My favorite school...

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/pa/20100610_Judge_orders_plaintiff_review_in_webcam_case.html#axzz0qYKnDWaQ

Posted on Thu, Jun. 10, 2010

Judge orders plaintiff review in webcam case

If there was one phrase that irked critics of Lower Merion School District's 69-page report on how, when, and why it secretly activated webcams on student laptops, it might have been the two words in large type on the cover:

Independent Investigation.

… On Wednesday, a federal judge took a step that could quell those concerns, ordering the district to share some of its computer evidence with a consultant for the family suing Lower Merion over the webcam monitoring.

… In essence, the order signed Wednesday allows the Robbinses' computer expert to run his own tests to see if the steps taken by the district's investigators were sufficient to locate all of the photos captured by the webcams.

The order requires L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. to let that expert, John Steinbach, copy a mirror image of the hard drive of the computer used by a network technician, Michael Perbix.

… One of Perbix's bosses, information-systems coordinator Carol Cafiero, spent more than six hours Tuesday answering questions under oath from the Robbinses' attorney as part of the lawsuit. In an earlier deposition, Cafiero had declined to answer Haltzman's questions, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

This is interesting. I like: “Even if you don't have to report it, you have to keep a record of it.” but there are too many loopholes.

http://www.databreaches.net/?p=12125

Ie: Proposed Data Security Breach Code of Practise

June 11, 2010 by admin

Brian Honan, who has often contributed news leads and links to this site, blogs about the proposed breach notification law in Ireland:

As someone who has been campaigning for mandatory data breach disclosure laws in Ireland for a number of years I am pleased to see the proposed Data Security Breach Code of Practise from the office of the Data Protection Commissioner. I have long argued that organisations need to realise that the data they hold on staff and customers is not theirs but rather has been entrusted to them by those individuals. The purpose of breach notification should not be to punish the organisation that suffered a breach but rather to help the affected individuals take appropriate steps to protect themselves, especially nowadays with identity theft and financial fraud being so rife.

Read more on Security Watch.

Interesting take on search. If you claim the searches are necessary to prevent terrorist activity, shouldn't you actually search immediately? The CNET article suggests a single image was found (at the time he entered the country) that was considered illegal. We'll never see the evidence of course, it's illegal.

http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=11093

Judge limits DHS warrantless laptop searches

June 10, 2010 by Dissent

Dan Goodin reports:

A federal judge has thrown out key evidence in a child pornography trial because the laptop alleged to contain more than 1,000 illegal images wasn’t searched until about five months after US customs officials seized it at a US border crossing.

The ruling by US District Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Northern District of California is a rebuke to the federal government’s controversial search and seizure practices at US borders. Two years ago, a federal appeals court ruled customs officers had the right to rummage through electronic devices even when there was no reason to suspect the hardware held illegal contents. Last week’s ruling suggests the government’s latitude isn’t without limit.

Read more in The Register. Declan McCullagh has more on the case on cnet.

[From the CNET article:

The Justice Department invoked a novel argument--which White dubbed "unpersuasive"--claiming that while Hanson was able to enter the country, his laptop remained in a kind of legal limbo where the Bill of Rights did not apply.

… Customs agents also searched Hanson's laptop three times in February 2009, with the first search taking place about a week after he entered the country and turning up no evidence of child pornography. The second and third searches allegedly did. White allowed the results of those searches to be used as evidence, saying they were "justified as an extended border search supported by reasonable suspicion."

(Related) I can see an interest when investigating crime (or accidents?) but how about “drive-by” examinations, or third party (your insurance agent or the repair guys) reviews of your driving history?

http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=11090

More on vehicle “black boxes”–applying the “Big Brother” standard under the Fourth Amendment

June 10, 2010 by Dissent

Over on FourthAmendment.com, John Wesley Hall, Jr. has a commentary on the use of automotive “black boxes” and under what conditions the government can use them as evidence. The commentary seems inspired by a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposal to require black boxes in all cars.

John writes, in part:

What about the privacy implications? Can the government legitimately require a “black box” as an event recorder? They do in commercial airliners, but the interests are vastly different. What’s the government interest in having them in all cars manufactured after a certain date, which I’m guessing means they will be in 85+% of all cars in ten years.

People have been convicted based on evidence from the “black box” refuting their statements to the police, as noted in the blog and the case law. My view is that a search warrant is required for the “black box” in a car. It is not like any other search of a car. Liken it to finding a computer in a car. It can’t be searched under the automobile exception or inventory, and a warrant is required for it, too.

Read his entire commentary on FourthAmendment.com

Describing the world, one statistic at a time?

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/024449.html

June 10, 2010

Pew Study: When to Buy Your Child a Cellphone

When to Buy Your Child a Cellphone, Stefanie Olsen, New York Times, Jun 9, 2010: "About 75 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds in the United States own a mobile phone, up from 45 percent in 2004, according to an April study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, part of the Pew Research Center. And children are getting their phones at earlier ages, industry experts say. The Pew study, for example, found that 58 percent of 12-year-olds now had a cellphone, up from 18 percent in 2004. Parents generally say they buy their child a phone for safety reasons, because they want to be able to reach the child anytime. Cost also matters to parents, cellphone industry experts say; phones and family plans from carriers are both becoming more affordable. Also, as adults swap out their old devices for newer smartphones, it is easier to pass down a used phone. But for children, it is all about social life and wanting to impress peers. The Pew study found that half of 12- to 17-year-olds sent 50 text messages a day and texted their friends more than they talked to them on the phone or even face to face."

(Related)

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/024452.html

June 10, 2010

Pew Internet Report: Neighbors Online

Neighbors Online by Aaron Smith, June 9, 2010: "One in five Americans use digital tools to communicate with neighbors and monitor community developments."

Let your computer tell you whenever something wrong/strange/different happens.

10 Database Activities You Should Monitor to Prevent Data Breaches, featuring Gartner

Date: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 Time: 8:00 am PT/11:00 am ET Duration: 60 Minutes

… hear featured presenter, Jeffrey Wheatman, Gartner's research director discuss the "Ten Database Activities Enterprises Need to Monitor," a newly-released Gartner Report, which details the latest security threats, reveals best practices for securing sensitive data and explains how to evaluate database activity monitoring (DAM) and fraud detection technologies.

