It is possible no one violated the law.
This kerfuffle is entirely due to a failure to notify users about
data capture. NOTE: Certain Computer Law experts (you know who you
are) should not take this article as justification for remaining
technological neanderthals...
You
don’t have to be tech-savvy to recognize the perils
December 14, 2011 by Dissent
Criminal defense attorney Scott
Greenfield has an interesting commentary
on revelations that the FBI may be availing itself of some of Carrier
IQ’s “features” that its customers may be deploying:
… this doesn’t
mean they already have their hands on your text messages, or even
that there’s any cooperation on the part of Carrier IQ. Indeed,
there may be a passel of issues surrounding any effort to gain access
to every keystroke you ever tapped on your smartphone, though it
would appear that since it’s in the hands of a third party, no
Fourth Amendment right attaches. On the other hand, since
no one knew this was happening, and it came as a huge, and scandalous
surprise to the public, a court should be hard pressed to conclude
that it passes scrutiny under Katz’s reasonable expectation of
privacy test.
But now you do
know. And so does the FBI. And as long as you continue to tap, tap,
tap on that cute little qwerty keyboard, you can’t deny you took
the risk of exposure to the government by Carrier IQ.
We’re inundated
with the magic of technology, making our world easier, faster and
perpetually more fabulous. Those who adore technology gush over
every shiny new toy. And to a large extent, the toys are great fun
and occasionally useful. But nobody wants to be serious about the
perils. And there is no shortage of perils.
My deep
understanding of all things technical precludes me from discussing
the potential of evils that could stem from this rootkit. I don’t
even know what a rootkit is. But I know too well that the government
will have no qualms about using it to their advantage if they can get
their hands on it.
[...]
By
the time a court rules that some technology I’ve never heard of is
so common and pervasive that no reasonable person could expect
privacy, the cutting edge is already a thousand light years ahead of
it. [I'm gonna have that printed on
a T-shirt! Bob] I learn about it via some of the more
technologically astute (and, naturally, younger) lawyers, like Keith
Lee, but so does the government. If there’s data to be mined,
they’ve got their pith helmets at the ready.
So enjoy those
new, shiny toys. Tap to your heart’s content. Hang in the clouds.
Eventually, we’ll find out whether you had some unexpected company
with you, and by the time it reaches a circuit court
and a decision is made about how unreasonable you were to expect that
your private, personal communications and messages would remain
private, it will be too late to worry about it.
By then, you will be informed that everyone knows that there’s no
privacy in the technological, digital, shiny toy world. But by then,
it will be too late to worry about it.
I couldn’t agree with Scott more,
which is why I have always been something of a technological
dinosaur. Maybe it’s a genetic thing. My dad used to buy new
clothes but then let them age in his closet for at least a few years
before he’d wear them. I was never sure why he did it, but I seem
to have inherited the reluctance to rush into new things. I wait
years to see if something is really safe or valuable to use and I
still use a Palm Pilot because I don’t like the idea of my patient
scheduling calendar being up in some cloud where others might be able
to access it. My new devices come with BlueTooth but I have no idea
what I want to do with that. By the time I figure it out, BlueTooth
will probably be passé.
On a positive note, I avoid all the
weekly Facebook privacy worries by having had the foresight to never
create a profile on most social media platforms (Twitter is the
exception and there, I use a #noloc app to keep my
tweets out of the Library of Congress).
Games? Apps? They sound great – and
often free – but as I learned as a health care professional decades
ago, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. And if the price of
lunch is the government amassing tons of data on me without judicial
oversight, well, thanks, but no thanks.
(Related) The benefits of a superior
education system?
"Reuters reports that a
quarter of the EU has yet to use the internet. Further, half of
those in some of the southern and western states do not even have
internet access at home. From the article: 'As well as highlighting
geographic disparities across one of the world's most-developed
regions, the figures underline the lack of opportunity people in
poorer communities have to take part in advances such as the Internet
that have delivered lower cost goods and service to millions of
people.' The full
report created by Eurostat can be found here."
...and since every employee has a
cellphone camera...
I
can just picture it….
December 14, 2011 by admin
Why risk getting caught downloading
customer data when you can just take pictures of it?
Trilegiant Corporation
in Stamford, Connecticut recently notified
the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office that a call center
vendor’s employee had been caught taking screen shots of customer
data (names and debit or credit card numbers) with his phone camera.
The police are reportedly investigating
and the firm is offering affected customers some free credit
monitoring services.
Ironically, perhaps, Trilegiant
describes itself as the “premier membership-based provider of
travel, shopping, health, dental, entertainment, and
consumer protection services.” [Hey! They caught the guy, didn't
they? Bob]
What are we saying here? China's
hackers rule? US security sucks? (Are we bragging or complaining?)
