Tuesday, November 06, 2018

These are the people who will write our security laws.  God help us!  (A very long post everyone should read.)  I’ll post a few tidbits. 
In early August, “Flash Gordon” (@s7nsins on Twitter) contacted me to say that he discovered a leak involving the House of Representatives.
   Notifying the House of their leak was one of those misadventures in notification that I should probably write a book about one day.  Calling the House switchboard and asking to speak to whomever was responsible for their cybersecurity resulted in me being bounced from extension to extension for the next hour or so.  No one seemed to know what office I should be connected to. 
   In any event, they locked down the leak and I decided not to report publicly on everything at the time.
But then last week, yet another researcher (Lee Johnstone, @Cyber_War_News on Twitter) got in touch with me and told me that the House was leaking. 
   It’s now noon on Monday, and I received no call back yesterday or today.  And as of my last check, the door is still wide open.  So I’ve decided to report on this now and tweet it to members of Congress.  Maybe their staff can get through to the right person to secure their data.
Update 1:38 pm.  One of my followers on Twitter has a contact in the Chief Administrative Office, it seems, and he alerted the contact, who said he’ll check into it.  That would be nice.
Update 5:14 pm.  More than 24 hours after I called them, the data now appear to have been secured, although I’m not sure whether it would have been secured if not for a follower’s contact.   


When is a “ban” not a ban? 
Alex Jones banned from Facebook? His videos are still there — and so are his followers
  Infowars is gone from Facebook after a high-profile showdown over the summer between Silicon Valley and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.  But another Facebook page, NewsWars, has taken its place — and Jones’s many fans have followed.
In the three months since Facebook removed four of Jones’s pages over allegations of hate speech, the NewsWars page has remained intact and surged in posts and page views.  The NewsWars Facebook page identifies NewsWars.com, which Jones said his company operates, as the website associated with the page and lists it under “Contact Info.” Jones said he doesn’t run the Facebook page.
   “It shows a huge failure in being able to control this stuff,” said Albright, research director for Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism.


We’ve been talking about this for years.
Chinese 'gait recognition' tech IDs people by how they walk
Chinese authorities have begun deploying a new surveillance tool: "gait recognition" software that uses people's body shapes and how they walk to identify them, even when their faces are hidden from cameras.
Already used by police on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai, "gait recognition" is part of a push across China to develop artificial-intelligence and data-driven surveillance that is raising concern about how far the technology will go.
Huang Yongzhen, the CEO of Watrix, said that its system can identify people from up to 50 meters (165 feet) away, even with their back turned or face covered.  This can fill a gap in facial recognition, which needs close-up, high-resolution images of a person's face to work.


We used to do this manually. 
Facebook is looking at how to suggest friends by tracking who you meet in person
Facebook has been granted a patent that it could use to detect the people who you spend time with on a regular basis.  The idea is that the person you sit next to on the bus and flirt with could be suggested as a Facebook friend by the social network.
The company wants to use the sensors in your phone to detect people near you in various situations.  That might be data from your phone's Bluetooth, Near Field Communications or other hardware.
The signal strength can also be measured. So standing very close and talking is discernible from just being in the same nightclub.  Perhaps Facebook will even be able to tell if you're dancing with each other - thanks to gyroscope data from the phones.


Perspective.  Helping to define our continuing debate about self-driving cars.
Securing Connected Cars: How to Create a Cost-Effective, Secure In-Vehicle Network Backbone
   Dubbed AV 3.0, the new policy will set federal guidelines for how autonomous and assisted driving solutions need to work on public roads.  A big part of making autonomous driving accessible will be the ability for car makers and suppliers to secure the networks that power these increasingly sophisticated vehicles.  In fact, that’s what cars today have become: highly-sophisticated mobile computer networks that just happen to travel at highway speeds. 


I’ll have to ask my students.  I stopped my subscription years ago. 
Are Newspapers Heading Towards Post-Print Obscurity?
Thurman, Neil J. and Fletcher, Richard, Are Newspapers Heading Towards Post-Print Obscurity?  A Case Study of the Independent’s Transition to Online-Only (2018).  Digital Journalism, doi: 10.1080/21670811.2018.1504625.  Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3256638 [h/t Joe Hodnicki]
“With print circulations in decline and the print advertising market shrinking, newspapers in many countries are under pressure.  Some — like Finland’s Taloussanomat and Canada’s La Presse — have decided to stop printing and go online-only.  Others, like the Sydney Morning Herald, are debating whether to follow.  Those newspapers that have made the switch often paint a rosy picture of a sustainable and profitable digital future.  This study examines the reality behind the spin via a case study of The Independent, a general-interest UK national newspaper that went digital-only in March 2016.  We estimate that, although its net British readership did not decline in the year after it stopped printing, the total time spent with The Independent by its British audiences fell 81%, a disparity caused by huge differences in the habits of online and print readers.  This suggests that when newspapers go online-only they may move back into the black, but they also forfeit much of the attention they formerly enjoyed.  Furthermore, although The Independent is serving at least 50% more overseas browsers since going online-only, the relative influence on that growth of internal organizational change and external factors — such as the “Trump Bump” in news consumption — is difficult to determine.” 


Slick.  I’d enter my birth year but I’m afraid I see “fire’ listed as a new word. 
When was a word first used in print?
Merriam Webster Time Traveler – “When was a word first used in print?  You may be surprised!  Enter a date below to see the words first recorded on that year.  To learn more about First Known Use dates, click here.”


An extra resource or two can’t hurt.

2 comments:

CRKB IT SOLUTION PVT LTD said...

Best content & valuable as well. Thanks for sharing this content.
Approved Auditor in DAFZA
Approved Auditor in RAKEZ
Approved Auditor in JAFZA
i heard about this blog & get actually whatever i was finding. Nice post love to read this blog
Approved Auditor in DMCC
Virgin Linseed Oil BP

CRKB IT SOLUTION PVT LTD said...


Always look forward for such nice post & finally I got you. Really very impressive post & glad to read this.
Web Development Company in Greater Noida
Software development company In Greater noida


Homoeopathic treatment for Psoriasis in greater noida
Kidney Disease Homoeopathy Doctor In Greater Noida
CMS and ED
CMSED