesses.”
BEER!
There's an App for that! (Okay, a device, but connect it to the
Internet of Things and I can have one waiting when I get home.)
Beer
Maker Envisions Individual Pints Anywhere, Anytime
For
anyone who has dreamed of one day being able to brew a personal pint
of beer anywhere imaginable, the new Synek draft system hopes to make
it a reality. Reminiscent of single-cup coffee brewing, Synek has
the ability to serve a personal beer fresh from the tap.
For
my students – particularly the Math students. Perhaps now those
who assert that they “can't get math” will be less surprised when
they get an “A” or “B” in my class.
Wisdom
Is a Slippery Construct
Are
truly wise people wise enough to know that they have a great deal of
wisdom? Or does their wisdom make them acutely aware of how little
wisdom they really possess? Research by Uwe Redzanowski and Judith
Glück of Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Austria, shows that
there is zero correlation between self-assessments
and peer ratings of wisdom, so those who think they’re wise are no
more likely than anyone else to be judged as wise by their peers. Of
course, it’s unclear whether peer ratings are a good measure of
wisdom…
Most
of the new students this quarter use Chrome. (I asked them at
Orientation)
Browser
Wars: Firefox vs. Chrome vs. Opera, The Definitive Benchmark
…
The war between web browsers has become more diverse as Internet
Explorer, the former giant of the space, has given up ground. That
space has been filled by Chrome, Firefox and Opera, a trio of free
competitors known across the globe.
You
really only need one browser, though, and once you choose you’re
likely to feel locked in as you accumulate plugins and bookmarks.
We’ve taken a close look at each browser to see which comes out on
top for a variety of benchmarks.
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