Hackers
targeting election networks across country prior to midterms
Hackers have ramped up their efforts to meddle with the
country’s election infrastructure in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s
midterms, sparking a raft of investigations into election interference,
internal intelligence documents show.
The hackers have targeted voter registration databases,
election officials, and networks across the country, from counties in the
Southwest to a city government in the Midwest, according to Department of
Homeland Security election threat reports reviewed by the Globe. The agency says publicly all the
recent attempts have been prevented or mitigated, but internal documents show
hackers have had “limited success.”
(Related)
Voting
Machines: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
… United States
elections are not evidence-based elections. According to computer science Professor Alex
Halderman of the University of Michigan, only two states, Colorado and New Mexico, conduct manual audits
sufficiently robust to detect vote tally manipulation. More than half of US states do not require manual audits at all, while manual recount
laws typically allow automatic state-funded recounts only if the margin of
victory is less than 1 percent.
Interesting. Can
anyone craft a ‘safe harbor’ from GDPR?
Another State Data Security Law: Ohio Gets in on the Action
Craig A. Newman of Patterson Belknap writes:
Starting today, Ohio businesses with written cybersecurity
programs will be looking for a free pass if they are sued under state law over
a data breach.
Ohio’s Data Protection Act (Senate Bill 220, Ohio Rev. Code § 1354.01, et seq.) goes into effect
today, creating a safe harbor from tort liability for businesses
that meet specific cybersecurity standards. The law won’t prevent litigation over a data
breach, but provides an affirmative defense to companies hit with such claims
if they have met the requirements of the new law. This includes adopting data security policies
that conform to a number of existing industry standards including the NIST
Cybersecurity Framework.
Read more on Data
Security Law Blog.
Inventing the news you wish for?
Oxford
University’s Oxford Internet Institute aggregator tool tracks “junk” political
views being shared on Facebook
TechCrunch: “Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute
(OII), which has just launched an aggregator tool which tracks what it terms “junk”
political views being shared on Facebook — doing so in near real-time and
offering various ways to visualize and explore the junk heap. What’s “junk news” in this context? The OII says this type of political content
can include “ideologically extreme, hyper-partisan, or conspiratorial news and
information, as well as various forms of propaganda”. This sort of stuff might elsewhere get badged
‘fake news’, although that label is problematical — and has itself been
hijacked by known muck spreaders. (So
‘online disinformation’ tends to be the label of choice in academic and policy
circles, these days.) The OII is here
using its own political propaganda content categorization — i.e. this term
“junk news” — which is based on what it describes as “a grounded typology”
derived through analyzing a large amount of political communications shared by
US social media users.
Specifically it’s based on an analysis of more than
2.5 million tweets sent in the period September 21-30, 2018 —
applying what the Institute dubs “rigorous coding and content analysis
techniques to define the new phenomenon”. This involved labelling the source websites of
shared links based on “a grounded typology that has been tested over several
elections around the world in 2016-2018”, with a content source
getting coded as a purveyor of junk news if it failed on 3 out of 5 of
criteria of the typology…
- The Visual Junk News Aggregator does what it says on the tin, aggregating popular junk news posts into a bipartisan thumbnail wall of over-inflated (or just out and out) BS. Complete with a trigger warning for the risk of graphic images and language. Mousing over the thumbnails brings up any title and description that’s been scraped for the post in question, plus a date stamp and full Facebook reaction data.
- Another tool — the Top 10 Junk News Aggregator — shows the most engaged with English language junk news stories posted to Facebook in the last 24 hours, in the context of the 2018 US midterm elections. (With engagement being based on total Facebook reactions per second of the post’s life.)..”
(Related) This
story is in both of the databases described in the previous article. Clearly, we don’t need Russians to create fake
news.
Kemp Cites
Voter Database Hacking Attempt, Gives No Evidence
The office of Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is also
the Republican gubernatorial nominee, said Sunday it is investigating the state
Democratic Party in connection with an alleged attempt to hack Georgia's online
voter database, which is used to check in voters at polling places in the
midterm elections.
The statement offered no evidence for the claim and didn't
specify allegations against Georgia Democrats. But it quickly became a last-minute flashpoint
in one of the nation's most closely contested governor's races as Tuesday's
election loomed.
Democrats viewed the development as more evidence that
Kemp's office, which oversees elections, was serving as an extension of his
gubernatorial campaign. Republicans,
meanwhile, framed it as an instance of Democrats trying to arrange nefarious
votes.
What could possibly go wrong?
US Militia
Groups Are Headed To The Southwest Border Despite Pentagon Concerns
Gun-carrying civilian groups and border vigilantes have heard a call to arms in President Donald Trump’s warnings
about threats to American security posed by caravans of Central American
migrants moving through Mexico. They’re
packing coolers and tents, oiling rifles and tuning up aerial drones, with
plans to form caravans of their own and trail American troops to the border.
… Asked whether his
group planned to deploy with weapons, McGauley laughed. “This is Texas, man,” he said.
The question now is how best to use it.
Toronto criminologist has the world’s most comprehensive database on what makes serial killers tick
“Reid, a 30-year-old criminologist and developmental
psychologist who’s finishing her PhD at the University of Toronto, has been
collecting information on missing persons for more than two years. She’s amassed an in-depth database of
thousands of them — drawing from official Search and Rescue (SAR) reports, the
Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) database, collecting tips from
crime-beat journalists as well as from friends and family of those missing — in
order to obtain the age, ethnicity, demographic, and geographical information
of victims. For some of this data
collection, she’s delegated research responsibilities to 13 volunteer
undergraduates at the University of Toronto.
Often, she cross-references this database with another database that
she’s been working on for closer to four years — her “serial killer”
database — which includes up to 600 variables on the behavioral and psychological
development of every known serial killer since the fifteenth century, making it
the most complete database on the developmental traits of serial killers in
existence…”
Some of my students foresee an end to all exercise.
… The Stator
electric scooter is truly one-of-a-kind.
… Those wide
wheels aren’t just for show either. Not
only do they house and protect a 1,000 W motor, but they are also part of the
“self-balancing” nature of the scooter.
With the battery weight solidly below the wheel axles and a wide contact
patch, the scooter is essentially self-righting and doesn’t require a
kickstand.
Push it sideways and it functions like a Weeble – it
wobbles but it won’t fall down.
… The Stator has a
top speed of 25 mph (43 km/h), which is definitely faster than most other electric scooters.
(Related)
GM creates
a global e-bike, looks for branding help with contest
… Part of that
EV-savvy strategy, apparently—or a parallel one, perhaps—involves e-bikes
intended for “consumers around the globe.”
Friday, the company showed first pictures of two e-bikes it’s
developed—one folding and one compact—and that they’ll be available for sale in
2019.
… In the meantime,
it’s looking for help with branding the bikes.
Those interested in submitting ideas can go here
until 10 a.m. EST on November 26.
Challenge winners will receive $10,000, and runner-up submissions get
$1,000.
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