• Identify fraud with application-layer monitoring (ERP, CRM, HR, BI/data warehouse, financial/accounting).

• Address audit findings for database segregation of duties (SOD) and change management.

• Mitigate the high levels of risk resulting from database vulnerabilities.

• Leverage advanced functions such as data leak prevention, proactive blocking, discovery of at-risk data, configuration auditing and database user rights attestation.

• Provide database audit capability without enabling resource-intensive native database logging and audit functions.

The webcast will also cover real-world case studies of enterprises that have implemented real-time database security and monitoring solutions to secure sensitive data and reduce compliance costs, with a meaningful ROI and typical payback period of less than 6 months.

Register now (limited availability).

Many of my international students probably know this already.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/11/world-cup-2010/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa: The Ultimate Guide To Digital Delight

… Sure, Mike Butcher over at TechCrunch Europe already posted a few pointers, and Nicholas Deleon from CrunchGear tried to compile an exhaustive list of websites, apps and podcasts as well.

But frankly, those guys are amateurs. I know you deserve better. So here goes.

(Related)

http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/10/kosmix-tweetbeat-world-cup/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

Kosmix Unleashes Its Realtime Tweetbeat On The World Cup

For my geeks

http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/softlogr-download-handpicked-free-software/

SoftLogr: Download Hand-Picked Free Software

www.softlogr.com

(Related) ...as in, also geeky

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-10-professional-sample-code-websites-for-programmers/

Top 10 Professional Sample Code Websites For Programmers

How teaching has evolved...

http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/qlipboard-create-how-to-video/

QlipBoard: Create How To Videos Easily

www.qlipmedia.com

Similar tools: CaptureFox, ShowMeWhatsWrong, Screenr and ScreenJelly.

This could be useful, but only when translated...

http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/bbc-documentaries-radio-documentaries-online/

BBC Documentaries: Download & Listen To 500 Free Radio Documentaries Online

AT&T continues to impress depress users.

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/06/10/0021228/ATampT-Leaks-Emails-Addresses-of-114000-iPad-Users?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

AT&T Leaks Emails Addresses of 114,000 iPad Users

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday June 09, @09:56PM

"Daily Tech reports that in what is one of the biggest leaks of email addresses in recent history, a group called Goatse Security has published the personal email addresses of 114,067 iPad 3G purchasers in what appears to be a legal fashion by querying a public interface that AT&T accidentally left exposed. Apparently AT&T left a script on its public website, which when handed an ICC-ID would respond back with the email address of the subscriber. This apparently was intended for an AJAX-style response inside AT&T's web apps. Gawker reports that it's possible that confidential information about every iPad 3G owner in the US has been exposed. ' This is going to hurt the telecommunications company's already poor image with iPhone and iPad customers, and complicate its very profitable relationship with Apple,' writes Ryan Tate, adding that the leak is likely to unnerve customers thinking of buying iPads that connect to AT&T's cellular network. 'Although the security vulnerability was confined to AT&T servers, Apple bears responsibility for ensuring the privacy of its users, who must provide the company with their email addresses to activate their iPads.' In a statement, AT&T says that the issue was escalated to the highest levels of the company and that it has essentially turned off the feature that provided the email addresses. 'We are continuing to investigate and will inform all customers whose email addresses and ICC IDS may have been obtained,' says AT&T. 'We take customer privacy very seriously and while we have fixed this problem, we apologize to our customers who were impacted.'"

Same old story. Unencrypted data on a laptop left unattended. Company doesn't know what data is in the file.

http://www.databreaches.net/?p=12098

(UPDATE) Over 21,000 affected by DentaQuest breach in March still have not been notified

June 9, 2010 by admin

Cross-posted from phiprivacy.net:

From the what-took-so-long dept:

On May 11, this site reported that the New Mexico Human Services Department had just revealed that a laptop theft that occurred on March 20 affected about 9,600 people. The laptop was stolen from the car of an employee of West Monroe Partners, a subcontractor for DentaQuest, the company that does Medicaid billing for the state agency.

No explanation was given in the media report as to why it took from March 20 until May 11 to disclose the breach. Now, almost another month later, Daniel Potter reports that those affected will first start getting notifications next week:

More than 10 thousand Tennesseans’ names and social security numbers were on a laptop that was stolen this spring. The computer belonged to a contractor for DentaQuest, which manages dental benefits for several government agencies, including TennCare….. DentaQuest opened a call center today, and will start mailing out notifications next week.

The more than 10,000 Tennesseans are apparently in addition to the 9,600 affected individuals in New Mexico. So our initial reports that the breach affected 9,600 was only a partial report. It now appears that over 21,000 individuals had their first and last names and Social Security Numbers in the stolen database. Another 55,000 individuals had partial or non-personal information on the stolen laptop.

A statement on DentaQuest’s site explains some of the delay in notification by saying that they were first notified of the March 20th theft on April 1.

DentaQuest, a dental benefits manager for multiple government programs in the U.S., was informed on April 1, 2010 that one of its contractors had experienced the theft of a laptop containing confidential patient information. The laptop was stolen on March 20, 2010 and contained a database with approximately 76,000 individuals’ information. Most of the data was not sensitive in nature, but nearly 21,000 individuals’ first names, last names, and Social Security Numbers were contained on the device. Approximately 10,500 Tennesseans were included in the 21,000 total.

Read more of the statement on their site. I note that they omit any mention that the laptop was stolen from an employee’s car.

And do you think that their press release claiming that “DentaQuest Officials Move Quickly to Notify…” is accurate if it is taking them over two months to send out notifications?

I still think this was intended to collect and map open Wifi systems, possibly for a “Where to find” database – fairly common on the Internet.. It is unlikely that a drive-by would capture a significant amout of traffic from any single source. Could it have been done better? Sure!

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/024448.html

June 09, 2010

Google Posts Audit of WiFi Code Used to Collect Data in Europe

Official Google Blog: "When we announced three weeks ago that we had mistakenly included code in our software that collected samples of payload data from WiFi networks, we said we would ask a third party to review the software at issue, how it worked, and what data it gathered. That report, by the security consulting firm Stroz Friedberg, is now complete and was sent to the interested data protection authorities today. In short, it confirms that Google did indeed collect and store payload data from unencrypted WiFi networks, but not from networks that were encrypted. You can read the report here. We are continuing to work with the relevant authorities to respond to their questions and concerns.

