Saturday, April 08, 2017

Imagining the downside of a terrorist attack?  (Upgrading their Mickey Mouse security?) 
How much privacy intrusion will you tolerate to take your kid on a ride or for a stay at a Disney property?
Joe Cadillic writes:
Imagine going through a metal detector before you check into your hotel room, imagine being patted down and searched before you get inside your hotel.  Imagine Disney using facial biometrics to spy on everyone in your family.
Well imagine no more, it’s already happening.
According to an article in the Orlando Sentinel, Disney World has made going to your hotel and amusement park a virtual trip to a TSA checkpoint.  Disney World has installed metal detectors and bag searches at all of their hotel entrances and park entrances.
Read more on MassPrivateI.


I wonder who reviewed this request before it was issued? 
Twitter pulls lawsuit after feds back down
Twitter has withdrawn a lawsuit against the U.S. government after the Customs and Border Protection backed down on a demand that the social media outlet reveal details about a user account critical of the agency.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday, contended that the customs agency was abusing its investigative power.  The customs agency has the ability to get private user data from Twitter when investigating cases in areas such as illegal imports, but this case was far from that.
The target of the request was the @alt_uscis account, one of a number of "alt" accounts that have sprung up on Twitter since the inauguration of President Donald Trump.  The accounts are critical of the new administration and most claim to be run by current or former staff members of government agencies.


An indication of how the EU sees Trumps rhetoric?
MEPs want Commission to toughen up Privacy Shield under Trump
The European Parliament wants the European Commission to ‘Trump-proof’ the Privacy Shield data sharing agreement between the EU and the United States after the new US administration threatened to roll back some privacy safeguards.
A slender majority of MEPs approved a resolution today (6 April) asking the Commission to force the Trump administration to guarantee privacy safeguards and give the European Parliament access to documents detailing how the Privacy Shield agreement has been enforced by US authorities during a legal review in September.  The resolution passed with 306 votes in favour and 240 against.


Perspective.  The business of Big Data.
Otonomo raises $25M to help automakers make money from connected cars
It’s no secret that data is the hot new revenue source for automakers, who are seeing additional profit opportunities bloom as vehicles become more connected and they can retrieve a ton of useful data that’s incredibly valuable when deployed correctly.  Israeli startup otonomo has been on top of that trend since its founding in 2015, with nine automakers worldwide using its platform to feed a marketplace that connects car makers and drivers with service providers, optimizing the monetization of that data.
   “There are more and more connected cars out there, and those connected cars are sending a lot of data in the background all the time to big databases the car manufacturers have built,” Volkow explained.  “They send the data between every minute to every three or four minutes depending on the model, and also when you start the car, when you park the car or when you have an event.”
All this data is valuable to car makers, for their own use in developing new vehicles, services and technologies.  But it’s also an additional cost load to bear.
“It costs a lot of money for the OEs; putting the modem in the car is like $100, then you have to pay AT&T about $5 per month to get the data out, then it’s about $1 to store the data,” Volkow said.
   Otonomo’s platform is a cloud solution, with nothing additional required in the car, that connects on one side to the databases of the car manufacturers, and on the other to different services and applications that want this data.  This group of customers including insurance companies, smart cities, workshops, dealerships, developers, and even hedge funds – “everybody wants car data,” as Volkow puts it.


Just because, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Santayana

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