Saturday, August 18, 2018

Cyber crime is big business.
Indian Bank Hit in $13.5M Cyberheist After FBI ATM Cashout Warning
On Sunday, Aug. 12, KrebsOnSecurity carried an exclusive: The FBI was warning banks about an imminent “ATM cashout” scheme about to unfold across the globe, thanks to a data breach at an unknown financial institution. On Aug. 14, a bank in India disclosed hackers had broken into its servers, stealing nearly $2 million in fraudulent bank transfers and $11.5 million unauthorized ATM withdrawals from cash machines in more than two dozen countries.
The FBI put out its alert on Friday, Aug. 10. The criminals who hacked into Pune, India-based Cosmos Bank executed their two-pronged heist the following day, sending co-conspirators to fan out and withdraw a total of about $11.5 million from ATMs in 28 countries.
… Just prior to executing on ATM cashouts, the intruders will remove many fraud controls at the financial institution, such as maximum withdrawal amounts and any limits on the number of customer ATM transactions daily.
The perpetrators alter account balances and security measures to make an unlimited amount of money available at the time of the transactions, allowing for large amounts of cash to be quickly removed from the ATM.
… One final note: Several news outlets have confused the attack that hit Cosmos Bank with another ATM crime called “jackpotting,” which requires thieves to have physical access to the inside of the cash machine and the ability to install malicious software that makes the ATM spit out large chunks of cash at once. Like ATM cashouts/unlimited operations, jackpotting attacks do not directly affect customer accounts but instead drain ATMs of currency.




Here we go again. If I can teach my students how to encrypt using RSA public/private keys, (in one hour using tools on the Internet) why wouldn’t criminals do the same if they suspected they were being tapped?
Exclusive: U.S. government seeks Facebook help to wiretap Messenger - sources
The U.S. government is trying to force Facebook Inc (FB.O) to break the encryption in its popular Messenger app so law enforcement may listen to a suspect’s voice conversations in a criminal probe, three people briefed on the case said, resurrecting the issue of whether companies can be compelled to alter their products to enable surveillance.
The previously unreported case in a federal court in California is proceeding under seal, so no filings are publicly available, but the three people told Reuters that Facebook is contesting the U.S. Department of Justice’s demand.
The judge in the Messenger case heard arguments on Tuesday on a government motion to hold Facebook in contempt of court for refusing to carry out the surveillance request, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Facebook and the Department of Justice declined to comment.
The Messenger issue arose in Fresno, California, as part of an investigation of the MS-13 gang, one of the people said.
… Unlike the San Bernardino case, where the FBI wanted to crack one iPhone in its possession, prosecutors are seeking a wiretap of ongoing voice conversations by one person on Facebook Messenger.
Facebook is arguing in court that Messenger voice calls are encrypted end-to-end, meaning that only the two parties have access to the conversation, two of the people briefed on the case said.
Ordinary Facebook text messages, Alphabet Inc’s Gmail, and other services are decrypted by the service providers during transit for targeted advertising or other reasons, making them available for court-ordered interception.
End-to-end encrypted communications, by contrast, go directly from one user to another user without revealing anything intelligible to providers.




Perspective.
When China Rules the Web
For almost five decades, the United States has guided the growth of the Internet. From its origins as a small Pentagon program to its status as a global platform that connects more than half of the world’s population and tens of billions of devices, the Internet has long been an American project. Yet today, the United States has ceded leadership in cyberspace to China. Chinese President Xi Jinping has outlined his plans to turn China into a “cyber-superpower.” Already, more people in China have access to the Internet than in any other country, but Xi has grander plans. Through domestic regulations, technological innovation, and foreign policy, China aims to build an “impregnable” cyberdefense system, give itself a greater voice in Internet governance, foster more world-class companies, and lead the globe in advanced technologies.
China’s continued rise as a cyber-superpower is not guaranteed. Top-down, state-led efforts at innovation in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics, and other ambitious technologies may well fail.
… But given China’s size and technological sophistication, Beijing has a good chance of succeeding—thereby remaking cyberspace in its own image. If this happens, the Internet will be less global and less open. A major part of it will run Chinese applications over Chinese-made hardware. And Beijing will reap the economic, diplomatic, national security, and intelligence benefits that once flowed to Washington.