• Privacy International: "Google today published an audit on its blog of the code used to collect Wi-Fi data as part of the company's global Street View operation. The report asserts that the system had intent to identify and store all unencrypted Wi-Fi content. This analysis establishes that Google did, beyond reasonable doubt, have intent to systematically intercept and record the content of communications and thus places the company at risk of criminal prosecution in almost all the 30 jurisdictions in which the system was used. The independent audit of the Google system shows that the system used for the Wi-Fi collection intentionally separated out unencrypted content (payload data) of communications and systematically wrote this data to hard drives. This is equivalent to placing a hard tap and a digital recorder onto a phone wire without consent or authorisation. The report states: "While running in memory, gslite permanently drops the bodies of all data traffic transmitted over encrypted wireless networks. The gslite program does write to a hard drive the bodies of wireless data packets from unencrypted networks." This means the code was written in such a way that encrypted data was separated out and dumped, leaving vulnerable unencrypted data to be stored on the Google hard drives. This action goes well beyond the "mistake" promoted by Google. It is a criminal act commissioned with intent to breach the privacy of communications. The communications law of nearly all countries permits the interception and recording of content of communications only if a police or judicial warrant is issued. All other interception is deemed unlawful."

[From the audit report:

The executable program, gslite, works in conjunction with an open source network and packet sniffing program called Kismet, which detects and captures wireless network traffic. The program facilitates the mapping of wireless networks. It does so by parsing and storing to a hard drive identifying information about these wireless networks – including but not limited to their component devices’ numeric addresses, known as MAC addresses, and the wireless network routers’ manufacturer-given or user-given names, known as “service set identifiers,” or “SSIDs.” The “parsing” involves separating these identifiers into discrete fields. Gslite then associates these identifiers with GPS information that the program obtains from a GPS unit operating in the Google Street View vehicle. Gslite captures and stores to a hard drive the header information for both encrypted and unencrypted wireless networks

… The gslite program does write to a hard drive the bodies of wireless data packets from unencrypted networks. However, it does not attempt to analyze or parse that data.

Should this be a concern? Clearly, they would never store classified data on their iP ad and then leave it in their car – would they?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/07/AR2010060701140.html

At the White House, getting in touch with the inner circle's inner iPads

… Practically everyone has an iPad -- or will have one very soon.

… But the big question is: What's on your iPad? So we asked.

… Summers has the Bloomberg app for financial information, says adviser Matt Vogel. Also Scrabble.

… Burton, who has been a bit of an iPad evangelist at the White House, has the app for Vanity Fair magazine, Scrabble, a news app and the entire last season of ABC's "Lost."

… Emanuel has "all the newspaper apps," says a top aide, and has installed the iBooks app so he can read books on the device, just like on a Kindle.

… Axelrod has only downloaded a couple of apps so far, his assistant, Eric Lesser, said. They include the Major League Baseball app and the National Public Radio one.

Interesting statistics, but is the graphic really necessary?

http://www.istrategy2010.com/blog/social-media-in-business-fortune-100-statistics/

Social Media in Business: Fortune 100 Statistics

I've been posting articles on the trend toward free journals. This is “Rupert Murdock-ing” science.

http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/06/09/213256/Univ-of-California-Faculty-May-Boycott-emNatureem-Publisher?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

Univ. of California Faculty May Boycott Nature Publisher

Posted by timothy on Wednesday June 09, @05:29PM

"Nature Publishing Group (NPG), which publishes the prestigious journal Nature along with 67 affiliated journals, has proposed a 400% increase in the price of its license to the University of California. UC is poised to just say no to exorbitant price gouging. If UC walks, the faculty are willing to stage a boycott; they could, potentially, decline to submit papers to NPG journals, decline to review for them and resign from their editorial boards."

Our language has added LOL and OMG, but I suspect it's not at the same intellectual level.

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/06/09/1941213/Official-Kanji-Count-Increasing-Due-To-Electronics?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

Official Kanji Count Increasing Due To Electronics

Posted by timothy on Wednesday June 09, @04:42PM

"Those who have studied Japanese know how imposing kanji, or Chinese characters, can be in learning the language. There is an official list of 1,945 characters that one is expected to understand to graduate from a Japanese high school or be considered fluent. For the first time in 29 years, that list is set to change — increasing by nearly 10% to 2,136 characters. 196 are being added, and five deleted. The added characters are ones believed to be found commonly in life use, but are considered to be harder to write by hand and therefore overlooked in previous editions of the official list. Japanese officials seem to have recognized that with the advent and spread of computers in daily life, writing in Japanese has simplified dramatically. Changing the phonetic spelling of a word to its correct kanji only requires a couple of presses of a button, rather than memorizing an elaborate series of brush strokes. At the same time, the barrage of words that people see has increased, thereby increasing the necessity to understand them. Computers have simplified the task of writing in Japanese, but inadvertently now complicated the lives of Japanese language learners. (If you read Japanese and are interested in more details on specific changes, Slashdot.jp has some information!)"

Unfortunately, Dilbert has this right too.

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-06-10/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DilbertDailyStrip+%28Dilbert+Daily+Strip%29

For the Computer Design students.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/06/09/sculptris-is-insanely-cool-free-3d-modeling-software/

Sculptris is insanely cool, free 3D modeling software

http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/letsannotate-com-annotate-pdfs-in-an-easy-way

LetsAnnotate.com - Annotate PDFs In An Easy Way

http://www.letsannotate.com/

As the title of the review puts it, Lets Annotate is a tool that can be used in order to make annotations on any PDF, either for quicker reference or for having your insight shared with fiends and colleagues.

This is accomplished by way of an online interface that has the added advantage of letting you dispense with emailing files. That is, the whole application is browser-based. You don’t have to install anything, and files are edited while you are online.

The Free Plan: 5 MB storage, 2 collaborators*per document Unlimited uploads Free forever

For my students who can't seem to remember to bring their thumb drives to school...

http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/fiabee-com-a-tool-for-backing-everything-up

Fiabee.com - A Tool For Backing Everything Up

http://www.fiabee.com/en/

Backing up your files should never be an afterthought, and I am speaking from experience here.

