Monday, April 17, 2017

Any action?  Like activating the motion sensors or the GPS by moving the phone? 
Answering What Constitutes a Search of a Cellphone after Riley Through a ‘Use-Based’ Approach
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Apr 16, 2017
Jacobsen, Kristen M., Let’s Get Physical, Physical: Answering What Constitutes a Search of a Cellphone after Riley Through a ‘Use-Based’ Approach (January 24, 2017).  Criminal Law Bulletin Volume 53, Issue 4, 2017.  Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2952497
“Investigating and prosecuting in the twenty-first century requires that the government have clear and workable rules to determine what action constitutes a Fourth Amendment search of a cellphone.  The use-based approach provides this guidance.  The use-based approach, which will substitute for the physical trespass doctrine, holds that any physical manipulation of the cellphone or any act that requires, or prompts, internal action on the part of the cellphone internally constitutes a Fourth Amendment search.  This approach prevents advancements in technology from eradicating Fourth Amendment protections, while the already-established exceptions allow law enforcement the latitude necessary to conduct investigations.”

(Related?) 
Many smartphone owners don’t take steps to secure their devices
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Apr 16, 2017
“Cybersecurity experts recommend that smartphone owners take a number of steps to keep their mobile devices safe and secure.  These include using a pass code to gain access to the phone, as well as regularly updating a phone’s apps and operating system.  Many Americans, however, are not adhering to these best practices, [No surprise.  Bob] according to a Pew Research Center report released earlier this year.”

(Related).  Works for lawyers, too.
Secure computing for journalists
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Apr 16, 2017
Matthew Green: “…Classical (desktop and laptop) operating systems were designed primarily to support application developers.  This means they offer a lot of power to your applications.  An application like Microsoft Word can typically read and write all the files available to your account.  If Word becomes compromised, this is usually enough to pwn you in practice.  And in many cases, these applications have components with root (or Administrator) access, which makes them even more dangerous.  Modern phone operating systems like Android and iOS were built on a different principle.  Rather than trusting apps with much power, each app runs in a “sandbox” that (mainly) limits it to accessing its own files.  If the sandbox works, even a malicious application shouldn’t be able to reach out to touch other apps’ files or permanently modify your system.  This approach — combined with other protections such as in-memory code signing, hardware secret storage and routine use of anti-exploitation measures — makes your system vastly harder to compromise…”


Are you willing to face an unethical car? 
Incorporating Ethics into Artificial Intelligence
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Apr 16, 2017
“This article reviews the reasons scholars hold that driverless cars and many other AI equipped machines must be able to make ethical decisions, and the difficulties this approach faces.  It then shows that cars have no moral agency, and that the term ‘autonomous’, commonly applied to these machines, is misleading, and leads to invalid conclusions about the ways these machines can be kept ethical.  The article’s most important claim is that a significant part of the challenge posed by AI-equipped machines can be addressed by the kind of ethical choices made by human beings for millennia.  Ergo, there is little need to teach machines ethics even if this could be done in the first place.  Finally, the article points out that it is a grievous error to draw on extreme outlier scenarios—such as the Trolley narratives—as a basis for conceptualizing the ethical issues at hand.  Published in the Journal of Ethics; click here for the full text (fee).” 


Something for my Security and Forensics students. 
Amazon Echo - Here's how to listen to EVERYTHING your Echo has EVER heard
   If you want to check-out your old recordings, you’ll need to download the Alexa companion app on your Android or iOS smartphone.
Launch the app, then tap on the Settings menu, then History.
   Tap on any of the recordings, which are listed in chronological order, to listen to the audio, review what Alexa thought you asked, and delete the file from Amazon’s servers.
If you want to delete more than one audio file, Amazon does provide a quick way to delete your entire back catalogue of voice commands.
To do this, head to amazon.com/mycd in your web browser.
From the list of devices registered to your Amazon account, select your chosen Alexa device, then tap Manage Voice Recordings, followed by Delete.


Interesting question. 
   there is an emerging debate over the competitive implications of big data.  Some observers argue that companies amassing too much data might inhibit competition, so antitrust regulators should preemptively take action to cut “big data” down to “medium data.”  Others say there is nothing new here, and existing competition law is more than capable of dealing with any problems.


A video manifesto?
Cleveland manhunt underway after video of murder uploaded to Facebook
A Cleveland man is at large after reportedly killing someone and uploading the footage to Facebook.  The video appears to show a man identified by police as 37-year-old Steve Stephens approaching a 74-year-old man, before asking him to say a name and shooting him in the head.  Some time after the murder, Stephens also began broadcasting on Facebook Live.  The video and broadcast were among multiple Facebook posts made by Stephens on Sunday afternoon, in which he claimed to have killed up to 15 people as part of an “Easter Day slaughter.”
   Facebook has removed the video and Stephens’ account, but it took the company several hours to take them down after Stephens started his attack at around 2PM local time.
   It’s not clear whether Facebook acted on its own to remove the posts, or reacted to requests from local law enforcement officials to take them down.


"The laddie doth protest too much, methinks,"  Or, is a trustworthy personality as important for a CEO as it is for a Presidential candidate?  (Last election notwithstanding.)  
Selling Mark Zuckerberg
The Facebook CEO’s likability blitz isn’t a presidential campaign, it’s a focus group for his 1.8 billion constituents — and part of a high stakes campaign to win your likes.
   Zuckerberg, now a 32-year-old dad with one daughter and another on the way, has evolved considerably in the intervening decade.  He hired speechwriters.  He spruced up his uniform from Valley schlub to monochrome minimalism.  He took on a series of annual self-improvement challenges that made him into a “lifestyle guru” for some male tech workers, according to the New York Times Style section.  (The paper said his announcements “sometimes have the feel of software upgrades,” but disciples admire Zuckerberg’s ability to reinvent himself “as a better human being.”)
“One of the things I’ve noticed over the years, he has improved his EQ,” Swisher told BuzzFeed News.  (EQ is shorthand for emotional quotient, a popular rubric for measuring interpersonal skills in Silicon Valley.)  “He was super, super awkward to talk to and he knew that he had a problem and he was fully aware.  He cared about changing it.”  He may even have challenged himself to improve.  I’m really shy, I should learn not to be so shy!  I can see him saying that,” Swisher said.


Want to be a Congressman?
Updates to the My Congressional District Tool
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Apr 16, 2017
“The U.S. Census Bureau recently updated the My Congressional District web application for the 115th Congress. Other updates include:
  • Statistics from the 2015 American Community Survey and maps for the congressional districts within the states that were redistricted in September 2016 (Florida, Minnesota, North Carolina and Virginia).
  • Embeddable functionality.
  • Re-enabled ability to download a .csv file for a single district or all districts within a state.
My Congressional District allows quick and easy access to statistics from the 2015 American Community Survey and 2014 County Business Patterns for the nation’s 435 congressional districts.  The American Community Survey provides detailed demographic, social, economic and housing statistics every year for the nation’s communities.  County Business Patterns provide annual statistics for businesses with paid employees at a detailed geography and industry level.  To see previous updates to the My Congressional District web application, click here.”

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