Friday, August 17, 2018

This does not give me a warm, fuzzy feeling about Apple security.
Melbourne teen hacked into Apple's secure computer network, court told
A Melbourne private schoolboy who repeatedly broke into Apple’s secure computer systems is facing criminal charges after the technology giant called in the FBI.
The teen, who cannot be named for legal reasons, broke into Apple’s mainframe from his suburban home on multiple occasions over a year because he was such a fan of the company, according to his lawyer.
The Children’s Court heard on Thursday that he had downloaded 90gb of secure files and accessed customer accounts.
His offending from the age of 16 saw him develop computerised tunnels and online bypassing systems to hide his identity until a raid on his family home uncovered a litany of hacking files and instructions all saved in a folder titled “hacky hack hack”.
The teen’s defence lawyer said his client had become so well known in the international hacking community that even mentioning the case in detail could expose him to risk.
… “Two Apple laptops were seized and the serial numbers matched the serial numbers of the devices which accessed the internal systems,” a prosecutor said.
“A mobile phone and hard drive were also seized and the IP address ... matched the intrusions into the organisation.
… Further analysis found that the schoolboy successfully accessed “authorised keys” as part of his offending.
Authorised keys grant log-in access to users and are said to be extremely secure.
He then used Whatsapp to communicate his offending to others.
The ongoing access continued until Apple eventually detected his presence and he was blocked.




Good that they have taken measures to identify risk, have they trained anyone to deal with what they find?
More U.S. states deploy technology to track election hacking attempts
A majority of U.S. states has adopted technology that allows the federal government to see inside state computer systems managing voter data or voting devices in order to root out hackers.
… The rapid adoption of the so-called Albert sensors, a $5,000 piece of hardware developed by the Center for Internet Security www.cisecurity.org, illustrates the broad concern shared by state government officials ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, government cybersecurity experts told Reuters.
… The 14 states that do not have a sensor installed ahead of the 2018 midterm elections have either opted for another solution, are planning to do so shortly or have refused the offer because of concerns about federal government overreach. Those 14 states were not identified by officials.




“No means yes, that should be obvious.”
APNewsBreak: Google clarifies location-tracking policy
Google has revised an erroneous description on its website of how its “Location History” setting works, clarifying that it continues to track users even if they’ve disabled the setting.
The change came three days after an Associated Press investigation revealed that several Google apps and websites store user location even if users have turned off Location History. Google has not changed its location-tracking practice in that regard.
But its help page for the Location History setting now states: “This setting does not affect other location services on your device.” It also acknowledges that “some location data may be saved as part of your activity on other services, like Search and Maps.”
Previously, the page stated: “With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.”




Summarized in a cute little infographic.
Mobile Privacy: What Do Your Apps Know About You?
The average smartphone user these days has between 60 and 90 apps on their device. Most of these apps request some sort of information about you and the device you are using. They may want to know your name, your email address, or your real-world address. But because smartphones are so powerful, they can also get quite a bit more than that, such as your exact location. Some apps will even request access to the device’s camera or microphone.
While all of this is done with the user’s consent, you may be surprised at the level of access some apps have to personal data. Did you know that 45 percent of the most popular Android apps and 25 percent of the most popular iOS apps request location tracking, for example? Or that 46 percent of popular Android apps and 25 percent of popular iOS apps request permission to access your device’s camera? Some Android apps even ask you to give them access to your SMS messages and phone call logs.




Do you think they knew the request was coming?
A federal court in the District of Columbia has blocked EPIC’s efforts to obtain a secret “Predictive Analytics Report” in a FOIA case against the Department of Justice. The court sided with the agency which had withheld the report and claimed the “Presidential communications privilege.” Neither the Supreme Court nor the D.C. Circuit has never permitted a federal agency to invoke that privilege. EPIC sued the agency in 2017 to obtain records about “risk assessment” tools in the criminal justice system. These techniques are used to set bail, determine criminal sentences, and even contribute to determinations about guilt or innocence. Many criminal justice experts oppose their use. EPIC has pursued several FOIA cases to promote “algorithmic transparency,” passenger risk assessment, “future crime” prediction, and proprietary forensic analysis. The case is EPIC v. DOJ (Aug. 14, 2018 D.D.C.). EPIC is considering an appeal.