… Fiabee is a tool that will let you carry out both automatic and selective backups by simply signing up for an account. It can back mostly anything that has a certain degree of relevance - from photos and documents to even you email messages, you will be capable of storing your data and accessing your files whenever you want, and also share them effortlessly with your contacts.

Furthermore, a mobile version is provided in the shape of an iPhone app.

Hey, it was fun!

http://www.killertechtips.com/

Download Google Pacman

Free Download Google Pacman, Play Offline! If you went to Google’s homepage today and got disappointed that the Pacman Google doodle is no more, don’t worry – you can download Google’s Pacman game and play it offline on your computer. All you need to do is download this file from Mediafire, unzip it and then open “Play Google Pacman” HTML file to play it offline.

http://www.mediafire.com/?kml3oz0mwyy

SHORT NOTICE!

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/06/free-webinar-teach-with-video.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+freetech4teachers%2FcGEY+%28Free+Technology+for+Teachers%29

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Free Webinar - Teach With Video

Tomorrow (June 10) at 3pm EST, Steven Katz and Simple K12 are presenting a free webinar about teaching with video. Steven is the author of Teach With Video, a practical guide to integrate video projects into the subjects you teach. Register for the webinar here.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:

Free Guide - Making Videos on the Web
Using Screen Captures to Enhance Instructions
How to Put a Video Editor on Your School's Website

Our theme today seems to be failure to take basic security measures...

This should be embarrassing, but I doubt their customers will even notice.

http://www.databreaches.net/?p=12090

FTC Approves Final Settlement Order with Dave & Busters

June 8, 2010 by admin

Following a public comment period, the Federal Trade Commission has approved a final settlement order with entertainment operation Dave & Busters. The final order settles charges that the company failed to secure customers’ sensitive credit and debit card information, resulting in several hundred thousand dollars in fraudulent charges.

The FTC vote approving the final order was 4-0, with Commissioner Edith Ramirez not participating. (FTC File No. 0823153; the staff contact is Katrina Blodgett, Bureau of Consumer Protection, 202-326-3158. See press release dated March 25, 2010 at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2010/03/davebusters.shtm.)

Source: FTC

[From the release:

Specifically, it failed to:

• Take sufficient measures to detect and prevent unauthorized access to the network.

• Adequately restrict outside access to the network, including access by Dave & Buster’s service providers.

• Monitor and filter outbound data traffic to identify and block the export of sensitive personal information without authorization.

• Use readily available security measures to limit access to its computer networks through wireless access points.

Billionaire Mayors have a different financial perspective...

http://www.databreaches.net/?p=12081

Crooks Steal $644,000 from NYC Department of Education

June 8, 2010 by admin

Michael Cheek reports:

Hackers have defrauded the New York City’s Department of Education of more than $644,000 by targeting an online bank account used to manage petty cash expenditures, according to investigators.

The Department of Education’s bank account with JPMorgan Chase was supposed to have a $500 limit but, due to an oversight, any amount of funds could be transferred. The cyber criminals were able to carry out the crime for 3 years because the DOE failed to reconcile its accounts on a regular basis. [A simple “Management Control” that no one bothered with. Bob]

“It is difficult to understand how the DOE accumulated years of account statements, reflecting hundreds of thousands of public dollars spent to pay bills, but did not review them,” the report, which was written by Special Commissioner of Investigation for the New York City School District, stated. “A cursory examination would have shown that the charges were not normal school expenses.”

Albert Attoh, who spearheaded the theft, was sentenced in April to 364 days in federal prison and ordered to pay more than $275,000 in restitution after pleading guilty to bank larceny. Attoh provided the routing and account information to others in exchange for cash.

Read the report here

The report explains the “oversight” mentioned above as to why there was no limit on transfers:

In interviews with DOE officials, SCI investigators learned that the DOE account used to perpetrate the fraud was one of two SIPP accounts at Chase which covered the entire DOE school system and it was limited to purchases of less than $500. However, there was no limit to the amount of money that could be used to pay bills by an EFT, because the DOE had not blocked the use of EFT from any DOE bank accounts, some of which had been established before EFT existed.

DOE officials explained that the fraudulent transfers dated back to October 2003, began with relatively small amounts, increased significantly starting in November 2004, and continued until the discovery of the fraud in February 2007. At that time, DOE officials blocked the use of EFT on the two accounts. DOE officials said that the SIPP accounts were not reconciled on a monthly basis, but when they were, the DOE employees who conducted the reconciliation believed the charges were legitimate. The SIPP accounts were subsequently moved from Chase to the NYC DOF.

In interviews with Chase officials, SCI investigators learned that, although there was a $500 limit for purchases from the account, there was no amount limit for an EFT and, because the DOE had not blocked the use of EFT, any amount could be electronically debited from the account. Chase officials acknowledged that, at the time the account was opened in 1990, EFT was not in existence. A Chase official said that the bank would be able to go back 60 days and recover approximately $130,000 debited from the DOE account.

The report also notes:

This is not the first time that SCI has found serious lapses in fiscal oversight within the DOE. Just last year, SCI reported substantiated findings about a clerk assigned to the unit then known as the Division of Assessment and Accountability who was able to steal more than $60,000 because no one looked at statements which reflected that he made thousands of dollars worth of personal purchases, including flying his family around the world. Last month, SCI issued another report which pointed out the lack of financial oversight in a number of DOE schools.

NYC DOE security grade: FAIL.

Anyone care to hazard a guess how often the employee and student databases may have been breached without the NYC DOE ever discovering it?

(Related)

http://www.databreaches.net/?p=12086

Another Small Company Takes a Financial Hit on the Cyber Chin

June 8, 2010 by admin

Matthew Gardiner writes:

Similar to the case of Hillary Machinery that I previously blogged about, another small company, DKG Enterprises, has recently taken a nearly $100K hit from cyber thieves. Very simply the thieves stole the corporate controller’s banking credentials, fraudulently transferred money to multiple mules, and voila, goodbye $100K. The headline of the KrebsonSecurity article that describes the case appears to blame Windows and its vulnerabilities for the breach since the company typically used Macs. While using a Mac versus a Windows PC to do sensitive transactions like transferring money for DKG and similar organizations may be reasonable advice for the short-term, we really need to address the bigger security problem and to do that, we need to first agree that the user (and his Web access machine) is not to blame.

