Strange timing. We've been calling TSA “security
theater” since it's inception. Why are we suddenly pointing out
how poorly they are doing the job they claim protects everyone?
EXCLUSIVE:
Undercover DHS Tests Find Security Failures at US Airports
An internal investigation of the Transportation
Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of
the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were
able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints
in 95 percent of trials, ABC News has learned.
… Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was
apparently so frustrated by the findings he sought a detailed
briefing on them last week at TSA headquarters in Arlington,
Virginia, according to sources. U.S. officials insisted changes have
already been made at airports to address vulnerabilities identified
by the latest tests.
… More recently, the DHS inspector general’s
office concluded a series of undercover tests targeting checked
baggage screening at airports across the country.
That review found “vulnerabilities” throughout
the system, attributing them to human error and technological
failures, according to a three-paragraph summary of the review
released in September.
In addition, the review determined that despite
spending $540 million for checked baggage screening equipment and
another $11 million for training since a previous review in 2009, the
TSA failed to make any noticeable improvements in that time.
(Related) Not fired (not sure what you would have
to do to get fired from a government agency) but the rhetoric will
make it sound that way.
Head Of TSA
Reassigned, After Tests Reveal Security Failures
After covert tests revealed major security
failures, the acting director of the Transportation Security
Administration has been reassigned.
In a statement, Jeh Johnson, secretary of homeland
security, said Melvin Carraway will now work at the department's
Office of State and Local Law Enforcement.
Well, this explains a lot. Interesting how
management sets priorities.
IRS Using
13-Yr. Old Microsoft Software
IRS computers are still running the 13-year old
Microsoft Windows XP
operating software which Microsoft stopped supporting a year ago with
security updates. Even the agency’s fraud-catching software is two
decades old.
… IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has said
budget cuts have kept the service from upgrading, telling
Congressional members that “we
still have applications that were running when John F. Kennedy was
president.”
The news comes as cold comfort to the tens of
thousands of Americans who have had their identity stolen as a result
of filing their taxes. And, the breaches can be no surprise to the
IRS itself which has been warned repeatedly by the Government
Accountability Office over limited security controls. In the
most recent report, the GAO found 69 potential problems, including
weak employee passwords.
Flag this resource, eventually you will need it.
(Probably 90% of victims can not do step 1)
New
One-Stop Resource for Identity Theft Victims
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Jun 1, 2015
“News
about data breaches at banks, stores, and agencies is an everyday
occurrence now. But if your private information has been
compromised, it doesn’t feel commonplace to you. The sooner you
find out, and begin damage control, the better off you’ll be.
IdentityTheft.gov,
a new website, offers step-by-step checklists of what to do right
away, and what to do next, depending on the information that’s been
stolen or exposed. It lists warning
signs indicating your identity was stolen, and gives websites and
phone numbers for organizations you’ll need to reach. And, it has
sample letters for disputing fraudulent charges, correcting
information in your credit reports, and getting business records
relating to the theft. Check out IdentityTheft.gov,
bookmark it, and print out the checklists, as your first line of
defense against identity theft.”
A win for Facebook users or just for Phil
Zimmerman?
Facebook
Wants To Send You Encrypted Emails
Looks like Facebook is
as wary of Big Brother as the rest of us. Facebook is testing
an experimental encryption feature as a safeguard against
surveillance.
You’ll be able to share a public encryption key
in your profile, and set up encrypted notifications so that all the
emails you receive from Facebook will be protected with encryption.
Facebook’s encryption work with OpenPGP, and it
uses GNU Privacy Guard (GPG), a popular free implementation of PGP
technology. If this all sounds confusing, Lifehacker has
a great guide to setting up email encryption if you haven’t
done so yet,
… as much as Facebook needs people to keep
posting personal information, it also needs people to feel secure
doing so.
Take a few seconds and check! (Digest Item #2)
Check Your
Google Privacy Settings
Google has rolled out a new My
Account page to help individual users control
their privacy settings and understand the options available to
them. The simplest way to check everything is as it should be is to
take the Privacy
Checkup and Security
Checkup, step-by-step guides to the most important settings.