Perspective. Higher than I thought. I was convinced that users went to social groups they already agreed with and ignored any evidence to the contrary.
14% of Americans have changed their mind about an issue because of something they saw on social media
“For most Americans, exposure to different content and ideas on social media has not caused them to change their opinions. But a small share of the public – 14% – say they have changed their views about a political or social issue in the past year because of something they saw on social media, according to a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted May 29-June 11. Although it’s unclear what issues people changed their views about, within the past year a variety of social and political issues – from the #MeToo movement to #BlackLivesMatter and #MAGA – have been discussed on social media. Certain groups, particularly young men, are more likely than others to say they’ve modified their views because of social media. Around three-in-ten men ages 18 to 29 (29%) say their views on a political or social issue changed in the past year due to social media. This is roughly twice the share saying this among all Americans and more than double the shares among men and women ages 30 and older (12% and 11%, respectively). There are also differences by race and ethnicity, according to the new survey. Around one-in-five black (19%) and Hispanic (22%) Americans say their views changed due to social media, compared with 11% of whites. Social media prompted views to change more among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (17%) than among Republicans and Republican leaners (9%). Within these party groups, there are also some differences by gender, at least among Democrats. Men who are Democrats or lean Democratic (21%) are more likely than their female counterparts (14%) to say they’ve changed their minds. However, equal shares of Republican and Republican-leaning men and women say the same (9% each)…”




Perspective. What would change their minds? Will this delay self-driving trucks?
Nearly half of Americans don't want a self-driving car: survey
Fewer Americans are embracing self-driving car technology following high-profile incidents involving Uber and Tesla vehicles, according to a new study from Cox Automotive.
Consumers’ interest in automatic braking and other autonomous features is high, but drivers view self-driving cars as less safe compared to a similar survey conducted two years ago. Forty-nine percent of respondents said they would never own a fully-autonomous car, known in the industry as a Level 5 vehicle. Two years ago, 30 percent said they would never buy one.
Meanwhile, a majority of people (63 percent) believed in 2016 that roadways would be safer if all vehicles were fully autonomous. That number has dropped to 45 percent.


(Related) Would better (any) laws help?
3 Practical Tools To Help Regulators Develop Better Laws And Policies
“Regulators and policymakers are driving efforts to deliver the benefits of automated vehicles (AVs) to the public as soon as possible, while minimizing their potential challenges. However, there are still many open questions regarding the best approach to achieving this objective. Key stakeholders—including regulators, policymakers, industry, citizens, and academia—have not yet reached a consensus on the approaches regulators should take in developing robust public policies for the governance of AVs. Understanding the types of regulatory challenges for AVs and using new practical tools or using traditional tools in a different way, would help with this problem of developing better AV policies and regulations. This policy paper analyzes several categories of regulatory challenges surrounding AVs and introduces three practical tools (Legal Interfaces, Law Labs, and Structured Dialogues) that can be utilized by policymakers and regulators in developing effective AV policies.”




An interesting question.
Why Didn’t Those F-15s Shoot Down That Stolen Commercial Airliner In Seattle?
When a rogue civilian airliner took off from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport last Friday, the military responded with a multifaceted, coordinated effort between two F-15 Eagle pilots, said officials at North American Aerospace Defense Command and the Defense Department.
But days after the incident, it remains unclear why military officials and the F-15 pilots agreed not to shoot down the aircraft, given concerns the pilot might deliberately crash it into a populated area.




Dilbert’s creator finds humor in Trump. Perhaps more of us should have? After all, there was a lot that was not funny.
Joke's on Brennan for failing to find humor in Trump's remark, 'Dilbert' cartoonist says
Imagine a scenario in which a top intelligence officer places the U.S. at risk all because he couldn't discern when the president was joking. It almost sounds like the plot for a comic strip.
Well, that's exactly what happened in the case of former CIA Director John Brennan, according to Scott Adams, creator of the popular “Dilbert” strip.
In a Twitter message Thursday, Adams slammed Brennan, asserting that the former CIA chief in 2016 didn't realize that President Trump was joking when the then-candidate urged Russia to find Hillary Clinton's missing emails.


