Thursday, October 18, 2012

(Yet another plug) What an interesting resource. I searched for UAV and DRONE and now I'm ready to ask questions at the Privacy Foundation (http://privacyfoundation.org/) seminar, “Domestic Privacy and Drones.” The seminar is TOMORROW.
October 17, 2012
Military Policy Awareness Links on Cybersecurity
MiPAL: Cybersecurity - Compiled by the National Defense University Library [MERLN - the Military Education Research Library Network - is a comprehensive website devoted to international military education outreach. It represents a consortium of military education research libraries that work together to provide access to a variety of unique electronic resources for the use of researchers and scholars.] Via Ian Burke.

(Related)
"NASA today said it wants to gauge industry interest in the agency holding one of its patented Centennial Challenges to build the next cool unmanned aircraft. NASA said it is planning this Challenge in collaboration with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Air Force Research Lab, with NASA providing the prize purse of up to $1.5 million."

(Related) And look at all of the really useful stuff you can do with your UAV! (A pime example of a “Money from Morons” scam?)
The Search for Sasquatch Continues — With a Silent Airship


Could this be preparation for CyberWar? Would terrorists have anything to gain by disrupting hospitals? Would hospital (or manufacturers) have a defense if (when?) a patient is harmed?
Dupple sends this quote from MIT's Technology Review:
"Computerized hospital equipment is increasingly vulnerable to malware infections, according to participants in a recent government panel. These infections can clog patient-monitoring equipment and other software systems, at times rendering the devices temporarily inoperable. While no injuries have been reported, the malware problem at hospitals is clearly rising nationwide, says Kevin Fu, a leading expert on medical-device security and a computer scientist at the University of Michigan and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who took part in the panel discussion. [He said], 'Conventional malware is rampant in hospitals because of medical devices using unpatched operating systems. There's little recourse for hospitals when a manufacturer refuses to allow OS updates or security patches.' ... Despite FDA guidance issued in 2009 to hospitals and manufacturers—encouraging them to work together and stressing that eliminating security risks does not always require regulatory review—many manufacturers interpret the fine print in other ways and don't offer updates, Fu says. And such reporting is not required unless a patient is harmed."


Am I reading this correctly? Someone reported a breach and they charged him with a crime?
By Dissent, October 18, 2012
Thirty-four charges have been laid against an individual under the Health Information Act, along with six additional charges under the Criminal Code. The charges have not yet been proven in Court.
As a result of a self-reported breach to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, the Commissioner opened an offence investigation into suspicious accesses to health information. Upon completion of the investigation, the matter was referred to Crown prosecutors at Alberta Justice. Thirty-one charges under the Health Information Act were then laid for improperly accessing other individuals’ health information, one charge was laid for inappropriate use of health information, one charge was laid for inappropriate disclosure of health information and one charge was laid for knowingly falsifying a record. Six additional charges were laid under the Criminal Code.
This is the third time charges have been laid under provisions of the Health Information Act. The maximum penalty for a first offence under the Health Information Act is $50,000 for each charge.


If I come up with a better patent system, can I patent it?
concealment writes with news that Amazon's Jeff Bezos has called for new legislation from governments to end abuse of the patent system. He said, 'Patents are supposed to encourage innovation and we're starting to be in a world where they might start to stifle innovation. Governments may need to look at the patent system and see if those laws need to be modified because I don't think some of these battles are healthy for society.' His comments are from an interview with the UK's Metro. Bezos was also optimistic about the future of the private space industry: "If private companies can start to generate profits from this kind of activity then you’ll start to see the flywheel spin more rapidly and we’ll make more progress, because I really do think we want to live in a civilization where millions of people are living and working in space"


People who have never heard of the “Streisand Effect” are doomed to repeat it...
Hulk Hogan Sues Gawker for $100M Over Sex Tape
October 18, 2012 by Dissent
Annie Youderian reports:
Hulk Hogan sued Gawker and its founder for $100 million, claiming the “loathsome defendants” posted a secretly recorded video of him having sex on Gawker.com and refuse to remove it.
Read more on Courthouse News.


