Perspective.
How much do you suppose goes to new security tools or processes that
would have prevented the breach?
Ingrid
Lunden reports:
When it comes to data breaches, retailers are one of the biggest
targets these days, and today we have some detail on the costs around
one of the more high-profile attacks. Target
today said that it has booked $162 million in expenses across 2013
and 2014 related to its data breach, in which hackers broke into the
company’s network to access credit card information and other
customer data, affecting some 70
million customers.
The figure, revealed in the company’s Q4
earnings published today, includes $4 million in Q4, and $191
million in gross expenses for 2014, as well as $61 million gross for
2013. Target says that the gross number was offset in part by
insurance receivables of $46 million for 2014 and $44 million for
2013.
Read
more on TechCrunch.
Are
you paranoid enough? Think “a Sony-like attack on banks.”
New
York's top financial watchdog mulled new regulations to stave off an
"Armageddon"-scale online attack that could bring U.S.
financial markets to their knees.
…
In
a speech before a Columbia Law School audience, Lawsky said that
within the next ten years or sooner, a "cyber 9/11" event
could cause dramatic chaos to the financial system for a time.
The
regulator said he is eyeing new measures to force insurance firms and
banks under DFS regulations to be prepared against such hacks.
(Related)
So simple. Could repairs keep up with a team of motivated vandals?
Arizona
authorities probe vandalism that cut off Internet, phones for hours
Officials
say all services have been restored following act of vandalism that
left people across northern Arizona without the use of the Internet,
cellphones and landlines for several hours.
During
Wednesday's outages, businesses couldn't process credit card
transactions, ATMs didn't function, law enforcement databases were
unavailable, and even weather reports were affected in an area
stretching from north of Phoenix to Flagstaff, about 100 miles away.
…
Phoenix police said CenturyLink employees found that a fiber-optic
cable in far north Phoenix had been completely cut through.
Another
reason to be paranoid. The problem is, “staffers” or even people
at the same location can put this data online. Quis
custodiet ipsos custodes?
Or perhaps, Quis
custodiet ipsos “Staffers?”
First
lady Michelle Obama’s Instagram feed is leaking details about her —
or her staffers’ — location.
As
first noticed
by Fusion on Wednesday, whomever
is managing the first lady’s account on the picture-sharing service
has opted in to also sharing their location. That data,
which appears on a map inside the mobile application, can reveal
details down to the building of where someone was when they uploaded
a picture to the service.
Clearly
the Secret Service should be concerned. They've already had a drone
crash at the White House and Paris is being “surveiled by
terrorists,” maybe. And drones are very difficult to detect with
RADAR. So they should test a drone with intercept and shoot down
(or capture) capabilities.
…
“Because these exercises will be conducted within the normally
flight restricted areas in the Washington D.C. area, they have been
carefully planned and will be tightly controlled
…
The release was put out to allay any concerns from the general
public if someone does notice a flight in generally restricted
airspace, the Secret Service spokeswoman said. [But
how do we know it's a Secret Service drone? Bob]
Note
that there is no “no fly zone” for advertisers.
Barry
Levine reports:
It was only a matter of time before drones started monitoring signals
from mobile devices.
Since early February, several small drones flying around the San
Fernando Valley in Los Angeles have been determining mobile devices’
locations from Wi-Fi and cellular transmission signals.
They are part of an experiment by Singapore-based
location marketing firm Adnear, which has offices around the
world. The firm told me that, to its knowledge, this is the first
time an adtech company has employed drones to collect wireless data.
Read
more on VentureBeat.
[From
the article:
…
A mobile user needs to have an app open that is transmitting via
cellular or Wi-Fi for this mapping to occur. The app does not need
to be sending location coordinates.
The
system identifies a given user through the device ID, and the
location info is used to flesh out the user’s physical traffic
pattern in his profile. Although anonymous, the user is “identified”
as a code.
This
is what you get when lobbyists write laws and regulations.
House
Democrats are voicing concerns that an expected White House plan to
protect people’s online privacy could actually undermine it.
As
soon as this week, the White House is expected to unveil new
legislation aiming to protect people’s privacy, but the plan could
cripple the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) ability to
safeguard people’s online history, Democrats feared on Wednesday.
“This
proposal by the White House sounds like it would severely undercut
the FCC’s authority to prevent [Internet service providers] from
using their position in the marketplace to do things like charging
subscribers not to have their browsing history data monitored or
setting ‘supercookies’ that allow users to be identified and
tracked across the Internet,” said Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.).
A
Privacy infographic?
Is
Your Favorite Website Spying on You?
We
all use services like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, but are these
websites keeping more information on us than we intended? As it
turns out, quite a few websites out there track
an incredibly large amount of data from users.
So
what can you do to make
sure you aren’t being tracked by the sites you visit?
Thankfully, you have options. The infographic below will show you
which sites are tracking you the most, and even more important, how
to make sure you aren’t being tracked, regardless of which web
browser you use.
Via
Study
Web
Would
putting my name on a court website somewhere count as “notice?”
Alan
Butler writes:
EPIC recently filed comments
on proposed
amendments to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure,
which would authorize judges to issue “remote access” search
warrants in certain cases. As EPIC outlined, the surreptitious
computer searches conducted under these remote access warrants would
run afoul of an important Fourth Amendment protection — the
requirement of prior notice. But the issue of delayed or
non-existent notice is not only present with remote access searches;
it is an issue with all electronic search authorities and especially
with searches conducted under the Stored Communications Act, 18
U.S.C. § 2703.
Read
more on EPIC.