Read more on CA Community.

If I use an open wifi connection at the local library, don't I “intercept” the same data? Otherwise I wouldn't know which packets belong to me rather than the guy sitting next to me.

http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=10972

Former Prosecutor: Google Wi-Fi Snafu ‘Likely’ Illegal

June 8, 2010 by Dissent

David Kravets reports:

Google “likely” breached a U.S. federal criminal statute in connection with its accidental Wi-Fi sniffing — but not for siphoning private data from internet surfers using unsecured networks, a former federal prosecutor said Tuesday.

Ironically, says former prosecutor Paul Ohm, it’s likely Google did not violate wiretap regulations, but instead might have breached the Pen Register and Trap and Traces Device Act for intercepting the metadata and address information alongside the content.

“I think it’s likely they committed a criminal misdemeanor of the Pen Register and Trap and Traces Device Act,” said Ohm, a prosecutor from 2001 to 2005 in the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. “For every packet they intercepted, not only did they get the content, they also have your IP address and destination IP address that they intercepted. The e-mail message from you to somebody else, the ‘to’ and ‘from’ line is also intercepted.”

Read more on Threat Level.

You need to manage your lawsuits as well as your IT... Or better in this case.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20100608_Lower_Merion_s_legal_fees_near__1_million_in_webcam_case.html#axzz0qIrc9LSS

Lower Merion's legal fees near $1 million in webcam case

By John P. Martin Inquirer Staff Writer

Legal fees in the Lower Merion School District's webcam case are inching toward $1 million, a sum that could end up handed to local taxpayers.

A district spokesman on Monday disclosed that the bills to defend the use of the now-disabled laptop tracking system have grown to about $780,000.

At the same time, the lawyer whose lawsuit over the webcam monitoring drew worldwide attention disclosed in court papers that his fees - costs he is likely to ask Lower Merion to pay - were more than $148,000 and climbing.

And the district's insurance firm renewed its contention that it shouldn't have to foot the bill in the case.

… Who will pay the legal tab remains unclear. Attorneys for Lower Merion contend that the district's multimillion-dollar insurance policy covers Robbins' claim. But in its Monday filing, Graphic Arts contended the district had breached its policy by "unilaterally retaining counsel and incurring other obligations and expenses."

(Related) Not surprising, Schools don't think about governance of IT either.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/06/07/lower-merion-seeks-outside-help-with-it-policies-in-wake-of-webcam-suit.aspx

Lower Merion Seeks Outside Help with IT Policies in Wake of Webcam Suit

By Dian Schaffhauser 06/07/10

The school district enmeshed in a lawsuit for using school laptops to capture images of students without their knowledge has just signed a $25,000 contract with SunGard Services to help with IT auditing and policy development. The school board for Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania approved the emergency expenditure in May 2010 after reviewing a report from a national legal firm that investigated the district's use of a "theft tracking" Webcam feature.

"There are a number of policy requirements delineated in the recent court order the district received," said Superintendent Christopher McGinley during a board meeting. "In order to fulfill both requirements and to make certain we're taking appropriate considerations in terms of the state of the art in other school districts, we are asking the school board to approve the contract with a company that specializes in IT governance, so that our policies we'll be working on in the next couple of months are fully developed and complete before we turn them back to the board. This will involve a number of policies in the area of technology."

It's one way to attract new businesses to Spain...

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/06/08/2352223/Spanish-Judges-Liken-File-Sharing-To-Lending-Books?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

Spanish Judges Liken File Sharing To Lending Books

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday June 09, @02:14AM

"A three-judge panel in the Provincial Court of Madrid has closed a case that has been running since 2005, ruling that the accused are not guilty of any copyright infringement on the grounds that their BitTorrent tracker did not distribute any copyrighted material, and they did not generate any profit from their site: '[t]he judges noted that all this takes places between many users all at once without any of them receiving any financial reward.' This implies that the judges are sympathetic to file sharers. The ruling essentially says that file sharing is the digital equivalent of lending or sharing books or other media. Maybe it's time for all them rowdy pirates to move to Spain."

How much do you want to bet that China's perspective will serve as a guide for US legislation?

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/024438.html

June 08, 2010

China's cabinet published a white paper on the Internet in China

The Register: "The Chinese government has issued a white paper laying out current, and future, internet policy - and you might not recognise its view of internet use in that country. The paper warns: "Citizens are not allowed to infringe upon state, social and collective interests or the legitimate freedom and rights of other citizens. No organization or individual may utilize telecommunication networks to engage in activities that jeopardize state security, the public interest or the legitimate rights and interests of other people."..."China's 3G network covers the whole country. Of all internet users in China - 346 million use broadband and 233 million use mobile phones to access the net."

• Full Text: The Internet in China, Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, Tuesday, June 8, 2010

For my Computer Security geeks. NOW CUT IT OUT!

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-signs-cell-phone-tapped/

6 Possible Signs Your Cell Phone May Be Tapped

Looks like parts of this site are down at the moment, but what a concept!

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/post-your-videos-to-your-blo/

Post Memorable Videos To Your Blog Where You’re the Star

… One awesome resource I discovered that can help to post your own videos to your blog is Oddcast Widgets.

Oddcast is a very cool technology that major brands have used to offer customers the ability to create viral videos that incorporate their own face. Saikat touched on this technology earlier when he wrote about Gizmoz. However, Oddcast takes the technology to a whole new level by allowing you to customize really funny videos with your own messages, or by integrating your own face into famous movie scenes, and letting you post your custom movie videos anywhere online.

Let's see if my Statustics students can figure this one out...

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/06/08/2158202/2-In-3-Misunderstand-Gas-Mileage-Heres-Why?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

2 In 3 Misunderstand Gas Mileage; Here's Why

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 08, @06:34PM

thecarchik sends in this piece, which was published last March but remains timely:

"OK, so here's a little test: Which saves more gasoline, going from 10 to 20 mpg, or going from 33 to 50 mpg? If you're like most Americans, you picked the second one. But, in fact, that's exactly backwards. Over any given mileage, replacing a 10-mpg vehicle with one that gets 20 mpg saves five times the gasoline that replacing a 33-mpg vehicle with one that gets 50 does. Last summer, Duke University's Fuqua School of Business released a study that shows how much damage comes from using MPG instead of consumption to measure how green a car is. Management professors Richard Larick and Jack Soll's experiments proved that consumers thought fuel consumption was cut at an even rate as mileage increased."