My wife trains dogs. One thing I've observed (other than that many “dog people” are certifyable) is what is called the “Clever Hans effect.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans) People who train their dogs to do just what they want without even knowing they are doing it. Perhaps somewhere a lawyer has trained his dog to testify?
Two Supreme Court Cases About Dogs May Profoundly Impact Americans’ Privacy
October 18, 2012 by Dissent
Michael Kelley reports:
On Oct. 31, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear two cases from Florida about drug-sniffing dogs that will either affirm or weaken the constitutional privacy rights of Americans.
Rulings favorable to the government would allow law enforcement to conduct warrantless searches and surveillance on an even more routine basis.
The first case will ask the court to clarify how accurate a drug dog must be to establish probable cause for the search of a vehicle.
The second case asks if police may take a drug dog to the front porch of a home to sniff for evidence of marijuana inside.
Read more on Business Insider.


Apps as tools for Big Brother. Interesting. I'll have this printed for my Intro to Computer Security students.
Sneaky Apps & Your Personal Information
October 17, 2012 by Dissent
Here’s another interesting infographic from Muhammad Saleem of BackgroundCheck.org:

(Related)
GAO report: Wireless consumers don’t know how location data are shared
October 17, 2012 by Dissent
Catching up on some news I missed or neglected to post….
Hayley Tsukayama reports:
A study released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office suggests that the government could do more to protect consumer privacy when it comes to mobile device location data.
The report, which was requested by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), concludes wireless companies are not fully explaining how they use location data culled from mobile phones.
Read more on Washington Post.


There must be studies (legal or psychological) that would help explain what laws get enforced and what laws are ignored...
"A former police officer in the Australian state of Victoria has called on law enforcement to prosecute creators of hate pages on social media following Facebook's decision to close down a page mocking Jill Meagher, the 29-year-old Melbourne woman abducted and killed last month. Susan McLean, who spent 27 years with Victoria Police before launching her cyber safety consultancy three years ago, said police have the ability to prosecute the creators of pages that are in breach of Australian laws but appear to be unwilling to use it. 'There have been many cases in the UK where these people have been hunted down and charged and jailed. We need to do that in Australia.' Under section 474.17 of the Commonwealth Crimes Act, it is an offense to use 'a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offense,' punishable by three years in jail."


It's sad to see so many otherwise bright people opting for a career in politics, but I suppose I should point them to useful information, no matter how much they resist...
October 17, 2012
My District Data
"Data matters. It helps us learn about where we live and the challenges we face. It should be handy, simple to understand and relevant. Elected officials -- and you and I -- ought to have access to good data. Over the next three months, we'll release a series of online, interactive reports that allow you to learn more about jobs, money, education and housing in your congressional district. Just click Go on this page, find your district by entering your zip code or typing in your address. Get a summary of statistics for your district or explore a full interactive report with maps and tables comparing your district to the nation. It is simple and it is all right here." [via Andrew F. Young]


“Sure, go ahead. Just don't tell anyone.”
Iron fertilization project in Pacific known to government
Government bodies knew about a controversial experimental project in which 100 tonnes of a dust-like material enriched with iron was dumped into the ocean off B.C.'s north coast, the project's leader says.
… In a written statement, Environment Canada says it told the company that carried out the plan that ocean dumping was not allowed and that it could be violating the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. The agency says it never received an application for ocean fertilization.
… The dumping created a bloom of phyto-plankton — plants at the base of the food chain that are eaten by other creatures. But the bloom grew to cover 10,000 square kilometres and was visible from space.
Disney says the bloom ate up carbon from the atmosphere and sequestered it in the ocean depths. [Has been proposed as a respons to Global Warming! Bob]
"What that does is create what's called a carbon offset credit, and that is a saleable commodity," Disney said. "We've determined that we can raise enough money to make this project sustainable and pay off the loan."


