Thursday, September 19, 2019


Responding to attacks is Okay. Preventing them by requiring adequate security would be better.
Schumer calls for federal response to school cyberattacks
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer Wednesday called on Congress and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to help school districts and other local government bodies threatened by increasingly common and sophisticated cyberattacks.
The issue has put school districts across New York on guard, particularly after the Syracuse City School District was hit with ransomware earlier this year. The district ended up paying a $50,000 insurance premium [??? Bob] to free itself, Schumer said.
"It’s a threat that’s wreaking havoc on our state and more specifically our schools," he said. “It's time to hit 'control-alt-delete' on ransomware and take a megabyte out of hackers." [Trying to sound like a techie? This fails miserably. Bob]
He put forward two proposals. The first is a bill called the Department of Homeland Security Cyber Incident Response Teams Act, which already has passed the House of Representatives. It would create specific teams within DHS to assist local government with cyberattacks.
Schumer also said the FBI should be more active in targeting attacks at their source, often out of the country. State bureau offices, meanwhile, would investigate specific incidents and report back to various levels of government.


(Related) How they do it in the UK.
NCSC urges UK universities to shield themselves from possible cybersecurity threats




Question: Is a private corporation the way facial recognition should go?
(license plate:cars=face:people)
This Company Built a Private Surveillance Network. We Tracked Someone With It
I gave the private investigator, who offered to demonstrate the capability, a plate of someone who consented to be tracked.
The results popped up: dozens of sightings, spanning years. The system could see photos of the car parked outside the owner's house; the car in another state as its driver went to visit family; and the car parked in other spots in the owner's city. Each was tagged with the time and GPS coordinates of the car. Some showed the car's location as recently as a few weeks before. In addition to photos of the vehicle itself, the tool displayed the car's accurate location on an easy to understand, Google Maps-style interface.
This tool, called Digital Recognition Network (DRN), is not run by a government, although law enforcement can also access it. Instead, DRN is a private surveillance system crowdsourced by hundreds of repo men who have installed cameras that passively scan, capture, and upload the license plates of every car they drive by to DRN's database. DRN stretches coast to coast and is available to private individuals and companies focused on tracking and locating people or vehicles. The tool is made by a company that is also called Digital Recognition Network.




Perspective.
Read the Privacy Commissioner’s Submission to the New Zealand Law Commission on the Use of DNA in Criminal Investigations (Issues Paper 43). You can view it here . Here’s a snippet:
1.18. In my view, a legitimate reason needs to be articulated for the State to collect and retain the DNA profiles of some people and not others. The incremental changes to the CIBS Act implemented over time mean there is a risk is that the scheme has become a de facto databank of those citizens who have come to the attention of the Police for a variety of reasons (where through being charged with an offence, being excluded as a suspect, being present in crime scene DNA analysis, or as a victim).
1.19. Function creep can intensify privacy intrusions and erode trust and confidence. Without proper safeguards there is a clear risk of gradual “creep” if DNA gathered for one law enforcement purpose ends up being used for a broader range of purposes than originally articulated or intended.
1.20. There appears to be a real risk of discriminatory impacts. As the Issues Paper notes, this has significant implications for Māori who are over-represented in the justice system. The DNA held in the databank is an available source for the investigation of future offences, regardless of the purpose for which it was originally collected.




After all, 100 billion flies can’t be wrong – eat garbage!
Poll: Two-thirds of Americans want to break up companies like Amazon and Google
Vox: “Americans are pretty on board with breaking up Big Tech, especially if it means companies such as Amazon and Google stop showing them search results they make money off of first. Nearly two-thirds of Americans would support breaking up tech firms by undoing recent mergers, such as Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, if it means ensuring more competition in the future. Another tech company issue appears to strike a chord with people even more: Almost seven in 10 Americans say it’s a good idea to break up big tech companies when the content they’re showing people is ranked depending on whether the company is making money off of it or not. Basically, when you search for a suitcase to buy on Amazon, it might show you options from its proprietary AmazonBasics line instead of from a company it doesn’t own. That’s according to polling from progressive think tank Data for Progress in partnership with YouGov Blue shared exclusively with Vox. And the results hold across most age groups, education levels, demographics, and political ideologies …”




Perspective. A phone that is just a phone! What a concept!
A No-Internet, Just-For-Kids Cell Phone Is Here, and It's Every Parent's Dream
Much to our chagrin, it seems like the age where kids get their first cell phone is skewing younger by the day. And while it's important that we're able to reach our children after soccer practice do they really need access to the internet on top of all the other bells and whistles? According to Stephen Dalby - a dad from Palo Alto, CA, and the founder and CEO of Gabb Wireless - the answer is no.
geared toward kids ages 8 to 14
Your kids can communicate with their loved ones freely via call or text, sans unlimited internet access and an app store.




I always talk about a book called “How to lie with statistics”
How juries are fooled by statistics
TED Talk – “Oxford mathematician Peter Donnelly reveals the common mistakes humans make in interpreting statistics — and the devastating impact these errors can have on the outcome of criminal trials.”



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