Friday, May 17, 2019


Failure to plan is planning to fail.”
From the for-the-love-of-a-free-press-would-someone-PLEASE-teach-these-people-about-the-first-amendment? dept.
Earlier this week, this site noted reporting by Paterson Times about an alleged breach involving the Paterson Public Schools in New Jersey. We also picked up a follow-up report that covered some… um…unexpected claims by the District as to how many threat actors might be involved and whether it was a former employee, and…. a whole bunch of other claims that seemed premature, at best. Usually, entities shut up and say they are investigating. Paterson Public Schools seems to have decided to take another approach that is not adverse to making themselves look inexperienced at handling a data security incident.
Today, the Paterson Times reports:
After a news story exposed a massive data breach at the Paterson Public Schools, superintendent Eileen Shafer threatened to sue the Paterson Times for purported “serious reputational harm” to the school district, a lawsuit that would be prohibited by law. The letter also suggested the district would use legal means to obtain materials related to the breach held by the Times, which would be prohibited by the state’s reporter’s shield law.
He asserts the breach, which claimed more than 23,000 account passwords and was not detected until the Paterson Times brought it to the district’s attention, has caused the school system to be “unfairly held out for ridicule in the community.”
Read more on the Paterson Times.
The basis for any ridicule of the district is the district’s response to the reported or alleged breach. They have repeatedly been shooting themselves in the foot and need to get a real professional in there to handle incident response properly. Their claims, demands, and legal threats are, to put it bluntly, bullshit, and should be called out as such.
How sad that those with the responsibility of educating our youth seem to be totally ignorant about the First Amendment. Hopefully, the Paterson Times’ lawyers will hand them a clue stick.




Russia can’t stop rigging elections. It would have been cheaper to bribe someone to get her into a ‘prestigious American college.’
Russian bots rigged Voice Kids TV talent show result
The result of a popular Russian TV talent show - The Voice Kids - has been cancelled after thousands of fraudulent votes were found to have handed victory to a millionaire's young daughter.
There were complaints after singer Mikella Abramova, aged 10, won with 56.5% of the phone-in vote.
A cyber security firm, Group-IB, was hired to examine the vote for Mikella Abramova, after the final of The Voice Kids, which is in its sixth season on Russian TV.
"The interim results of the check confirm that there was outside influence on the voting, which affected the result," a Channel One statement said (in Russian).
According to investigators, more than 8,000 text messages were sent from about 300 phone numbers during the vote.
A Group-IB statement said that sequential phone numbers had been used to send automated votes - in other words, "bots were used in this case".
"More than 30,000 votes came in for one contestant from those phone numbers," Group-IB said. Rival singers got no more than 3,000 votes each, Russia's Kommersant daily reported.




Deliberate bias or helpful coaching?
The NYPD uses altered images in its facial recognition system, new documents show
A new report from Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology (CPT) has uncovered widespread abuse of the New York Police Department’s facial recognition system, including image alteration and the use of non-suspect images. In one case, officers uploaded a picture of the actor Woody Harrelson, based on a witness description of a suspect who looked like Harrelson. The search produced a match, and the matched suspect was later arrested for petty larceny. [See? It works! Bob]




I suppose we’ll be calling this ‘voiceal recognition.’
Selective hearing: AI-powered listening device picks a voice out of a crowd




A video that justifies my choice to not own a phone?
How Smartphones Sabotage Your Brain’s Ability to Focus
WSJ Podcast [no paywall] – “Our phones give us instant gratification. But there’s a cost: loss of attention and productivity. WSJ’s Daniela Hernandez goes on a quest to understand the science of distractions and what you can do stay be more focused and productive.”



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