It would be funny, if it wasn't my tax dollars!
October 17, 2012
Sen. Tom Coburn's Wastebook 2012
Wastebook 2012: "100 entries highlighted by this report"


Well IP Lawyers, is this enough?
Megaupload Is Dead. Long Live Mega!
They’ve been indicted by the U.S. government for conspiracy and briefly thrown in jail, but Kim Dotcom and his partners in the digital storage locker Megaupload have no intention of quitting the online marketplace.
Instead the co-defendants plan to introduce a much-anticipated new technology later this year that will allow users to once again upload, store, and share large data files, albeit by different rules. They revealed details of the new service exclusively to Wired.
They call it Mega and describe it as a unique tool that will solve the liability problems faced by cloud storage services, enhance the privacy rights of internet users, and provide themselves with a simple new business. Meanwhile, critics fear that Mega is simply a revamped version of Megaupload, cleverly designed to skirt the old business’s legal issues without addressing the concerns of Internet piracy.
(Dotcom and three of his partners remain in New Zealand, where they were arrested in January 2012. They face extradition to the U.S. on charges of “engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering, and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement,” according to the Department of Justice.)
… And because the decryption key is not stored with Mega, the company would have no means to view the uploaded file on its server. It would, Ortmann explains, be impossible for Mega to know, or be responsible for, its users’ uploaded content — a state of affairs engineered to create an ironclad “safe harbor” from liability for Mega, and added piece of mind for the user.
… Dotcom’s belief is that even the broad interpretation of internet law that brought down Megaupload would be insufficient to thwart the new Mega, because what users share, how they share it, and how many people they share it with will be their responsibility and under their control, not Mega’s.


Geeky stuff The reality Apple ignores...
Learning to jailbreak is a rite of passage for most iOS device owners. After purchasing a new iPod touch, iPhone or iPad; one of the first things you’ll learn to do is to jailbreak it in order to break free from Apple’s tight grasp, install custom tweaks and hacks, as well as cracked apps (let’s be honest, we all do it). So what should you install after you’ve jailbroken your device? That’s what our Best Of Cydia Tweaks page is here to answer!
We’ve published several informative resources on the subject so if you’re unsure about what jailbreaking actually means, please read my evergreen article A Newbie’s Guide to Jailbreaking. Once you’ve managed to muster up the confidence to actually perform the jailbreak, download our handy How To Jailbreak Your iPhone, iPod Touch, Or iPad manual in PDF, ePub or Kindle formats to assist you along the way.
Now that your device is free from Apple’s restrictions, let’s dive into the good stuff! Would you like to control your iOS device with your voice and extend Siri’s capabilities? Would you like to use Google Chrome as the default browser? You can do so much more with a jailbroken device and our Best Of Cydia Tweaks page will assist you in selecting the best tweaks and hacks.


Now I can illustrate Statistics using Dancing Gerbils!
… Rekapi is an animation library for JavaScript that depends on Underscore.js and Shifty.js. It can be used to make some really cool animations very easily.
The library can be used to make and DOM animations. To give the API a try, you can play with it in a live sandbox online and create some animations. The DOM animations you make in Rekapi can also be exported to CSS3 @keyframes to improve performance. The site’s homepage has some sample animations made from Rekapi.


I have good news: “Every day there are hundreds of new free Kindle books on Amazon.com.” And I have bad news: “A lot of them suck.” But you should still look, because Free is Good!
FKB.me, with FKB standing for Free Kindle Books, is a web service that picks out good books from the list of books daily uploaded onto Amazon for Kindle devices. The books are hand-picked by real people and not a result of a computer algorithm. These books are sorted into categories of nonfiction, fiction, language learning, food, and children / young adults.


Just cool...
… The application is called Gpredict, and it is about as close as you can get to having a satellite-monitoring ground station right on your own computer screen for free. I usually don’t even bother installing most of the satellite tracking apps out there because they’re usually extremely simple and not very exciting. Many of the Android apps out there that are meant to track satellites are fun and interesting, but limited in what they can do.
That is not the case with Gpredict. It’s very well written, very functional, and it looks really cool maximized up on my second screen while I get work done on my primary monitor. Watching and tracking the path of satellites is a fun way to occupy a screen that you may not be using at any given moment.