Thursday, August 16, 2018

I can see robotic Teddy Bears urging children to vote for the Bull Moose party.
New research shows that children are more likely than adults to give in to peer pressure from robots, a disturbing finding given the rapidly increasing rate at which kids are interacting with socially intelligent machines.
… The point of Vollmer’s experiment was to measure the social impact exerted by robots onto both children and adults, particularly the way in which peer pressure from robots might contribute to social conformity. The results, published today in Science Robotics, shows that adults are largely immune to robotic influence, but the same cannot be said of children, who conformed to the opinions of a robotic peer group, even when those opinions were clearly wrong. This research means we need to keep a close eye on the social effects exerted by robots and AI onto young children—an increasingly important issue given the frequency with which children are interacting with social machines.




Don’t ‘look’ like a lawyer?
Visual Literacy for the Legal Profession
Sherwin, Richard K., Visual Literacy for the Legal Profession (January 15, 2018). Journal of Legal Education, Forthcoming . Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3212819
“Digital technology has transformed the way we communicate in society. Swept along on a digital tide, words, sounds, and images easily, and often, flow together. This state of affairs has radically affected not only our commercial and political practices in society, but also the way we practice law. Unfortunately, legal education and legal theory have not kept up. Inconsistencies and unpredictability in the way courts ascertain the admissibility of various kinds of visual evidence and visual argumentation, lapses in the cross examination of visual evidence at trial, and inadequately theorized notions of visual meaning and the epistemology of affect tell us that the status quo in legal education is untenable. Law teachers today have an obligation to provide their students with the rudiments of visual literacy.”




Could be useful.
Google releases political ad directory
Google is rolling out the online library of U.S. political ads it promised lawmakers last year, along with a report detailing political ad-spending trends across its platforms.




Perspective. “Run! Run! The Bezos is coming!”
Movie theater stocks drop on report Amazon may disrupt their industry next
Amazon may disrupt the movie theater business next.
Bloomberg News is reporting Amazon is looking to buy Landmark Theatres.
Citing people familiar with the situation, the media outlet said the movie chain's owners are working with investment bank Stephens and talking to "other suitors." It added that no decisions have been made and the discussions may not lead to a deal.




A tool for me.


I can see robotic Teddy Bears urging children to vote for the Bull Moose party.
New research shows that children are more likely than adults to give in to peer pressure from robots, a disturbing finding given the rapidly increasing rate at which kids are interacting with socially intelligent machines.
… The point of Vollmer’s experiment was to measure the social impact exerted by robots onto both children and adults, particularly the way in which peer pressure from robots might contribute to social conformity. The results, published today in Science Robotics, shows that adults are largely immune to robotic influence, but the same cannot be said of children, who conformed to the opinions of a robotic peer group, even when those opinions were clearly wrong. This research means we need to keep a close eye on the social effects exerted by robots and AI onto young children—an increasingly important issue given the frequency with which children are interacting with social machines.




Don’t ‘look’ like a lawyer?
Visual Literacy for the Legal Profession
Sherwin, Richard K., Visual Literacy for the Legal Profession (January 15, 2018). Journal of Legal Education, Forthcoming . Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3212819
“Digital technology has transformed the way we communicate in society. Swept along on a digital tide, words, sounds, and images easily, and often, flow together. This state of affairs has radically affected not only our commercial and political practices in society, but also the way we practice law. Unfortunately, legal education and legal theory have not kept up. Inconsistencies and unpredictability in the way courts ascertain the admissibility of various kinds of visual evidence and visual argumentation, lapses in the cross examination of visual evidence at trial, and inadequately theorized notions of visual meaning and the epistemology of affect tell us that the status quo in legal education is untenable. Law teachers today have an obligation to provide their students with the rudiments of visual literacy.”




Could be useful.
Google releases political ad directory
Google is rolling out the online library of U.S. political ads it promised lawmakers last year, along with a report detailing political ad-spending trends across its platforms.




Perspective. “Run! Run! The Bezos is coming!”
Movie theater stocks drop on report Amazon may disrupt their industry next
Amazon may disrupt the movie theater business next.
Bloomberg News is reporting Amazon is looking to buy Landmark Theatres.
Citing people familiar with the situation, the media outlet said the movie chain's owners are working with investment bank Stephens and talking to "other suitors." It added that no decisions have been made and the discussions may not lead to a deal.




A tool for me.


