Thursday, August 23, 2018

Depressing. Could it be true?
It’s Too Late to Protect the 2018 Elections. But Here’s How the U.S. Can Prepare for 2020.
… America’s adversaries believe that it is still both safe and effective to attack U.S. democracy using American technologies and the freedoms we cherish.
And why wouldn’t they believe that? In some ways, the United States has broadcast to the world that it doesn’t take these issues seriously and that any perpetrators of information warfare against the West will get, at most, a slap on the wrist.




When is an attack not an attack? When it’s a test. But an unauthorized test is an attack, isn’t it? Does anyone at the DNC know what is going on?
Attack on DNC Part of Simulated Phishing Test
A recent phishing attack aimed at the Democratic National Committee’s voter database was actually part of a simulation, researchers and representatives of the Democratic Party confirmed.
Cybersecurity firm Lookout this week came across a custom phishing website apparently aimed at the Democratic National Committee (DNC), specifically its VoteBuilder service.
The phishing site mimicked a login page of NGP VAN, a technology provider for the Democratic Party, and was hosted by DigitalOcean.
Lookout immediately notified the DNC, NGP VAN and DigitalOcean, and the phishing page was removed within hours, before any credentials were compromised. The FBI was also informed and an investigation was launched.
However, after further analysis, the DNC now believes the fake website was actually created by a third-party as part of a “simulated phishing test on VoteBuilder.”
The test, which mimicked several attributes of actual attacks on the Democratic party's voter file, was not authorized by the DNC, VoteBuilder nor any of our vendors,” explained Bob Lord, the DNC’s chief security officer.




A tough nut to tackle, because of all the nuts.
Fanning the Flames of Hate: Social Media and Hate Crime
Müller, Karsten and Schwarz, Carlo, Fanning the Flames of Hate: Social Media and Hate Crime (May 21, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3082972 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3082972
“This paper investigates the link between social media and hate crime using Facebook data. We study the case of Germany, where the recently emerged right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has developed a major social media presence. We show that right-wing anti-refugee sentiment on Facebook predicts violent crimes against refugees in otherwise similar municipalities with higher social media usage. To further establish causality, we exploit exogenous variation in major internet and Facebook outages, which fully undo the correlation between social media and hate crime. We further find that the effect decreases with distracting news events; increases with user network interactions; and does not hold for posts unrelated to refugees. Our results suggest that social media can act as a propagation mechanism between online hate speech and real-life violent crime.”




Looks like this Harvard-connected firm is analyzing everything.
Despite policies banning surveillance, it is unclear how effective Facebook and others can be at preventing trusted third-parties from misusing user data.
Crimson Hexagon, a Boston data analytics company, raised some eyebrows last week when it announced that its access to the firehose of user data from Facebook and Instagram had been reinstated—after being suspended and investigated by the social media giant for alleged misuse of data for surveillance purposes.
The reinstatement, which began earlier this month, followed “several weeks of constructive discussion and information exchange,” said Dan Shore, Crimson’s chief financial officer. But the companies didn’t specify the results of the inquiry or explain why access was restored, raising more questions about how Facebook and other platforms police third parties like Cambridge Analytica and Crimson Hexagon.
… Crimson has also relied extensively on Twitter data, and has collected so many tweets—over a trillion since 2010—that Twitter relies on the company’s services to analyze its own network.




Implications for the Internet of Things?
Win! Landmark Seventh Circuit Decision Says Fourth Amendment Applies to Smart Meter Data
The Seventh Circuit just handed down a landmark opinion, ruling 3-0 that the Fourth Amendment protects energy-consumption data collected by smart meters. Smart meters collect energy usage data at high frequencies—typically every 5, 15, or 30 minutes—and therefore know exactly how much electricity is being used, and when, in any given household. The court recognized that data from these devices reveals intimate details about what’s going on inside the home that would otherwise be unavailable to the government without a physical search. The court held that residents have a reasonable expectation of privacy in this data and that the government’s access of it constitutes a “search.”
… in its decision, released last week, the Seventh Circuit wisely recognized that smart meters and analog meters are different




Perspective.
We Still Love Email, But We’re Spreading the Love with Other Channels
Adobe: “Our love for the inbox remains, but our preference for engagement on other channels has increased. That’s one of the findings in our fourth annual consumer email survey of over 1,000 white-collar workers in the U.S. According to the survey, which looked at how consumers are communicating across email and other channels, time spent checking personal email is up an impressive 17 percent year-over-year (YoY). Consumers are checking personal email an average of 2.5 hours on a typical weekday. On top of that, they’re spending an average of 3.1 hours checking work email. All this time means people have integrated email into nearly every part of the day. Ninety percent of respondents check personal email during work. Eighty-five percent check it before they get to work, and nearly a quarter take a look before they even get out of bed in the morning. People even check personal email while watching TV (60%), using the bathroom (40%), talking on the phone (35%), working out (16%), and even driving (14%). Why is email so ingrained in our lives? One reason may be that it’s so manageable—we can sort, file, filter, and generally get things done. It’s also a known, safe quantity. We’re familiar with how to make email work for us, and we feel confident about the privacy of our data…”




Wally demonstrates how to “manage up.”


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