Another state joins the wolf pack

http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=10869

Connecticut Attorney General Asks Google If It Collected Wireless Network Data Without Permission In CT

June 7, 2010 by Dissent

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is asking Google whether its “street view” cars collected personal information transmitted over wireless networks without permission while photographing Connecticut streets and homes.

Google has acknowledged that “street view” cars in some locations have intercepted information from unsecured personal WIFI networks.

In Europe, notably Ireland, Google admitted intercepting packets of data from unsecured WIFI networks. Private litigation alleges that Google also did so in the United States. Published reports say the captured, private online information may include general web browsing, passwords, personal emails and other data.

Blumenthal wrote Google asking the company whether it gathered such data in Connecticut. If it did, the attorney general is demanding that the company tell his office how much and what kind of information it collected, when and where it did so, why, where the data is stored and other information.

“Driveby data sweeps of unsecured WIFI networks here would be deeply disturbing, a potentially impermissible, pernicious invasion of privacy,” Blumenthal said. “Consumers and businesses rightly expect Google to respect their privacy, not invade it by vacuuming up confidential data.

“I am demanding Google reveal any WIFI data collection in Connecticut. If it occurred, the company should provide my office a full explanation, including what it gathered, when, where and why. My office can evaluate whether laws were broken. Concealed Internet capture by Google’s high tech cars may violate valid expectations of privacy — making it possibly illegal. If personal data was collected, Google must disclose how widely it was captured, how it was stored, who had access to it and the purpose.

“Unauthorized surveillance of wireless network data is the dark side of the new Internet era — and I will fight it.”

Source: Attorney General Richard Blumenthal

Hack-du-jour

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/view-hidden-content-facebook-fan-pages-fan/

How To View Hidden Content on Facebook Fan Pages Without Becoming a Fan

(Related)

http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/07/privacy-facebook-visitors/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

Privacy, Schmivacy: Facebook Is Attracting Near-Record Numbers Of New Visitors

See? Someone has been listening to my rants about shared access fiber to the home!

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/06/07/2255227/NZ-Plan-For-Fiber-To-the-Home?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

NZ Plan For Fiber To the Home

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 08, @02:20AM

Ars has a note about New Zealand's plans for nationwide broadband access, which will induce envy in many North American readers.

"New Zealand has decided not to sit around while incumbent DSL operators milk the withered dugs of their cash cow until it keels over from old age. Instead, the Kiwis have established a government-owned corporation to invest NZ$1.5 billion for open-access fiber to the home. By 2020, 75 percent of residents should have, at a bare minimum, 100Mbps down/50 Mbps up with a choice of providers. Crown Fibre Holdings Limited is the company, and it's wholly owned by the government — for now — and the company's mission couldn't be any clearer. Two of its six guiding principles include 'focusing on building new infrastructure, and not unduly preserving the "legacy assets" of the past' and 'avoiding "lining the pockets" of existing broadband network providers.'"

If the newspaper industry won't change itself, Google will change for it.

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/06/07/1725204/Googles-Plan-To-Save-the-News-Through-Reinvention?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

Google's Plan To Save the News Through Reinvention

Posted by Soulskill on Monday June 07, @01:48PM

"It's no secret that Google doesn't create content, but rather helps people find it. And Google News is no different. So what does the company plan to do about complaints from the news industry that profits are dropping drastically? In a lengthy and comprehensive article, The Atlantic diagnoses the problem and looks at Google's plan to 'save' the symbiotic organism it is attached to, which older generations have traditionally branded 'the news.' The answer, of course, hinges on moving news from dead tree print to the information age via Google's many projects: Living Stories, Fast Flip, and YouTube Direct. But Google is also exploring the more traditional options of displaying ads and designing a paywall so users can easily migrate back to subscriptions like the newspapers of yore. You may also recall that last week the Internet was abuzz with the idiocy of suggestions the FTC had aggregated from inside the industry. Ars brings mention of other proposed plans, both good and bad, from the FTC's report on ideas that newspaper companies are kicking around."

Too simple?

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/06/illustrated-and-narrated-explanation-of.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+freetech4teachers%2FcGEY+%28Free+Technology+for+Teachers%29

Monday, June 7, 2010

Illustrated and Narrated Explanation of Creative Commons

The nuances of Copyright and Creative Commons and the differences between them can be confusing. I recently came across this neat little video that does a good job of explaining Creative Commons and what Creative Commons licenses allow or do not allow people to do with your works. A PDF of the images in the video can be found here.

For my Disaster Recovery class. Failure to understand Murphy's Law? "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong"

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/06/07/2038227/Water-Main-Break-Floods-Dallas-Data-Center?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

Water Main Break Floods Dallas Data Center

Posted by Soulskill on Monday June 07, @05:25PM

"IT systems in Dallas County were offline for three days last week after a water main break flooded the basement of the Dallas County Records Building, which houses the UPS systems and other electrical equipment supporting a data center in the building. The county does not have a backup data center, despite warnings that it faced the risk of service disruption without one."

For my next Statistics class. And my Data Analysis class

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/024428.html

June 07, 2010

WolframAlpha Adds Computational Power for Climate Data from Around the Globe

Follow up to postings on climate change, this news release: "Since Wolfram|Alpha launched in 2009, we’ve had numerous requests to add data on climate. As part of our one-year anniversary release, we recently added a vast set of historical climate data, drawing on studies from across the globe, which can be easily analyzed and correlated in Wolfram|Alpha. You can now query for and compare the raw data from different climate model reconstructions and studies, as reported in peer-reviewed journals and by government agencies, many of them covering more than a thousand years of history. The full set of reconstructions was chosen from as broad a collection of sources as possible, from well-known records such as ice cores and tree rings, to corals, speleothems, and glacier lengths — and even some truly unusual ones, like grape harvest dates. Or are you more interested in global greenhouse gas concentrations? If you’re interested in exploring this vast area of climatology yourself, you can start by looking at a detailed summary of the most prominent models in literature: simply ask Wolfram|Alpha about “global climate”, which will bring up a selection of data sets that have figured prominently in the news over the past few years."

