Illogical? Sounds like Facebook has no control over leaks that occur
as users send and receive data that is “tapped” by an extension
in their browser.
Private
messages from 81,000 hacked Facebook accounts for sale
… Facebook said its security
had not been compromised. [Because
they had no security on third party extensions? Bob]
And the data had probably been obtained through
malicious browser extensions.
Facebook
added it had taken steps to prevent further accounts being affected.
[Were the steps a request
to browsers to stop using these extensions? Bob]
… "We have contacted browser-makers to
ensure that known malicious extensions are no longer available to
download in their stores," said Facebook executive Guy Rosen.
… According to Facebook, it was one
such extension that quietly monitored victims' activity on the
platform and sent personal details and private conversations back to
the hackers.
Facebook has not named the extensions it believes
were involved but says the leak was not its fault.
… He claimed that his hacking group could
offer data from 120 million users, of whom 2.7 million were Russians.
But Digital Shadows told the BBC that this claim
was doubtful because it was unlikely Facebook would have missed such
a large breach.
We need someone who has studied the writings of
people like this. I know only one. No wonder the police have
problems interpreting social media rants.
Law
Enforcement Faces Dilemma in Assessing Online Threats
The
perpetrators of mass shootings often provide a treasure trove of
insight into their violent tendencies, but the information is not
always seen by law enforcement until after the violence is carried
out. In addition, rants and hate speech rarely factor into whether
someone passes a background check to buy guns.
… "We
can go out on Twitter and there are loads of people saying insane
stuff, but how do you know which is the one person? It's always easy
after the fact, to go: 'That was clear.' But clearly everyone
spouting their mouth doesn't go and shoot up a synagogue," said
David Chipman, a retired agent of the federal Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and now senior policy adviser for
the Giffords Center.
… Keeping
tabs on social media posts has been used for years by law enforcement
to try to identify potential threats. The task is enormous and it's
an inexact science. The volume of posts is significant and the
question arises: Is something a true threat or free speech?
… Among
more than 550 police departments across the country surveyed several
years ago by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, about
three-quarters said they regularly searched social media for
potential threats.
Lt.
Chris Cook, spokesman for the Arlington, Texas, Police Department,
said the searches are often done manually, using keywords to try to
identify troubling posts.
"It's
very time consuming, it's very staff and resource intensive and you
have humans involved in the process so there is the potential that
law enforcement can miss something,"
Why
is it so hard to create a process that works?
How Big Oil
Dodges Facebook’s New Ad Transparency Rules
A Facebook
ad in October urged political conservatives to support the Trump
administration’s rollback of fuel emission standards, which it
hailed as “our president’s car freedom agenda” and “plan for
safer, cheaper cars that WE get to choose.” The ad came from a
Facebook page called Energy4US, and it included a disclaimer,
required by Facebook, saying it was “paid for by Energy4US.”
Yet there is no such company or organization as
Energy4US, nor is it any entity’s registered trade name, according
to a search of LexisNexis and other databases. Instead, Energy4US —
which Facebook says spent nearly $20,000 on the ads — appears to be
a front for American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a trade
association whose members include ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and Shell.
(Related)
Without new
laws, Facebook has no reason to fix its broken ad system
In recent days, both Vice
News and Business
Insider have put Facebook’s political ad transparency
efforts to the test ahead — and the results are not good.
Yesterday, Vice was able to easily game the “Paid for by”
disclosure on political ads, getting false disclosures approved in
the name of all 100 sitting US senators.
… But without any real requirements put in
place by Congress or the Federal Elections Commission, there are no
penalties for vulnerabilities in Facebook’s ad disclosure methods.
I thought this might happen. Once legislatures
realized that significant consequences (GDPR) could change corporate
behaviors, they would start trying to top one another.
Senator
Wyden proposes 20 prison sentences for CEOs who lie about data
collection and protection
Senator Ron Wyden [D-OR] (previously)
has introduced the Consumer
Data Protection Act, which extends personal criminal liability to
the CEOs of companies worth more than $1B or who hold data on more
than 50,000,000 people who knowingly mislead the FTC in a newly
mandated system of annual reports on the steps the company has taken
to secure the data.
CEOs whose companies lie to the FTC about these
measures will face 20 years in prison and $5 million in fines for
breaches.
This reminds me of the criminal liability regime
in the Sarbanes-Oxley bill passed after the Enron scandal, which
threatened jail sentences for CEOs who signed their name to false
financial statements and had far-reaching consequences (for example,
record labels had been routinely running "third shift"
pressings to produce extra, off-the-books copies of popular CDs that
would be sold in record stores but without sending any royalties to
the musicians involved -- after SOX, this came to an abrupt halt).
It turns
out that when the CEO's freedom is on the line, businesses manage to
create really effective policies to accomplish whatever it
is the company needs to do to keep the CEO out of prison: “Depend
upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it
concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
A project for people?
LOC Crowd -
Crowdsourcing the Transcription of Primary Sources
The Library of Congress has launched a new
crowdsourcing initiative to transcribe primary source documents. The
new initiative simply called Crowd
has contains collections of documents that the Library of Congress
wants the public to help transcribe.
Anyone can participate in the LOC's Crowd project.
To get started simply go to the site and click on one of the five
collections of documents. The current collections are Branch
Rickey: Changing the Game, Civil
War Soldiers: Disabled But Not Disheartened, Clara
Barton: Angel of the Battlefield, Letters
to Lincoln, and Mary
Church Terrell: Advocate for African Americans and Women. Once
you've chosen a collection you can choose an individual document
within the collection. Your chosen document will appear on the left
side of the screen and a field for writing your transcription appears
on the right side of the screen. After you have completed your
transcription it is submitted for peer review.
… All of the collections in Crowd do have
timelines and some other resources that help to provide context for
the documents that are in need of transcription.
The Smithsonian has a similar crowdsourcing
project called Smithsonian
Digital Volunteers.
You don’t see articles like this too often.
The Most
Awesome Online Teachers for Learning Web Development
For the past few months, I have been on a learning
spree looking to enhance my existing coding
skills and also learn new programming languages and frameworks. In
this process, I have watched a countless number of video tutorials
and online
courses that pertain to programming and, specifically, web
development.
In my quest to become a better developer, I’ve
come across several awesome “teachers” who aren’t just
excellent programmers but awesome educators and have the art of
explaining complex and difficult concepts.
This is an attempt to highlight the best
instructors on the Internet for JavaScript, React, Redux, Node.js,
Firebase (database and storage), Docker, Google Golang, Typescript,
Flutter (for mobile app development), Dart, Git, Webpack and Parcel
bundler.
I’ve taken courses by every single instructor
mentioned here and recommend them highly.
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