Caleb Pershan reports:
California Attorney General
Kamala Harris is leading an investigation into whether criminal identity theft
took place at Wells Fargo, a bank embroiled in a scandal that may involve up to
two million bank and credit card
accounts allegedly created without customers’ approval as part of an
unscrupulous, sales-driven corporate culture.
The LA Times has learned through a public records
request of a warrant served on October 5th to search Wells Fargo’s San
Francisco headquarters.
Read more on SFist.
There are many ways that governments can interfere with
businesses. Consider the impact of a
government that suggests Microsoft was helping them spy on Brazil, for
example.
Microsoft allows Brazil to inspect its source code for ‘back doors’
Microsoft, still stung by accusations that it installed
“back doors” for the U.S. government to access customers’ communications,
opened a center in Brazil on Wednesday where officials will be able to inspect
its programming code, in an attempt to allay suspicions in the region that its
software programs are vulnerable to spying.
Behind reinforced walls and with strict security settings,
the world’s biggest software company showed off its fourth ‘Transparency
Center’ in Brasilia, where experts from Latin American and Caribbean
governments will be able to view the source code of its products.
… At the new site,
visited on Wednesday by officials including the speaker of Brazil’s Congress,
no electronics will be allowed into the secure viewing room. [Because no one understands the intricacies of
operating systems like a politician!
Bob]
Microsoft prevents anyone from copying the massive amount
of coding on display – as much as 50 million lines for its email and server
products. Viewers inspect copies of
source code on computers connected only to local servers and cut off from the
internet. The copies are later deleted. [This is refered to as “hiding the
evidence.” Bob]
Viewers can use software tools to examine the code,
Microsoft said, but it was not
immediately clear whether experts would be able to run deep code analysis
necessary to uncover back doors or other bugs. [So how will they prove to
themselves that there are no back doors?
Bob]
… The Brasilia
facility is Microsoft’s fourth transparency center after the NSA scandal. It set up the first one at its Redmond,
Washington headquarters in the United States in 2014, one in Brussels last year
and one in Singapore earlier this month. It will soon open another in Beijing.
Flailing about? My
students agreed they would walk away from the deal for Verizon to buy
Yahoo. The problem is, if Verizon wants
to compete with Google and Facebook, they need a company like Yahoo. Who else is there?
Yahoo demands ‘transparency’ from National Intelligence
director over security order
Yahoo revealed
on Wednesday that it has submitted
a letter to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper
demanding transparency involving national security orders issued to tech
companies around obtaining user data. The
move is intended to provide citizens insight about what the U.S. government is
looking for.
The company acknowledged that while its communication
makes “specific reference to recent allegations” levied against it, “it is
intended to set a stronger precedent of transparency for our users and all
citizens who could be affected by government requests for user data.” Yahoo once again denied reports that
stated it
secretly scanned customer emails on behalf of the intelligence community:
“The mail scanning described
in the article does not exist in our systems.” [Not one of those broad denials… Bob]
Do they know something we don’t know? Does this have anything to do with Russian
hackers?
Regulators to Toughen Cybersecurity Standards at Nation’s
Biggest Banks
U.S. regulators on Wednesday unveiled an initial plan to
bolster the ability of the country’s largest banks to withstand a major
cyberattack, a move aimed at protecting the U.S. financial system in the event
of a technology failure.
The plan, released jointly by the Federal Reserve, the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the
Currency, would strengthen the way agencies oversee how large U.S. banks and
foreign banks operating in the U.S. with $50 billion or more in assets manage
and address threats to cybersecurity.
… The draft plan
would impose the toughest restrictions on firms considered to pose the greatest
risk to the financial system. Those firms would have to prove they can get their
core operations running within two hours of a cyberattack or major IT failure.
The new rules also would apply to nonbank
financial companies deemed systemically risky by a panel of regulators headed
by Treasury Secretary Jacob
Lew.
This is one of those subject that I honestly have not
begun to think about.