(Related)

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/024429.html

June 07, 2010

UK Government releases system to access financial data from across the public sector

"COINS - the Combined On-line Information System - is used by the Treasury to collect financial data from across the public sector to support fiscal management, the production of Parliamentary Supply Estimates and public expenditure statistics, the preparation of Whole of Government Accounts (WGA) and to meet data requirements of the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Up to nine years of data can be actively maintained [not so vast, but at least half-vast. Bob] - five historic (or outturn) years, the current year and up to three future (or plan) years depending on the timing of the latest spending review. COINS is a consolidation system rather than an accounts application, and so it does not hold details of individual financial transactions by departments. COINS contains millions of rows of data; as a consequence the files are large and the data held within the files complex. Using these download files will require some degree of technical competence and expertise in handling and manipulating large volumes of data. As such it is likely that this data will be most easily used by organisations that have such expertise, rather than individuals. More directly useful and accessible datasets that draw on the contents of the COINS database will be made available by August 2010."

For my website class: a graphic description of HTML5

http://www.focus.com/images/view/11905/

HTML5

“Technically” trumps “Ethically” every time.

http://politics.slashdot.org/story/10/06/06/1739255/California-Judge-Routes-Campaign-Robocalls-Through-Colorado?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

California Judge Routes Campaign Robocalls Through Colorado

Posted by timothy on Sunday June 06, @02:58PM

"Victoria Kolakowski, a current sitting law judge at the California PUC, is running for Alameda Superior Court judge in California. As part of her campaign she is robodialing people in California with a pre-recorded message. The only problem is that in Califorina robodials are actually illegal unless first introduced by a non-recorded natural person who gains consent to play the call. Ironically, the agency set up to protect our privacy and enforce this law, the California PUC, is the very agency where Kolakowski works today. Kolakowski originally apologized for the calls but then later deleted messages on her Facebook account from people objecting to her use of these calls. Now Kolakowski is trying to argue that because 'technically' she is routing her calls through Colorado from outside the state that her robodials are actually legal."

I can't wait to see how this turns out.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/06/06/2150212/Australian-Police-Ask-Facebook-For-Police-Alarm-Button?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

Australian Police Ask Facebook For Police Alarm Button

Posted by timothy on Sunday June 06, @06:07PM

"The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has requested social networking site Facebook install a law enforcement representative in Australia and introduce some sort of button in which users can immediately report online crime to the police in a single click. It is National Cyber-Security Awareness Week in Australia, so the AFP is on an all-out offensive — announcing it is also investigating whether Google committed offences under Australia's Telecommunications Interception Act when it harvested Wi-Fi data."

Something like this has been in the works for a while.

So, is this illegal, immoral or fattening? Interesting take on the “expectation of Privacy” argument. (Also see the MTV article at the end of this post.)

http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=10836

How ‘BT Sarah’ spies on your Facebook account

June 6, 2010 by Dissent

Jason Lewis reports:

Some of Britain’s biggest firms were last night accused of ‘spying’ on their customers after they admitted ‘listening in’ on disgruntled conversations on the internet.

The companies include BT, which uses specially developed software to scan for negative comments about it on websites including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Budget airline easyJet, mobile-phone retailer Carphone Warehouse and banks including Lloyds TSB are also monitoring social networking sites to see what is being said about them.

The firms claim there is nothing sinister about the practice, with BT insisting it is merely acting as ‘a fly on the wall’ to ‘listen and engage with our customers’.

[...]

Simon Davies, director of human rights group Privacy International, said: ‘People venting to their friends do not suddenly expect the object of their anger to be listening in and then to butt in on their conversations. This is nothing short of outright spying.

‘The firms liken this to listening to a conversation in the pub. But it is more like listening at someone’s door with a very large glass. It may not be illegal but it is morally wrong. And it is unlikely to stop there. If the regulators decide there is nothing wrong then political parties are sure to use it, along with lobbyists and firms trying to sell us things. ’ [Hello? Where have these guys been for the last few years? Bob]

Dr Yaman Akdeniz, a legal expert and director of online privacy group Cyber-Rights, also warned that many of the firms could be breaking data protection laws.

‘Just because I am on Facebook or Twitter does not give BT or any other company the right to contact me unsolicited,’ he said. ‘These may be public conversations but firms should not be contacting users without their consent.

Read more in the Daily Mail.

If people post complaints publicly, then the “no reasonable expectation of privacy” argument would probably apply here in the U.S. People set up Google alerts on themselves all the time to find out if their name is coming up anywhere, so how is it any different for businesses to do it? But consider the second part of the issue in the U.K. — can the company you are publicly complaining about then contact you? Here in the U.S., I don’t think consumers would have grounds for filing any legal action, and I suspect a lot of people might be pleasantly surprised if a company that they were upset with reached out to try to resolve the complaint, but does the U.K. afford greater protection on this?

A brief video that suggests anonymity makes us un-civil...

http://fora.tv/2010/05/18/Debate_The_Internet_and_Democracy#Wales_Keen_and_Sifry_Debate_Internet_Civility_Anonymity

Debate: The Internet and Democracy

Miller Center of Public Affairs

Facts or Marketing?

http://www.techcrunchit.com/2010/06/06/google-does-the-hard-sell-on-security-for-its-enterprise-apps/

Google Does The Hard Sell On Security For Its Enterprise Apps

by Leena Rao on June 6, 2010

It’s no secret that Google has ambitions of becoming an Enterprise productivity suite powerhouse; perhaps one day taking over the top spot from Microsoft. As Google’s President, Global Sales Operations and Business Development Nikesh Arora told us at TechCrunch Disrupt a last week, Google hopes for Apps to be a billion dollar revenue stream in three to four years.

But one challenge has been convincing businesses that a move to the cloud promises security. And some early Apps users have even questioned the security of the suite, which includes e-mail, calendaring, document sharing and chat applications. To mitigate these concerns, Google has released a white paper to give enterprise customers greater transparency into Google’s security practices, policies, and technology involving Google Apps. And of course, the white paper is also intended to also assure current and potential clients of its “strong and extensive security infrastructure.” Google has even created a special portal about privacy and security for the educational institutions that use Apps.

