Sadly, I think there are only two parties here in the US that would want to hire this guy.

http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-to-hack-an-election/

How to Hack an Election

It was just before midnight when Enrique Peña Nieto declared victory as the newly elected president of Mexico.

…   When Peña Nieto won, Sepúlveda began destroying evidence.  He drilled holes in flash drives, hard drives, and cell phones, fried their circuits in a microwave, then broke them to shards with a hammer.  He shredded documents and flushed them down the toilet and erased servers in Russia and Ukraine rented anonymously with Bitcoins.  He was dismantling what he says was a secret history of one of the dirtiest Latin American campaigns in recent memory.

For eight years, Sepúlveda, now 31, says he traveled the continent rigging major political campaigns.  With a budget of $600,000, the Peña Nieto job was by far his most complex.  He led a team of hackers that stole campaign strategies, manipulated social media to create false waves of enthusiasm and derision, and installed spyware in opposition offices, all to help Peña Nieto, a right-of-center candidate, eke out a victory.s

Local.  (Every politician claims their solution is the best, toughest, “most excellent,” etc. 

Colorado Student Privacy Bill Authors Call It The Toughest In US

Shaun Boyd reports that State Rep. Alec Garnett and State Rep. Paul Lundeen have teamed up on a bipartisan student privacy bill that

would define “what is the data that’s being collected, who can see it, what can they do with it, who can they share it with and under what circumstances can it be shared, and how we protect it.

[…]

The bill would specifically prohibit companies from creating profiles, selling data or using it to target advertising. School districts would also be required to post which digital companies’ apps they are using in classrooms.

Read more on CBS.

The bill is HB16-1423, the “STUDENT DATA TRANSPARENCY AND SECURITY ACT.”  I’ve only skimmed it so far, but it does appear to have some strong provisions.

This is something I have not seen before.

http://www.bespacific.com/paper-notice-takedown-everyday-practice/

Paper – Notice and Takedown in Everyday Practice

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Apr 2, 2016

Urban, Jennifer M. and Karaganis, Joe and Schofield, Brianna L., Notice and Takedown in Everyday Practice (March 29, 2016). Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2755628

“It has been nearly twenty years since section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act established the so-called notice and takedown process.  Despite its importance to copyright holders, online service providers, and Internet speakers, very little empirical research has been done on how effective section 512 is for addressing copyright infringement, spurring online service provider development, or providing due process for notice targets.  This report includes three studies that draw back the curtain on notice and takedown:

1.      using detailed surveys and interviews with more than three dozen respondents, the first study gathers information on how online service providers and rightsholders experience and practice notice and takedown on a day-to-day basis;

2.       the second study examines a random sample from over 100 million notices generated during a six-month period to see who is sending notices, why, and whether they are valid takedown requests; and

3.       the third study looks specifically at a subset of those notices that were sent to Google Image Search.

The findings suggest that whether notice and takedown “works” is highly dependent on who is using it and how it is practiced, though all respondents agreed that the Section 512 safe harbors remain fundamental to the online ecosystem.  Perhaps surprisingly in light of large-scale online infringement, a large portion of OSPs still receive relatively few notices and process them by hand.  For some major players, however, the scale of online infringement has led to automated, “bot”-based systems that leave little room for human review or discretion, and in a few cases notice and takedown has been abandoned in favor of techniques such as content filtering.  The second and third studies revealed surprisingly high percentages of notices of questionable validity, with mistakes made by both “bots” and humans.

The findings strongly suggest that the notice and takedown system is important, under strain, and that there is no “one size fits all” approach to improving it.  Based on the findings, we suggest a variety of reforms to law and practice.”

For my Computer Security students.

RESOURCE: Data Protection Laws of the World

DLA Piper has released its 2016 resource on data protection laws around the world.  From the abstract:

More than ever it is crucial that organisations manage and safeguard personal information and address their risks and legal responsibilities in relation to processing personal data, to address the growing thicket of applicable data protection legislation.

A well‑constructed and comprehensive compliance program can solve these competing interests and is an important risk‑management tool.

This handbook sets out an overview of the key privacy and data protection laws and regulations across nearly 100 different jurisdictions and offers a primer to businesses as they consider this complex and increasingly important area of compliance.

DLA Piper’s global data protection and privacy team has the deep experience and international reach to help global businesses develop and implement practical compliance solutions to the myriad data protection laws that apply to global businesses.

They also include some tools like, “Data Privacy Scorebox” and “Cybertrak.”

Access the resource online, here, or download it.

Dang!  It’s like they wrote my final exam. 

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/273375?utm_source=google-news&utm_medium=syndication&utm_campaign=google-editors-pick&google_editors_picks=true

50 Must-Have Features for Small-Business Websites (Infographic)

https://assets.entrepreneur.com/static/20160401070034-website-feature-must-have-infographic.jpg?_ga=1.96373083.698602165.1453122795

More to teach, but how useful? 

http://fortune.com/2016/03/31/microsoft-office-process-automation/

How Microsoft Is Automating Business Chores

…   Most businesses still think of Microsoft Office as a collection of software for creating documents, crunching numbers, or managing meetings.  Slowly but surely, however, the software giant is transforming it into a hub for managing all kinds of business chores—from scheduling group meetings to electronic signatures more efficiently.

Want to arrange for an Uber car to pick you up after your last meeting of the day? There’s an Outlook calendar app that allows you to do just that.

…   So far, scenarios such as these have mostly been imaginary but more illustrations of Microsoft’s master plan for business process automation and collaboration emerged Thursday during its annual developer conference in San Francisco.

…   One example involves an application being developed by Starbucks.  The coffee chain is writing software that gathers data from Microsoft’s Outlook calendar system and uses that knowledge to arrange for food to be delivered to your meeting—it figures out when and where.

For the History buffs.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2016/04/try-google-newspaper-archive-to-locate.html

Try the Google Newspaper Archive to Locate Old Articles and Images

Earlier this week I shared the U.S. News Map which is a database of newspapers that displays search results on a map of the United States.  The U.S. News Map is limited to the years of 1836 to 1925 and is limited to U.S. newspapers.  The Google News Newspaper archive offers a larger selection of newspapers both in terms of years and geography.  In the Google News Newspaper archive you can search for a specific newspaper, search for article titles, or as demonstrated below you can search for a topic. 

A clear indication that the internet has “arrived?”  

http://www.bespacific.com/ap-stylebook-announces-change/

AP Stylebook announces changes to use of Internet and Web

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Apr 2, 2016

Effective June 1, 2016 with the launch of the new AP Stylebook, the word internet will be written in lowercase.  Per another tweet – “Also, we will lowercase web in all instances – web page, the web, web browser – effective June 1.”