Once you’re satisfied with those, you can
“manage the information that can be used from Search, Maps, YouTube
and other products to enhance your experience on Google,” “Use
the Ads Settings tool to control ads based on your interests and the
searches you’ve done,” and “Control which apps and sites are
connected to your account”.
All of which should help ensure you’re only
sharing what you want to share with Google and others trapped within
its extensive ecosystem. Alternatively, you could go into full
tinfoil hat conspiracy theory mode and try to break
away from Google completely.
Perspective. Are we in the 'consolidation phase'
of the chip industry, or is this a move of desperation?
RPT-Intel's
purchase of Altera defends its datacenter dominance
Intel Corp's $17 billion
purchase of programmable chip maker Altera Corp is a costly defensive
move to ward off rivals in the prized datacenter business it
dominates, analysts said on Monday.
… "This whole
deal is defensive for the datacenter," said Bernstein analyst
Stacy Rasgon, who saw it as an admission by Intel that it was getting
harder to drive performance gains.
He questioned Intel's
projections for the programmable chip market, which is built on
datacenter use and growing adoption of Intel chips in everyday
objects connected to the Internet. "I
think their growth goals are ludicrous," he said.
"They think it's going to grow 7 percent a year, but Altera
shrunk 2 percent a year in the last three years."
… Intel, which
analysts estimate has more than 90 percent of the datacenter market,
already has an agreement to use Altera chips. Its move comes as
companies such as Qualcomm Inc, using ARM Holdings -designed chips
and the soon-to-be merged Avago Technologies and Broadcom Corp , also
target the datacenter market.
By buying Altera,
Intel avoids the risk of
being dropped as the smaller company's manufacturing partner,
which had been the subject of some speculation, said Gartner analyst
Mark Hung.
The purchase means
Intel is hedging against the likelihood that the rise of FPGA chips
will reduce the need for central processing unit (CPU) chips running
servers, where Intel currently dominates.
(Related) Does this explain “merger mania?”
Why
Mega-Mergers Are Back in Vogue for Internet Companies
Perspective. Are news organizations analyzing
social networking sites enough to understand the new politics?
How
Millennials’ political news habits differ from those of Gen Xers
and Baby Boomers
It’s been well documented that younger
adults differ from their elders in their news habits, both in the
platforms they use and the sources they rely on. A
Pew Research Center report released today looks specifically at
the political news habits of Millennials, and how they vary from the
two generations before them. Here are five key takeaways from the
report:
2
Compared
with the previous two generations, Millennials are less
familiar with many news sources
we asked about in the survey.
3
Millennials
are no less trusting than Gen Xers and Baby Boomers of news sources
they know.
4
Millennial
Facebook users are exposed to more political content on the social
media site than are Gen Xers or Boomers.
5
Millennials
are less interested in politics than older generations.
(Related)
We now
spend more than eight hours a day consuming media
If you weren’t reading this article, you would
probably be scanning something else on the internet, watching TV, or
maybe—just maybe—reading a newspaper or magazine. In short, you
would be consuming media.
On average, people spend more than 490 minutes of
their day with some sort of media, according to a new report by
ZenithOptimedia. Television remains dominant, accounting for three
hours of daily consumption—an hour more than the internet, in
second place.
“Scholars'
Labs” I like it. Sounds like we're growing students in a Petri
dish.
The
Evolving, Expanding Service Landscape Across Academic Libraries
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Jun 1, 2015
Brian
Mathews – Chronicle of Higher Education – The
New Service Layer – “…During this same time — while
reference transactions were declining — other service points
migrated into our environments. Writing
Centers, Communication
Studios, Multimedia
Studios, IT
Help Desks, and Adaptive/Assistive
Technologies Support Spaces are all common today. Other niche
areas have emerged including data
visualization rooms, GIS
Labs, markerspaces,
Digital
Humanities Centers, Scholars’
Labs, language
labs, and gaming
labs. Libraries are as robust as ever. We may be answering
fewer traditional questions, but collectively we are involved
across many more components of the academic enterprise.”
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