Strange
that SlashGear thinks this is a PR problem. What advice did their
lawyers offer? Did PR lie to the lawyers? Did the lawyers rely on
the PR guys?
Nope,
Samsung doesn’t actually encrypt Smart TV voice data
If
Samsung
thinks it's already safe from the latest
Smart
TV scandal, it better put its PR team into action again. The
company publicly stated that its Smart TVs were not eavesdropping on
users and that it follows security best practices when transmitting
voice queries, and only voice queries, to a third-party company for
processing. Apparently, for the Korean consumer electronics giant,
such "best practices" don't actually include encryption,
leaving owners' voice commands, or practically anything they say to
the TV, open for hackers to hear.
(Related)
Kashmir
Hill and Pendarvis Harshaw point out that it’s not just Samsung TV
that can capture our conversations through voice recognition
features. See what other devices and cars can do – and what their
privacy policies reveal – on
Fusion.
Amusing
that this article is in the Japan Times. Not much being said by
those beneath the blimp? Is there a threat by a country that has
cruise missiles and the ability to deliver them to Washington
undetected, or are they more interested in people already on the
ground?
AFP-JIJI
reports that the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Elevated Netted
Sensor System (JLENS) blimp, which the government says is intended to
spot low-flying cruise missiles amid thousands of aircraft in this
corner of the U.S. East Coast, is making the people who live under it
uncomfortable:
“There is a particular visceral reaction to looking up in the sky
and seeing someone or something staring back at you,” said Ginger
McCall of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington.
Combing through thousands of pages it obtained through the Freedom of
Information Act, the nonprofit group found no guarantee that JLENS
will not be used for ground surveillance.
Instead, it came across contracts stating that “the
technology was specifically designed to integrate very high
definition video” to track and identify people and vehicles in a
five-kilometer (three mile) radius,” McCall said.
Shouldn't
everyone be using this standard?
Quinten
Plummer reports:
Microsoft has adopted an international standard for certifying the
security of its cloud offerings, making it the first major cloud
services provider to do so, the company says.
The company adopted the International Organization for
Standardization and International Electrotechnical Commission’s
standard 27018 to certify the security of its cloud offerings, using
the guidelines to set a uniform, international approach to protecting
privacy for personal data stored in the cloud.
I
knew this because a professor friend of mine pointed it out some
years ago.
Me:
“So HIPAA means we no longer need to worry about privacy!”
Professor:
“Not so fast, my incredibly ignorant friend.”
Amanda
Robert reports:
In recent weeks, it has been widely reported that Dr. Robert Taub
will testify in the corruption case against New York State Assembly
Speaker Sheldon Silver.
According to the Jan. 21 federal complaint, Taub referred his
patients from the Columbia University Mesothelioma Center to the
high-profile asbestos cancer law firm Weitz & Luxenberg, which
employed Silver. These patients and their cases generated millions
in referral fees for Silver, who in exchange, the complaint says,
secretly directed state funding to Taub’s cancer center.
While it seems that Taub’s role as a government witness may have
helped him avoid criminal charges, should he be held to standards
agreed to by all medical professionals, particularly the Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA?
Karen Porter, an associate professor of clinical law at Brooklyn Law
School who also serves as executive director of its Center for
Health, Science and Public Policy points out that HIPAA isn’t
“extraordinarily protective of people’s information.”
...because
it addresses so many of the areas I teach.
Hunton
& Williams write:
The Report illustrates some
of the current and growing challenges for data protection
and cybersecurity including:
the growing complexity of managing and providing security for
cyberspace;
the growing sophistication and “professionalization” of
cybercrimes and hackings;
the future focus of cyber criminals on the mobile sphere;
the risks of “big data” and “big data” analytics to
individual privacy;
the failures of companies and organizations to prioritize breach
preparedness; and
the shortcomings of a “check the box” approach to compliance
with data protection laws, and the need for effective risk
management and dynamic implementation of security.
Interesting
Top
10 U.S. Privacy Developments of 2014
It's
not in the US, but it is “educators”
Updated:
Following a strongly negative public reaction to his statements
yesterday, it appears the Education Minister is backing off. Adam
Shostack kindly pointed out that
CBC
now reports:
Bolduc said Wednesday the government has asked an independent person
from outside the school board to look into what happened.
Once the review is complete, Bolduc said he would decide, “based on
the facts, what should be done in the future.”
Steve
Rukavina reports:
Quebec Education Minister Yves Bolduc says high school staff are
permitted to strip-search students, as
long as it’s done “in a respectful fashion.”
Bolduc’s comments Tuesday follow a report in the Journal de
Montréal newspaper, saying that a 15-year-old female student at the
Neufchatel High School in Quebec City was strip-searched last week
after school officials suspected she was selling drugs.
The girl told the newspaper that the female school principal and a
female staff member took her to a room in the school and asked her to
remove all her clothing, including her underwear. The female staff
member held a blanket in front of the student while the principal
searched her clothes.
