...and they secure it just like Hillary Clinton?
Evan Halper writes about an issue I’ve raised in
my own commentary on the risks
of the explosion of voter profiling.
….
But as presidential campaigns push into a new frontier of voter
targeting, scouring social media accounts, online browsing habits and
retail purchasing records of millions of Americans, they have brought
a privacy imposition unprecedented in politics. By some estimates,
political candidates are
collecting more personal information on Americans than even the most
aggressive retailers. Questions are emerging about how
much risk the new order of digital campaigning is creating for
unwitting voters as the vast troves of data accumulated by political
operations become increasingly attractive to hackers.
Read more on Government
Technology.
What control do I have? If I don't allow the car
in my garage to use my secure WiFi to connect to the manufacturer,
will it update when I drive by a Starbucks?
Your next
car will update itself while you sleep, and maybe watch you too
… Automakers tell us that the average 2016
model year car has up to 100 million lines of software code resident
in various systems throughout the vehicle. About 20 million of those
lines of code are required just to run a standard navigation and
infotainment system.
… According to Forbes Business,
“20 percent of vehicles sold worldwide in 2015 will include some
form of embedded connectivity while the number of connected cars
sold globally will grow more than sixfold to 152 million by 2020.”
… “By the turn of the decade, every new car
sold around the world will have a data communications modules. It’s
not just about infotainment. It’s more about the functionality of
the vehicle,” Pisz told Digital Trends. “It’s about the car
telling the customer that it’s not feeling well before the customer
knows. If a fault code comes up, it goes to a big data center and
it’s noted as an exception. The information goes back to the
dealer or back to the customer.” This kind of feature uses the
same data connection that provides you with real-time navigation
information and safety services.
… In order to update the engine management and
related systems – including transmission control, braking and
stability controls, adaptive cruise control, and passenger safety
systems – the automaker must be absolutely certain that the update
is received and implemented correctly, or the vehicle could be left
inoperable.
… One key thing to mention regarding OTA
updates is that the door swings both ways. While your car is being
updated, the potential exists for your car to report back to the
automaker. Some of the data that can be reported is personal, and
may be used to market to you, or potentially to challenge you.
For my Computer Security students. Notice that
this is exactly what the book says.
NSA Hacker
Chief Explains How to Keep Him Out of Your System
… In the world of advanced persistent threat
actors (APT) like the NSA, credentials are king for gaining access to
systems. Not the login credentials of your organization’s VIPs,
but the credentials of network administrators and others with high
levels of network access and privileges that can open the kingdom to
intruders. Per the words of a recently leaked NSA document, the NSA
hunts
sysadmins.
The NSA is also keen to find any hardcoded
passwords in software or passwords that are transmitted in the
clear—especially by old, legacy protocols—that can help them move
laterally through a network once inside.
… In general, Joyce noted, spies have little
trouble getting into your network because they know better than you
what’s on it.
“We put the time in …to know [that network]
better than the people who designed it and the people who are
securing it,” he said. “You know the technologies you intended
to use in that network. We know the technologies that are actually
in use in that network. Subtle difference. You’d be surprised
about the things that are running on a network vs. the things that
you think are supposed to be there.”
… Another nightmare for the NSA? An
“out-of-band network tap”—a device that monitors network
activity and produces logs
that can record anomalous activity—plus a smart system
administrator who actually reads the logs and pays attention to what
they say.
Prof van Schewick also offers solutions. How
un-lawyerly!
Is
T-Mobile's Binge On Legal? Law Professor Says No
… The Stanford report
by law school professor Barbara van Schewick contends that Binge On
"gives providers in the program a competitive advantage"
and that "T-Mobile's selection of services harms competition and
stifles free expression." It even goes as far as to say that
"Binge On's discriminatory effects are here to stay," and
that "Binge On sets us on a slippery slope."
What I most feared, evidence that her server had
been hacked, has still not surfaced. It really doesn't matter if
they were “marked classified.” (Or what the definition of “is”
is.)
The Obama
administration has confirmed for the first time that Hillary
Clinton's home server contained closely guarded government secrets,
censoring 22 emails that contained material requiring one of the
highest levels of classification. The revelation came three days
before Clinton competes in the Iowa presidential caucuses.
State Department
officials also said the agency's Diplomatic Security and Intelligence
and Research bureaus are
investigating if any of the information was classified at the time of
transmission, going to the heart of Clinton's defense of
her email practices.
How will this change IBM? Ask Watson!