"Chinese-based hacking of 760
different corporations reflects a growing, undeclared
cyber war. From giants like Intel and Google to unknowns like
iBahn, the Chinese hackers are accused of stealing everything isn't
nailed down. Simply put, it is easier and cheaper to steal rather
than develop the legal way. China has consistently denied it has any
responsibility for hacking that originated from servers on its soil,
but — based on what is known of attacks from China, Russia and
other countries — a declassified estimate of the value of the
blueprints, chemical formulas and other material stolen from U.S.
corporate computers in the last year reached almost $500 billion"
Interesting applications for facial
recognition tech...
Across the Web and around the world,
your face is being detected and recognized. Here are 6 of the more
prominent examples.
Dude! I was hanging with Bill Gates
and Warren Buffet the other day and they kept bugging me for loans.
Bummer dude!
"Betabeat's Adrianne Jeffries
takes a look at the questionable young science
of using
social media to evaluate creditworthiness. As
banks start nosing around Facebook and Twitter, Jeffries explains,
the wrong friends might just sink your credit. 'Let's take a trip
with the Ghost of Christmas Future,' she suggests. 'The year is
2016, and George Bailey, a former banker, now a part-time consultant,
is looking for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage for a co-op in the
super-hot neighborhood of Bedford Falls (BeFa). He has never missed
a loan payment and has zero credit card debt. He submits his
information to the online-only PotterBank.com, but halfway through
the application process, the website asks for his Facebook login.
Then his Twitter. Then LinkedIn. The cartoon loan officer avatar
begins to frown as the algorithm discovers Mr. Bailey's taxi-driving
buddy Ernie was once turned down by PotterBank for a loan; then it
starts browsing his daughter Zuzu's photo album, 'Saturday Nite!' And
what was this tweet from a few years back: "FML, about to jump
off a goddamn bridge"?' So, could George piggyback
his way to a better credit score by adding Larry and Sergey to
his Google+ Circles?"
Not coincidence, but not clear what it
really is...
Ca:
Insider breach at Insurance Corporation of British Columbia linked to
shootings, arson
December 14, 2011 by admin
This sounds like it might qualify as
one of the worst – if not, THE worst – insider breach of 2011.
When people
affiliated with the Justice Institute of British Columbia starting
seeing their homes shot at or set on fire, the RCMP began
an intensive investigation.
That probe has now
culminated in the firing of an Insurance Corporation of
British Columbia (ICBC) employee who accessed information on
dozens of people, including 13 people victimized by the
shooting/arson incidents, RCMP said Wednesday.
“We can now
state the investigation revealed a link to an ICBC employee, who
allegedly accessed personal information of 65 individuals, including
the 13 identified victims,” Chief Supt. Janice Armstrong of the
Lower Mainland District Regional Police Service said in a statement.
“That employee, along with other individuals, is under continued
police investigation.”
Read more on Vancouver
Sun.
The coverage doesn’t discuss what the
employee’s motivation may have been, but QMI
Agency reports that none of the victims, all of whom were
students associated with the college, were harmed or appear to have
been involved in criminal activity.
The Justice Institute of British
Columbia provides training programs for the public safety sector as
well as programs in community and social justice and health sciences.
It is not clear which program the 13 victims or the other 52
individuals whose were accessed are enrolled in. Nor is it confirmed
that the other 52 individuals are all affiliated with JIBC.
JIBC issued a statement
on their web site today, but like the RCMP’s
press statement, it offers no clue as to why an employee of ICBC
would be involved in any attacks or arson. Nor is there any
indication whether the employee accessed the information and passed
it on to other(s) or used the information directly. None of the
shootings or arsons occurred on JIBC campuses.
CKNW
quotes Sergeant Peter Thiessen of the RCMP as saying:
“I’m not in a
position to share what we believe some possible motives may have
been. But we are looking at number of different scenarios.”
Thiessen says that
ICBC employee and other people are under continued police
investigation.
In theory, multiple (many, many) phones
working together could broadcast HDTV images – but very few homes
in the US still have the ability to receive them.
U.S.-Funded
Internet Liberation Project Finds Perfect Test Site: Occupy D.C.
… If he has his way, Meinrath’s
project will lead to low-cost, easy-to-use wireless connections
around the globe, all lashed together in mesh that can withstand the
whims of dictators willing to pull the plug on the internet to quash
dissent. He and a team of software engineers are developing
open-source software to turn cheap wireless access points and Android
smartphones into nodes on the network, which could then be used by
dissidents to evade censorship and to spread low-cost connections
everywhere around the world. Proponents of the plan include the U.S.
State Department, which has given Meinrath a $2 million grant to
develop the code.
I'd be happy if we could agree not to
arm them with Hellfire missiles.
Civil
liberties group calls for privacy protections involving domestic
drones
December 15, 2011 by Dissent
Jim Barnett reports:
A leading
organization advocating individual rights is recommending new rules
and limits to protect the privacy of Americans in advance of expected
expanded use of domestic drones by police and other law enforcement
agencies.