Wednesday, August 15, 2018

An attack against Instagram rather than random users?
A weird Instagram hack is locking users out of their accounts and people are furious
Instagram users are complaining on Twitter about a bizarre hack that locks them out of their accounts, and then changes the username, image, and associated email address.
According to numerous complaints on Twitter, first spotted by Mashable, Instagram users are finding that they can no longer access their account because the login details have changed.
They also report the hackers changing their profile pictures to animated stills from Disney or Pixar films, or just deleting the accounts altogether. In some cases, hackers changed the associated email to one with Russia's .ru domain.
Instagram said in a blog post on Tuesday that it is investigating the issue, and advised users to keep a strong password.
… Multiple users complained that Instagram isn't doing enough to help them. Because their login credentials have changed, it's difficult for the users to recover their accounts.




Are they saying that Arab Spring has mutated into Russian meddling in our elections? (Yes, they are.)
How social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump
To understand how digital technologies went from instruments for spreading democracy to weapons for attacking it, you have to look beyond the technologies themselves.




Cooperate or else?
Tech Giants Face Hefty Fines Under Australia Cyber Laws
Tech companies could face fines of up to Aus$10 million (US$7.3 million) if they fail to hand over customer information or data to Australian police under tough cyber laws unveiled Tuesday.
The government is updating its communication laws to compel local and international providers to co-operate with law enforcement agencies, saying criminals were using technology, including encryption, to hide their activities.
The legislation, first canvassed by Canberra last year, will take into account privacy concerns by "expressly" preventing the weakening of encryption or the introduction of so-called backdoors, Cyber Security Minister Angus Taylor said.
Taylor said over the past year, some 200 operations involving serious criminal and terrorism-related investigations were negatively impacted by the current laws.
"We know that more than 90 percent of data lawfully intercepted by the Australian Federal Police now uses some form of encryption," he added in a statement.
The type of help that could be requested by Canberra will include asking a provider to remove electronic protections, concealing covert operations by government agencies, and helping with access to devices or services.




Because someone could hijack a subway car and fly it into a building? If there is a real threat, shouldn’t they tell people about it? Why aren’t reporters the least bit curious?
The agency in charge of Los Angeles’ subways announced at a press conference today that it is working with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to install body scanners in the city’s metro system. The plan to scan the bodies of passengers for “concealed threats” is said to be the first of its kind in the U.S.




Perhaps a tool for my researching students…
Browser plug-in organizes and contextualizes big news stories for readers
MIT newsroom: “The explosion of digital content has made it hard to navigate news today. This startup’s plug-in will cut down on time and browser tabs, while readers search for information. Acciyo’s name might draw from fiction, but the purpose of the search engine extension is firmly rooted in fact. “When I was first figuring out what we wanted to call it, I went through a list of Harry Potter spells,” said co-founder Anum Hussain, MBA ’18. “Acciyo was very fitting because what we’re doing is summoning information from across the web and making it easier for you, in a similar fashion to how that spell [in the book series, ‘accio’] works, to be able to summon anything you need. We’re just doing that in the context of news.” Acciyo, Hussain said, is a Google Chrome extension that appears to the right of a screen like a bookmark, and presents the user with an “interactive, movable timeline of articles previously published on the subject you’re currently reading.” The plug-in pulls from wire content — the Associated Press and Reuters — and automatically pops open on major U.S. news sites. Hussain said as the company evolves they will explore other news sources to pull from. Because the stories are from the wire, Hussain explained, they tend to be bigger stories that would likely be found on a publication’s front page. For example: the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States. The plug-in would include stories on Kavanaugh’s background, his nomination, as well as earlier stories about other candidates considered for the role…”




Some people just have to ace every test.
Spanish driver tests positive for every drug in test
A driver in northeastern Spain has tested positive for ‘every possible kind of drug’ after being pulled over by police on Saturday.
Police found high levels of cannabis, amphetamines/methamphetamine, cocaine, opiates; as well as alcohol, with a rate of 0,60 mg/l.




I teach classes for 11 of these. Perhaps I should ask for a raise?
The 25 Highest-Paying Jobs In America In 2018
Glassdoor.com, one of the leading job and recruiting websites in the world, recently published a report on the highest-paying jobs of 2018.
… The findings of the report indicate that a career in the healthcare or technology industries will earn you the heftiest paycheck. Thirteen out of the 25 jobs on the list were in the tech industry and five out of 25 of the jobs were in the healthcare industry.


Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Not surprising.
Researcher study – U.S. House candidates vulnerable to hacks
Reuters: “Three of every 10 candidates running for the U.S. House of Representatives have significant security problems with their websites, according to a new study by independent researchers that underscores the threat hackers pose to the November elections… A team of four independent researchers led by former National Institutes for Standards and Technology security expert Joshua Franklin concluded that the websites of nearly one-third of U.S. House candidates, Democrats and Republicans alike, are vulnerable to attacks. NIST is a U.S. Commerce Department laboratory that provides advice on technical issues, including cyber security. Using automated scans and test programs, the team identified multiple vulnerabilities, including problems with digital certificates used to verify secure connections with users, Franklin told Reuters ahead of the presentation. The warnings about the midterm elections, which are less than three months away, come after Democrats have spent more than a year working to bolster cyber defenses of the party’s national, state and campaign operations.
Democratic National Committee officials told Reuters they have completely rebuilt the party’s computer network, including email systems and databases, to avert a repeat of 2016, when Russian intelligence agents hacked into Democratic accounts and then used stolen data to undermine support for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid…”




Perspective.
Google plans to spend $600 million expanding its SC data center
Search engine giant Google Inc. plans to invest $600 million to expand its massive data center outside Charleston, according to records filed with Berkeley County.
… Since it first opened, Google has pumped $1.8 billion into the decade-old site, which is in Moncks Corner, but details of its expansion plans are still limited. The company declined to describe its plans until they win the blessing of Berkeley County officials.
… The company runs eight data centers in the U.S. and 15 worldwide, including three in the Carolinas and Georgia. Google didn’t say what prompted the expansion plans.
The company’s growth in South Carolina has drawn criticism from environmental groups, who say that the data center is drawing too much water to cool its servers. The company sparked controversy locally when it asked for permission to pull 1.5 million gallons of water a day from beneath Berkeley County, a request that has since stalled.




Something for my vets? They also have to be poor?
Connecting More Than 6 Million Low-Income Americans
… The company also announced it will significantly expand eligibility – for the eleventh time in seven years – to low-income veterans, nearly one million of whom live within the Comcast footprint. According to the United States Census Bureau’s 2016 American Community Survey, less than 70 percent of low-income veterans have Internet access, and about 60 percent own a computer.


Monday, August 13, 2018

NOW will you listen to the experts and do something about security? (Probably not.)
An 11-year-old changed election results on a replica Florida state website in under 10 minutes
An 11-year-old boy on Friday was able to hack into a replica of the Florida state election website and change voting results found there in under 10 minutes during the world’s largest yearly hacking convention, DEFCON 26, organizers of the event said.
… Nico Sell, the co-founder of the the non-profit r00tz Asylum, which teaches children how to become hackers and helped organize the event, said an 11-year-old girl also managed to make changes to the same Florida replica website in about 15 minutes, tripling the number of votes found there.
Sell said more than 30 children hacked a variety of other similar state replica websites in under a half hour.
“These are very accurate replicas of all of the sites,” Sell told the PBS NewsHour on Sunday. “These things should not be easy enough for an 8-year-old kid to hack within 30 minutes, it’s negligent for us as a society.”
Sell said the idea for the event began last year, after adult hackers were able to access similar voting sites in less than five minutes.
“So this year we decided to bring the voting village to the kids as well,” she said.




Of course they can be hacked.
Police Bodycams Can Be Hacked to Doctor Footage
As they proliferate, police body cameras have courted controversy because of the contentious nature of the footage they capture and questions about how accessible those recordings should be.
But when it comes to the devices themselves, the most crucial function they need to perform—beyond recording footage in the first place—is protecting the integrity of that footage so it can be trusted as a record of events. At the DefCon security conference in Las Vegas on Saturday, though, one researcher will present findings that many body cameras on the market today are vulnerable to remote digital attacks, including some that could result in the manipulation of footage.
… In all but the Digital Ally device, the vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to download footage off a camera, edit things out or potentially make more intricate modifications, and then re-upload it, leaving no indication of the change. Or an attacker could simply delete footage they don't want law enforcement to have.