New IBM
Watson Chief David Kenny Talks His Plans For 'AI As A Service' And
The Weather Company Sale
When IBM announced the close of its acquisition of
The Weather Company on Friday, it added another veteran CEO in
Weather’s David Kenny to work under Big Blue boss Ginni
Rometty. And IBM’s not wasting Kenny’s time on integrating
his former company into the fold. So hours after the announcement,
the newly-appointed chief of the critical IBM Watson unit shared his
top priority: to bring Watson together into a more cohesive product
that will introduce ”artificial intelligence as a service.”
… The Weather Company had made a priority to
connect hundreds of
millions of sensors to produce more than 20
terabytes of data a day for its apps and websites.
That expertise will now go into IBM’s other
Internet of Things units, scanning information from medical
equipment, smartphones as well as trains, planes and automobiles.
… Watson already solves “deep problems,”
Kenny says, in areas including law,
healthcare and financial risk. But those clients can’t always
share their stories, he admits, and IBM could do a better job
unifying the various Watson capabilities into one coherent product.
Make those offerings more repeatable and easier to plug-and-play and
get running almost immediately with a customer big or small, and
Watson could democratize
machine learning in a way that other AI companies can’t
offer at the same scale, Kenny says.
Opportunity! Would the NRA help us create an
online marketplace for weapons?
It’s now
a lot harder to buy a gun from someone on Facebook
While Facebook itself doesn't sell guns, it has
dealt for years with the right way to handle sales of regulated goods
such as firearms, adult toys and prescription drugs on its social
media network.
On Friday, the firm changed its policy regarding
firearms, completely banning any peer-to-peer firearms sales on its
network. That means users can no longer offer or coordinate the
private sale of firearms on the site. This policy also applies to
the sale of gun parts and ammunition, said a Facebook spokeswoman.
Why is this not available to the public?
Tweeting at
a Federal Agency? The New ‘US Digital Registry’ Can Tell You for
Sure
A new registry of verified government social media
accounts could help the
public beware of online digital doppelgängers and allow
developers to create tailored applications that pull in data from
thousands of official government social media accounts.
The U.S. Digital Registry aims to be the
authoritative source for all official social media accounts used by
federal agencies. The registry also lists official government mobile
apps and mobile websites.
… Accessing the U.S. Digital Registry requires
an OMB Max ID, which is available to federal government employees and
contractors with a valid .gov, .mil, or .fed.us email address.
Register
for an OMB Max ID if you need one.
Only basic access is free unless you are in law
school…
Ravel law –
California Case Law Now Live
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Jan 29, 2016
Daniel
Lewis – Jan 20, 2016: “We
just took a big step forward in making the law freely and easily
available. Starting today, as part of the Harvard-Ravel
digitization project, the
comprehensive, authoritative collection of California case law is
available online at Ravel. For the first time, anyone can
search and read all California court opinions for
free, including landmark rulings on every topic, from
same-sex marriage (In
re Marriage Cases, 2008) to separation of powers (Houston
v. Williams, 1859). Each case is accompanied by a high-quality
scan of the original book in which it was published, providing an
authentic version that can not be found anywhere else but Ravel. For
lawyers, law students, academics and the general public, this is an
extraordinary resource that was previously out of reach to many.
California’s court opinions are a critical part of our country’s
legal “operating system,” yet until today these rulings have been
locked behind expensive paywalls and printed in books available only
to a limited few. Ravel now makes this vast legal database available
to everyone, along with
powerful tools to sift through it. We’re incorporating
Harvard’s case law collection into the rest of our platform as
well. For professionals who subscribe to our suite of analytical
tools, you’ll soon find California state judges as part of our
Judge Analytics feature and will be able to explore in powerful
detail how these judges make decisions…”
… Ravel Advanced is
free for law students and legal academics. Create
an Educational Account
Not much.
… Over the past two years, we and our partners
at the Open Syllabus
Project (based at the American Assembly at Columbia) have
collected more than a million syllabuses from university websites.
We have also begun to extract some of their key components — their
metadata — starting with their dates, their schools, their fields
of study and the texts that they assign.
This past week, we made available online a beta
version of our Syllabus
Explorer, which allows this database to be searched. Our hope
and expectation is that this tool will enable people to learn new
things about teaching, publishing and intellectual history.
Another week of devolving education.
Hack
Education Weekly News
… The
EFF asks why so many universities are opposing the Department of
Education’s proposed OER policy (that federally funded educational
resources would be openly licensed). One possible answer: patent$.
… “Colman Chadam carries genetic markers
for cystic fibrosis, but doesn't have the disease itself, according
to his parents.” Buzzfeed
looks at the legal battle his parents are waging against a Palo
Alto school district which dismissed him from a school, charging
he posed a health risk to other students.
… Via
Inside Higher Ed: “Students waste about one-fifth of class time
on laptops, smartphones and tablets, even though they admit such
behavior can harm their grades.”