Orin Kerr writes:
I’ve blogged twice before about
whether it is a Fourth Amendment search for the government to scan the magnetic
stripe of a seized credit card. In my
view, the answer is yes. But the cases
so far are coming out the other way: The
Sixth Circuit held that the answer is no, as did a
divided Eighth Circuit panel.
The Fifth Circuit has now ruled
on the question. In an opinion by Judge
Gregg Costa involving gift cards, United States v. Turner, the court agreed
with the Sixth Circuit and the Eighth Circuit that scanning the magnetic stripe
is not a search.
I’m a fan of Judge Costa’s work,
but I think this decision is wrong. I
thought I would expand on my prior posts and say more on why it’s wrong — and
why I think it matters.
Read more on The
Volokh Conspiracy.
Perspective. I
never would have bet that this could happen.
Why can’t taxis adapt?
Uber and Lyft Are Now Bigger than Taxis and Rental Cars
Combined
For the first time in the third quarter of 2016, more
business travelers are choosing ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft than
traditional taxis and rental cars combined, according to statistics from the
expense report software company Certify.
Of the over 10 million ground transportation receipts
Certify processed during the three months that ended in September, 52% of them
were for the two ride-hailing services, VentureBeat
reports. Uber was the overwhelming
victor, with 48% compared to Lyft’s 4%. The numbers cover North America.
… The numbers
showing ride-hailing becoming the dominant business transportation option come
just a day after Uber co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick said at Vanity
Fair’s New Establishment Summit in San Francisco that the ride-hailing giant
had reached than 40 million monthly active riders worldwide. He added that he company paid out between $1.5
billion and $2 billion to drivers in the last month, after taking its cut, and
that an average Uber rider spends $50 monthly on the service.
For my Architecture students. This may be the world you will work in.
Gartner’s 10 strategic predictions for 2017….and beyond
The overarching theme, Plummer said, is digital disruption,
which is not only happening, but is increasing in scale over time. Here are the 10 predictions:
1. By
2020, 100 million consumers will shop in virtual reality.
2. By
2020, 30% of web browsing sessions will be done without a screen.
3. By
2019, 20% of brands will abandon their mobile apps.
4. By
2020, algorithms will alter behavior of billions of global workers in a
positive way.
5. By
2022, a blockchain-based business will be worth $10 billion.
6. By
2021, 20% of activities will involve at least one of the seven digital giants.
7. Through
2019, every $1 that enterprises invest in innovation will require an additional
$7 in core execution.
8. Through
2020, the Internet of Things will increase data center storage demand by less
than 3%.
9. By
2022, IoT will save consumers and businesses $1 trillion a year.
10. By
2020, 40% of employees can cut healthcare costs by wearing a fitness tracker.
Blockchain keep popping up. I keep finding new perspectives on how it
will be used.
How the Blockchain Could Change Corporate Structure
UP UNTIL NOW, a centralized company has been the best way
to create a network that solves a large need: Uber
connected riders with drivers, banks connected savers with borrowers, and Twitter connected content writers with content
consumers. But thanks to the invention
of the blockchain, we will no longer need central companies to act as the
middleman. The business models of the
future will be software protocols developed, governed and owned by the
communities they support.
… Every
centralized company based on a network has to overcome the chicken-and-egg
problem regarding customer acquisition: No riders want to start using an Uber
network with just one driver, and no one wants to drive for an Uber network
with no riders. The successful companies
often have bizarre tales of how they overcame this problem. Uber individually coordinated private
black-car drivers, Facebook ripped Harvard’s student pages, and
Twitter convinced a few celebrities to start blasting content. But many more would-be useful networks failed
before they ever got started.
The decentralized blockchain model circumvents this
problem by incentivizing early adopters, who are rewarded if the network grows,
not just the central company that owns it. Imagine if the first Uber drivers and riders
had gotten a stake in the network. This
model will be applied to other services, such as a Dropbox disrupter where you
can pay to store your files or get paid to contribute your hard-disk space, or
decentralized global marketplaces where payments are escrowed on a blockchain.
I’ve been wondering what I should do with all those violins
I’ve been collecting.
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