The inability to read encrypted communications
does not mean you have no information. Who talks to who? Where are
they located? How often do they talk? Who starts the communication?
Is the message long (detailed plans) or short (execute!)? I know
the government knows all of this, they taught me.
WASHINGTON —
While the Justice Department wages a public fight with Apple
over access to a locked iPhone,
government officials are privately debating how to resolve a
prolonged standoff with another technology company, WhatsApp, over
access to its popular instant messaging application, officials and
others involved in the case said.
No decision has been made, but a court fight with
WhatsApp, the world’s largest mobile messaging service, would open
a new front in the Obama administration’s dispute with Silicon
Valley over encryption, security and privacy.
WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook,
allows customers to send messages and make phone calls over the
Internet. In the last year, the company has been adding encryption
to those conversations, making it impossible for the Justice
Department to read or eavesdrop, even with a judge’s wiretap order.
As recently as
this past week, officials said, the Justice Department was discussing
how to proceed in a continuing criminal investigation in which a
federal judge had approved a wiretap, but investigators were stymied
by WhatsApp’s encryption.
… Some investigators view the WhatsApp issue
as even more significant than the one over locked phones because it
goes to the heart of the future of wiretapping. They say the Justice
Department should ask a judge to force WhatsApp to help the
government get information that has been encrypted. Others are
reluctant to escalate the dispute, particularly with senators
saying they will soon introduce legislation to help the
government get data in a format it can read.
… Businesses, customers and the United States
government also rely on strong encryption to help protect information
from hackers, identity thieves and foreign cyberattacks. That is
why, in 2013, a White House report said the government should “not
in any way subvert, undermine, weaken, or make vulnerable generally
available commercial encryption.”
No doubt the pendulum will swing too far the other
way now.
Doctor
Wanted Germanwings Co-Pilot to Be Hospitalized
Two weeks before a Germanwings co-pilot
intentionally crashed
a jet into the French Alps in March 2015, a doctor recommended
psychiatric hospitalization but didn’t alert authorities out of
fear of breaching Germany’s strict privacy laws, according to a
draft of the final report by air-safety investigators.
Investigators are expected to recommend that such
privacy laws both in Germany and across Europe need to be reassessed
by aviation authorities in cases where a “threat to public safety”
should trump medical confidentiality.
Definitely something to start my next Data
Management class with. Interesting article. Not sure I agree or
even understand it, but it is interesting.
“The
Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism”
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Mar 12, 2016
von Shoshana Zuboff, March 3, 2016: “Governmental
control is nothing compared to what Google is up to. The company is
creating a wholly new genus of capitalism, a systemic coherent new
logic of accumulation we should call surveillance capitalism. Is
there nothing we can do?… Google is ground zero for a wholly
new subspecies of capitalism in which profits derive from the
unilateral surveillance and modification of human behavior. This is
a new surveillance capitalism that is unimaginable outside
the inscrutable high velocity circuits of Google’s digital
universe, whose signature feature is the Internet and its successors.
While the world is riveted by the showdown between Apple and the
FBI, the real truth is that the surveillance capabilities being
developed by surveillance capitalists are the envy of every state
security agency. What are the secrets of this new capitalism,
how do they produce such staggering wealth, and how can we protect
ourselves from its invasive power?”
[From
the article:
It is an unprecedented market form that roots and
flourishes in lawless space.
… Cyberspace was its birthplace because, as
Google/Alphabet Chairperson Eric
Schmidt and his coauthor, Jared Cohen, celebrate on the very
first page of their book about the digital age, “the online world
is not truly bound by terrestrial laws…it’s the world’s largest
ungoverned space.”
For my students who read.
Literature
Map Helps You Find Authors You Might Like
Finding books that kids will like can be a
difficult task. Literature
Map is a tool that might make that process easier. Literature
Map provides a web of authors you might like based on authors
that you already enjoy reading. To use Literature
Map just type an author's name into the search box and webbed
list of authors will be displayed. The authors' names closest to the
author whose name you entered are the authors whose work you're most
likely to enjoy.
Another resource for my Math students.
Underground
Mathematics – University of Cambridge
From the University of Cambridge comes Underground
Mathematics which started in 2012 as the Cambridge
Mathematics Education Project (CMEP). The site provides a library of
rich resources for age 16+ students with the aim of “Enabling all
students to explore the connections that underpin mathematics”.
Underground Mathematics is being developed by the University of
Cambridge, funded by a grant from the UK Department for Education.
The resources are free for all users; you can read more about the
team and their philosophy here.
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