In a report
released Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union recommends
drones not be deployed indiscriminately unless there are grounds to
believe the unmanned aerial planes will collect evidence about a
specific crime, adding government power “needs to be subject to
checks and balances.”
Read more on CNN.
Related: ACLU’s press
release and their report, Protecting
Privacy From Aerial Surveillance: Recommendations for Government Use
of Drone Aircraft
Here's a thought: Let's start the
patent process on every Science Fiction idea that seems to be even
vaguely technically feasible in the next 50 years.
"On Tuesday, Google was awarded
U.S. Patent No. 8,078,349 for methods and devices for Transitioning
a Mixed-mode Autonomous Vehicle from a Human Driven Mode to an
Autonomously Driven Mode. From the fast-tracked patent
application, which was filed last May and kept under wraps at
Google's request: 'The autonomous vehicle may be used as a virtual
tour guide of Millennium
Park in Chicago. In the example embodiment, the vehicle may have
an instruction to drive to the Cloud Gate (Silver Bean) sculpture at
Millennium Park. When the vehicle arrives, the autonomous
instruction may tell it to wait in the location for a predetermined
amount of time, for example 5 minutes. The instruction may then
direct the vehicle to drive to the Crown Fountain at Millennium Park
and again wait for 5 minutes. Next, the instruction may tell the
vehicle to drive to the Ice Rink at Millennium Park and wait for
another predetermined amount of time. Finally, the vehicle
instruction may tell the vehicle to return to its starting
position.'"
Has a “Best Seller” list ever been
about anything other than what sells best? It's not even a
popularity contest – no free books made the list.
"Amazon's released their list
of 2011's best-selling books, revealing that 40% of the best-selling
ebooks didn't even make it onto their list of the best-selling print
books. The #1 and #2 best-selling ebooks of the year weren't
even available in print editions, while four of the top 10
best-selling print books didn't make it into the top 100 best-selling
ebooks. 'It couldn't be more clear that
Kindle owners are choosing their material from an entirely different
universe of books,' notes one Kindle site, which
points out that five of the best-selling ebooks came from two
million-selling ebook authors — Amanda Hocking and John Locke —
who are still awaiting the release of their books in print. And five
of Amazon's best-selling
ebooks were Kindle-only 'Singles,' including a Stephen King short
story which actually outsold another King novel that he'd released in
both ebook and print formats. And Neal Stephenson's 'Reamde' was
Amazon's #99 best-selling print book of 2011, though it didn't even
make it onto their list of the 100 best-selling ebooks of the year.
'People who own Kindles are just reading different books than the
people who buy printed books,' reports the Kindle site, which adds
'2011 may be remembered as the year that hundreds of new voices
finally found their audiences.'"
(Related) A unique business model?
What would his profit percentage have been if a more traditional DVD
version had been released?
"Comedian Louis C.K., real name
Louis Szekely, took a major risk by openly selling his latest
stand-up special, 'Louis C.K. Live at the Beacon Theater,' for only
$5 on his website and refusing
to put any DRM restrictions on the video, which made it easily
susceptible to pirating and torrenting. Four
days later, Louis CK's goodwill experiment has
already paid off: The 44-year-old comic now reports making a
profit of about $200,000, after banking more than
$500,000 in revenue from the
online-only sale. The special, which has sold 110,000 copies so far,
is only available on Louis CK's website."
For my geeks...
When you really stop to think about it,
an Internet browser in its simplest form isn’t really that
impressive an application. I mean, yes, the Internet is amazing by
anyone’s standards. The concept of linking so many of the world’s
computers and mobile devices within this massive network, that is
epic. But the concept of transferring a text file with special code
in it, and displaying that transferred text onto the computer screen
– that’s really not a big deal.
… Using the approach below, you can
use Word, Access or Excel to read HTML documents on the web, alter
those documents, and then output whatever you want in a new browser
window.
For my Math students
I am really getting fed up
tired of having to explain Wolfram Alpha graphs to students. For
some reason, the default in Wolfram Alpha is to graph everything with
imaginary numbers. This results in bizarre-looking graphs and makes
it near-impossible to use Wolfram Alpha as a teaching tool for
undergraduate mathematics, a real shame. Now that Google
has entered the online graphing fray, I have a wary hope that the
programmers at Wolfram Alpha might finally (after two years of
waiting) fix the problem.
Here are a few examples. I’ll show
you the graph in Wolfram
Alpha, on a TI-84 Plus emulator (TI-SmartView), from Google
Search, and from Desmos
Graphing Calculator. These are all the “default” looks.
Wolfram Alpha consistently shows this confusing imaginary view as the
default whenever working with graphs involving variables in radicals.
Quite a list of organizations to
research.
A
Look At The Organizations That Grabbed $115 Million In Grants From
Google In 2011
Now this is truly strange...
Benny Hill Yourself, as the name
suggests, is a web based tool that lets you replace Benny Hill with
yourself in some of his video sequences. As you can see in the image
below, the tool puts your picture on top of his face and then
finalizes the video accordingly.