Apparently,
it's not just teachers strip searching students. And technology is
making this even easier.
Don’t
read this commentary from John W. Whitehead if you don’t want to
get depressed.
“The
Fourth Amendment was designed to stand between us and arbitrary
governmental authority. For all practical purposes, that
shield has been shattered, leaving our liberty and personal integrity
subject to the whim of every cop on the beat, trooper on the highway
and jail official. The framers would be appalled.”—Herman
Schwartz, The Nation
Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—are being choked out
by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the
right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser,
and arrest any individual at any time and for the
slightest provocation.
Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws,
forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye
scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases—these are just a few
ways in which Americans are being forced to accept that we have no
control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with
government officials.
Read
the whole thing on The
Rutherford Institute.
Interesting
ethical questions.
Facebook
updates feature for suicide prevention
Facebook
began rolling out a feature update Wednesday that aids suicide
prevention.
The
updated tool lets users flag content on both the desktop and mobile
version of the social network that they find concerning. If a
Facebook friend posts something that indicates he might be thinking
of harming himself, users
can click on an arrow on the post to report it. Facebook
will then offer options to contact the friend, contact another friend
for support or contact a suicide helpline.
…
Boyle and Staubli said if anyone sees a direct threat of suicide on
Facebook, they should contact their local emergency services
immediately.
(Related)
Should potential suicides be reported here? How else will DHS
capture potential suicide bombers?
Julia
Harumi Mass and Hugh Handeyside write:
The federal government will have to produce information on a vast and
secret domestic surveillance program and defend the program’s
legality in open court. That’s the result of a decision issued
Friday by the federal judge presiding over our lawsuit
challenging the Suspicious Activity Reporting program, part of an
ever-expanding domestic surveillance network established after 9/11.
The program calls on local police, security guards, and the public —
our neighbors — to report activity they deem suspicious or
potentially related to terrorism. These suspicious activity reports
(“SARs” for short) are funneled to regional fusion centers and on
to the FBI, which conducts follow-up investigations and stockpiles
the reports in a giant database that it shares with law enforcement
agencies across the country.
The decision is significant.
Read
more on ACLU.
(Related)
On a broader scale...
Will
Facebook’s New Flagging Feature Stifle Freedom of Speech?
…
Introduced ostensibly to help Facebook remove fake news stories,
thereby stopping such a post going viral, it turns out that the
feature is open to abuse.
…
Stories that might offer an alternative political viewpoint could be
subjected to the same sort of reporting as a hoax, or flagged because
they’re deemed “offensive”. That calculation is useful here.
One or two people objecting will make little difference. Dozens or
hundreds, however, will result in an algorithm being executed, and
the item being reviewed with a view to removal.
With
the one hand, Facebook removes hoax items, thereby helping to protect
online security and privacy. This is commendable. But what good
does enabling a group of people to highlight a news story for removal
because it carries views that they are uncomfortable with?
Eventually
we have to address all of these. Are these useful models for
legislation? How about a “crowd sourced law” wiki?
Cheryl
Miller reports:
A bipartisan pair of state lawmakers on Wednesday unveiled a package
of privacy bills that tackle issues ranging from car-data hacking to
encryption standards for cloud-stored information.
[…]
Three of the bills mentioned by Gaines and Gatto are already in
print. SB
206 would ban state agencies from collecting data from cars’
diagnostic systems beyond what’s necessary for California’s smog
check program. SB
271 prohibits drones from flying over schools. And AB
170 would create new rules for the state’s genetic testing
program, which takes tiny blood samples from newborns and, after
de-identifying the records, makes them available to researchers.
A fourth bill, AB 83, will
be shaped by public suggestions submitted to a wiki
page created by Gatto.
Read
more on The
Recorder (sub. Required).
Facebook
sees “new users” as the path to growth.
Facebook:
Only 40% of the world has ever connected to the Internet
Only
40% of the world has ever connected to the Internet and the
unconnected mostly live in developing nations, according to a new
study published Monday by Facebook-led Internet.org.
The
study, which outlines the state of global Internet connectivity, also
found that 37.9% of Earth's population uses the Internet at least
once a year, but more than 90% of the world's population, at least,
lives within the range of a mobile network.
…
You can read the full report here.
A
true innovation killer? “We've always done it this way!” (I'd
get one of these if my wife let me)
Flow
Hive, a Gadget for Beekeepers, Sets New Crowdfunding Record on
Indiegogo
Crowdfunding
platform Indiegogo has been abuzz about the Flow Hive, an invention
that aims to help beekeepers better harvest honey.
Launched
on Sunday, the campaign reached its goal of $70,000 within the first
eight minutes, and the donations kept pouring in, hitting a
record-breaking $2.18 million in the first 24 hours. Now, with 40
days left to go, funders have pledged more than $2.9 million.
The
device claims to help beekeepers collect honey with less disturbance
to the bees because the hive itself doesn’t need to be opened. The
campaign
page says that the product is “the most significant innovation
in beekeeping since 1852.”
For
all my students, please! Great quote from the article: “emails are
where keystrokes go to die”
5
Tools That Can Help You Write Better Emails
…
we don’t talk too much about the most basic habit of all – the
art of writing better emails.
The
email hall of infamy is littered with carcasses of careers destroyed
and faces reddened because of an email faux passé. But hold on.
This little post isn’t about the bad news. It is about the neat
little tools that can get you ahead in the email writing department.
Here are five cool (and new) email writing tools we picked up from
the far corners of the web.
Dilbert
explains consulting, I think.
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