Think of a technology that allows you to print out some data you have in your computer, send it electronically then require the recipient to re-enter it into their computer. Gosh I hate Fax machines. Technology invented before the Civil War is probably not the optimal technology to use today.
Hackers could use fax machines to take over entire networks, researchers warn
Researchers at Nasdaq-listed Check Point Software Technologies said that fax machines — which still reside in many offices — have serious security flaws. Those vulnerabilities could potentially allow an attacker to steal sensitive files through a company's network using just a phone line and a fax number.
In a report released on Sunday, Check Point researchers showed how they were able to exploit security flaws present in a Hewlett Packard all-in-one printer. Standalone fax machines are a rarity in companies today, but the fax function is still present in commonplace all-in-one printers.




American parents would panic. Is it possible the French can’t figure out how to use Smartphones in the classroom? Mon Dieu!
French school students to be banned from using mobile phones
French school students will be banned from using mobile phones anywhere on school grounds from September, after the lower house of parliament passed what it called a “detox” law for a younger generation increasingly addicted to screens.
The centrist president Emmanuel Macron had promised during his election campaign that he would outlaw children’s phones in nursery, primary and middle-schools, until around the age of 15.
The new law bans phone-use by children in school playgrounds, at breaktimes and anywhere on school premises. Legislation passed in 2010 already states children should not use phones in class.




Perspective. An interesting article.
AI is bringing a new set of rules to knowledge work
The rules of the physical world are either not applicable or are severely diminished. Things move from sparsity to abundance, where consumption does not lead to depletion. To the contrary, the more an object is consumed, the more valuable it becomes. Cost of production and distribution is no longer critical, and the concept of inventory is no longer applicable.
When things go digital, they also move from linear to exponential – a world in which new technologies and new players can enter and dominate an industry in just a few years.
Consider that each year more people take online courses offered by Harvard than the number of students who attended Harvard in its 380-year history. Each year, three times more people use online dispute resolutions to resolve disputes on eBay® than lawsuits filed in the United States. Each day, five billion videos are watched on YouTube®. For context, the first YouTube video was uploaded in 2005. I was talking to a gentleman at Facebook® recently who said, “I joined Facebook three years ago and 70 percent of the company started after me.” Talk about hyper-growth businesses!


Sunday, August 12, 2018

Not sure I’d go that far.
Why I Love the GDPR: 10 Reasons
I have a confession to make, one that is difficult to fess up to on the US side of the pond: I love the GDPR.
There, I said it. . .
In the United States, a common refrain about GDPR is that it is unreasonable, unworkable, an insane piece of legislation that doesn’t understand how the Internet works, and a dinosaur romping around in the Digital Age.
But the GDPR isn’t designed to be followed as precisely as one would build a rocket ship. It’s an aspirational law. Although perfect compliance isn’t likely, the practical goal of the GDPR is for organizations to try hard, to get as much of the way there as possible.
The GDPR is the most profound privacy law of our generation. Of course, it’s not perfect, but it has more packed into it than any other privacy law I’ve seen.




Electric scooters are going to be a tough sell…
Los Angeles residents burning, vandalizing shared electric scooters: report
Electric scooter-sharing programs are becoming increasingly common in cities across the United States, but some Los Angeles residents have become frustrated with the motorized scooter and are fighting back against them – literally – according to the Los Angeles Times.
Videos of people kicking, throwing and burying the scooters at sea have popped up across social media, the L.A. Times reported. An Instagram account titled "Bird Graveyard" – a reference to the scooter company Bird – has acquired more than 25,000 followers and features images and videos of scooters that have been have been lit on fire, tossed into canals, smeared with feces and broken into pieces.


(Related) Really tough.
A 183-year-old law created for horse-drawn carriages has frustrated Silicon Valley's buzziest startups
… Electric scooters are illegal on public UK streets and pavements, meaning Bird and its rivals would be flouting the law if they tried to launch in Britain. And that's partly thanks to a 183-year-old act originally designed to stop nuisance behaviour from horse-drawn carriage drivers, and those driving cattle.
The UK government categorises electric scooters as "carriages," which are not permitted on pavements under the 1835 Highways Act.
… And what about electric scooters on roads?
That's still (mostly) illegal, because the government requires scooter owners to register their vehicles with the DVLA, the UK's driving authority. And in order to pass the DVLA's strict requirements, a scooter would need to have three wheels (most operate with two), and be fitted with brakes and lights. That rules out most popular types of scooter.