The white paper, which is embedded here, outlines Google’s corporate security policy, and then how Apps includes information security, physical security and operational security.

Going from $6 per GB to $12.50 per GB ($75/GB on the 200MB plan) illustrates the corporate equivalent of a Learning Curve. As technologies begin to offer alternatives to your product/service, raise prices to drive customers away!

http://www.gearlog.com/2010/06/new_iphone_data_plans_is_200mb.php

Thursday June 3, 2010

New iPhone Data Plans: Is 200MB Enough?

AT&T just swapped out its smartphone plans for new, lower-priced but lower-capacity plans. iPhone and other smartphone owners have a choice between a 200MB plan for $15/month and a 2GB plan for $25, instead of their old 5 GB plan for $30.

Since AT&T says the vast majority of phone users fit into these plans, we decided to check by charting the data usage of six of PCMag.com's iPhone users for the past six months.

In our quick survey, we found that 200MB just isn't enough for a tech-savvy iPhoner, but 2GB definitely is. None of our users went over 500 MB in a month. (Apparently, nobody's streaming Pandora or YouTube on their phones all day.) But several of our staffers consistently went over 200 MB. All of the users had either an iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS.

Apparently, one of the things we didn't count on was how much people use Wi-Fi. Our staffers generally have Wi-Fi networks both at home and in the office, and that really cuts down on cellular data usage. You can watch all the YouTube you want without it hitting your bill, if you're using Wi-Fi.

The real danger for iPhone users on the new plans, though, comes with the new tethering feature. It may be tough to hit 2GB using your phone alone . But with a laptop? No problem.

(Related) Symptoms of a dying industry?

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/06/07/0542246/Canadas-Largest-Cities-Seeing-the-End-of-the-Phone-Book?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

Canada's Largest Cities Seeing the End of the Phone Book

Posted by timothy on Monday June 07, @02:05AM

"Telephone directories are available on the Internet, and many phones even store their own directories. There is less and less demand for a printed phone book, so residential phone books will no longer be printed and delivered in Canada's seven largest cities. Do we now expect everyone's grandma to look up phone numbers on the Internet? Of course, the Yellow Pages, where businesses pay for a listing, will still be delivered."

(Related) Republicans support business for philosophical reasons, Democrats for campaign contributions? Can it be that simple?

http://agonist.org/netbetrayal

"74 Democrats sold you out to AT&T, Verizon and Comcast"

For my Data Mining and Statistics students. Perhaps we should build one?

http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/06/attack-of-the-tweets-mtvs-movie-awards-twitter-visualization-graph/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

Attack Of The Tweets: MTV’s Movie Awards Twitter Visualization Graph

http://tweettracker.mtv.com/live/

How many countries are there?

http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=10829

AU: Police investigate Google over Street View data

June 6, 2010 by Dissent

And now Australia piles on:

Federal police have launched an investigation into Google and some of its employees for collecting private information while taking photographs for the Street View service.

[...]

[Federal Attorney-General Robert] McClelland today said the data collection may have in breach of the Telecommunications Interceptions Act, “which prevents people accessing electronic communications other than for authorised purposes”.

Read more on news.com.au. Additional coverage on The Age.

(Related)

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/google-wifi-data-to-be-forked-over-to-governments-after-all.ars

Google relents, to give WiFi data to Germany, France, Spain

Just a thought, but if the banks are claiming these are not their problem (not a breach of their security) they don't have to report them and we have no good measure of how big a problem this is.

http://www.databreaches.net/?p=12047

ACH Fraud Sparks Another Suit

June 5, 2010 by admin

Linda McGlasson reports:

In another round of bank vs. customer, a Maine business has sued its bank, alleging that the institution failed to prevent fraudulent ACH transactions totaling more than $500,000.

Patco, a Sanford, Maine-based construction company, had its corporate bank account raided over a six-day period last May by cyber thieves who were able to move over $588,000 to dozens of money mules throughout the country.

The business was able to recover only $230,000 of the stolen funds and has sued its bank, Ocean Bank of Portsmouth, NH, for failing to detect and prevent the bogus transfers.

Read more on BankInfoSecurity.com

Yes, it is a PowerPoint, but the lady does think through the problem and gives good advice.

http://www.phiprivacy.net/?p=2855

Embedding Privacy into Health Information Technology: An Absolute Must

By Dissent, June 5, 2010 4:08 pm

A presentation by Ann Cavoukian, Ph.D., Information and Privacy Commissioner, Ontario, Canada at the MD Physician Services User Conference on Embedding Privacy into Health Information Technology, June 4.

You can see the PowerPoint here. It contains links to helpful brochures as well as some case examples.

Business models that work? Does this one translate to other industries?

http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/05/teardown-chegg/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

TC Teardown: Chegg Is A Money Machine

Chegg may very well be the fastest-growing, most successful, second-generation e-commerce startup that you hardly ever hear about,except maybe for the fact that it’s raised more than $140 million. Chegg is the “Netflix for textbooks.” It lets students across 6,400 college campuses rent from a virtual bookstore containing 4.2 million books. Based on my analysis (which I get into more detail below), the company is on track to generate $130 million in revenues in 2010, up from $25 million in 2009, and $10 million in 2008. During the January, 2010 semester, I estimate the company made close to $1 million in revenue a day, up fivefold from $200,000/day the previous January, and it should double that this coming September. My analysis suggests Chegg will do close to $50 million in revenue this September alone. It is underappreciated, to say the least.

Cute! My website students might find it useful.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/turn-movie-animated-gif-windows-movie-maker/

How To Turn A Movie Into An Animated GIF

… The weapon of choice in this tutorial is Windows Movie Maker. We won’t be using Windows Movie Maker to turn the file into a .GIF image, but we’ll be using it to edit the movie file so it can be easily turned into an animated movie .GIF image.

… Now that we have the video, we need to convert the file into a .GIF. This is one thing which Windows Movie Maker doesn’t do for us, but there are websites which will. Using the instruction in the Makeuseof GIF Ninja tutorial, you’ll easily be able to convert the video file into an animated .GIF.