In a news release, the De la Capitale School Board did not dispute
that version of events.
The board said school officials have a responsibility to ensure a
safe and healthy environment.
Any
manager worth the title should be able to design a process that
prevents this.
Carnegie
Mellon Mistakenly Accepts -- Then Rejects -- 800 Grad School Students
The
Pittsburgh university revealed yesterday that it had erroneously
admitted 800 students to its highly selective Master of Science in
Computer Science program -- which ranks as the number one program of
its kind in the world, according to
U.S.
News & World Report.
Carnegie
Mellon
explained
that the error “was the result of serious mistakes in our process
for generating acceptance letters.”
…
However, such oversights occur more often than one might expect --
though typically at the undergraduate level, where the application
process is less personal, the Associated Press reports. In December,
Johns Hopkins mistakenly sent welcome letters to 300 rejected
undergrads, and in 2009, the University of California sent acceptance
emails to all 46,000 applicants.
“It's
hard to define what an intermediary is but we studied it anyway.”
Isn't it the companies (processes) that we removed back when the
buzzword was “disintermediation?”
Liability
of Online Intermediaries – New Study by the Global Network of
Internet and Society Centers
“The
Global
Network of Internet and Society Research Centers (NoC) and the
Berkman
Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University are
pleased to announce the release of a
new
report, which examines the rapidly changing landscape of online
intermediary liability at the intersection of law, technology, norms,
and markets, and is aimed at informing and improving Internet
policy-making globally. This report is a first output of a larger
initiative on the governance of online intermediaries and consists of
a
case
study series exploring online intermediary liability frameworks
and issues in Brazil, the European Union, India, South Korea, the
United States, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam, and a
synthesis
paper. In addition to facilitating the research project, the
Berkman Center led the drafting of the synthesis document and
contributed a case study on intermediary liability in the United
States. The synthesis paper seeks to distill key observations and
provide a high-level analysis of some of the structural elements that
characterize varying governance frameworks, with a focus on
intermediary liability regimes and their evolution. While
intermediary liability varies significantly across the country case
studies, the synthesis highlights the importance of cultural and
political context, as reflected in both the legal norms aimed at
regulating intermediaries and the perception of intermediaries’
social function within the countries studied. The United States
paper describes and assesses the intermediary liability landscape in
the United States, providing an overview of major US legal regimes
that protect online intermediaries from liability for user content.
It then offers a series of short case studies describing ways in
which US-based companies and other organizations have structured
their operations in compliance with and in response to US law. The
research effort is grounded in a diversity of global perspectives and
collaborative research techniques, committed to objective and
independent academic standards, and aspires to be useful, actionable,
and timely for policymakers and stakeholders. More broadly, the
Network of Centers seeks to contribute to a more generalized vision
and longer-term strategy regarding the role of academic research,
facilitation and convening, and education and communication in the
Internet age. The full text of the
Berkman
Center contribution, the other
case
studies by our international partners, and the
synthesis
paper are available on the Publixphere website, where the authors
welcome comments and feedback. The series and individual papers are
also available for download from
SSRN.”
For
my “Anything but Microsoft” students.
Microsoft
Offers 100 GB of Free Storage for Using Bing
…
The company is now
offering
100 GB of free space to anyone. And there’s only one catch. To
get the space, you’ll need to sign up for Bing Rewards.
Bing
Rewards is a program run through the Microsoft search engine in an
attempt to get more users to choose it over Google. As long as you
stay signed into Bing (either on a PC or mobile device), the search
engine collects your browsing data and based on where you visit and
what you buy, you earn credits.
The
more searching with Bing you do, the higher your Bing Status rises
and Rewards are accrued as a result, according to the program’s
terms.
…
Microsoft even offers an option where you can donate your Bing
Rewards credits to a charity.
To
get your 100 GB of free OneDrive storage requires only a few simple
steps, AndroidAuthority
reports.
…
However, the Bing Rewards deal also require you sign up to receive
promotional emails from Microsoft about OneDrive in the future, cNet
reports.
This
agrees with what I find in the classroom.
America’s
Skills Challenge – Millennials and the Future
Educational
Testing Service – “Recent research reveals an apparent paradox
for U.S. millennials (born after 1980, ages 16–34):
while
they may be on track to be our most educated generation ever, they
consistently score below many of their international peers in
literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich
environments. Equally troubling is that these findings
represent a decrease in literacy and numeracy skills when compared to
results from previous years of U.S. adult surveys. As a country,
simply providing more education may not be the answer. There needs
to be a greater focus on skills — not just educational attainment —
or we are likely to experience adverse consequences that could
undermine the fabric of our democracy and community.
This
vital new report sheds light on the growing inequality of
opportunity in the United States and the impact this has on both
skills acquisition and outcomes for both current and future
generations.”
A
“backgrounder” for my IT students.
What
Are APIs, And How Are Open APIs Changing The Internet
For
the student toolkit.
How
To Use Your Smartphone as a Windows Microphone