Perspective
For the first time ever, a Forrester survey on Internet usage found that users report spending less time online than they did in 2011, nearly back to the average duration reported in 2009. According to Forrester, this data likely doesn’t demonstrate a true drop in Internet usage, however, instead representing a change in the notion of what it means to be online. The information comes from a survey of 58,000 US adults.
… Not only does the data show a decline in reported Internet usage, it also demonstrates a decline in the number of (US-based) consumers who own a laptop, netbook, or desktop. The data shows that smartphones and tablets are primarily used (in relation to the Internet) to access social networking websites, while consumers still prefer either a laptop or a desktop for performing other, more “serious” tasks. This delineation between PC and mobile device usage may indicate that Internet users don’t consider the times they pull out a smartphone or tablet as “being online,” but rather only when they sit down and perform a specific Internet-related activity on the computer.


Stuff for students?
Ten Terrific Mind Mapping and Brainstorming Tools
Today, I am running a workshop about using mind mapping and brainstorming tools to help students meet some of the Common Core standards in English Language Arts. Below are some of the tools that we will be using today.


A new source of videos for my Math classes (and other subjects)
Check Out These YouTube EDU Gurus
Last month YouTube launched a Star Search of sorts to find the next ten YouTube EDU Gurus. This week those new gurus were revealed and I'm very happy to say that three of them have been featured here on Free Technology for Teachers in the past. Those three are Keith Hughes, Kristen Williams, and Paul Anderson. Their new introductory videos are posted below. Congratulations to all of the new YouTube EDU Gurus. I look forward to all of the new content that you produce.
[Like this one...
Introducing Math Apptician - YouTube Next EDU Guru

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Wednesday, October 17, 2012

See? Plenty of time.
"Maybe instead of zero-day vulnerabilities, we should call them -312-day vulnerabilities. That's how long it takes, on average, for software vendors to become aware of new vulnerabilities in their software after hackers begin to exploit them, according to a study presented by Symantec at an Association of Computing Machinery conference in Raleigh, NC this week. The researchers used data collected from 11 million PCs to correlate a catalogue of zero-day attacks with malware signatures taken from those machines. Using that retrospective analysis, they found 18 attacks that represented zero-day exploits between February 2008 and March of 2010, seven of which weren't previously known to have been zero-days. And most disturbingly, they found that those attacks continued more than 10 months on average – up to 2.5 years in some cases – before the security community became aware of them. 'In fact, 60% of the zero-day vulnerabilities we identify in our study were not known before, which suggests that there are many more zero-day attacks than previously thought — perhaps more than twice as many,' the researchers write."


For my Disaster Recovery students... How would you protect data and operations that you were certain were being targeted?
"The Pirate Bay has made an important change to its infrastructure. The world's most famous BitTorrent site has switched its entire operation to the cloud. From now on The Pirate Bay will serve its users from several cloud hosting providers scattered around the world. The move will cut costs, ensure better uptime, and make the site virtually invulnerable to police raids — all while keeping user data secure."
They are still running their own dedicated load balancers that forward encrypted traffic to one of their "cloud" providers, rather than dealing with physical colocation. Seems like a sensible decision any IT manager would make.


Now this is a sanction that hurts! (But weren't we concerned that Iran was counterfeiting US $100 bills?)
"In an interesting problem with physical currency, Iran is now running out of hard currency, due to a combination of inflation, and 'Koenig & Bauer AG of Würzburg, Germany, also says it has not responded to an Iranian request for bids to make the presses to print new rials.' Perhaps they should switch to BitCoin."
In addition to not printing money for them, the European currency presses won't sell Iran the equipment needed to print their currency domestically (not unexpected with the embargo). pigrabbitbear adds: "Eutelsat Communications, one of the largest satellite providers in Europe, has just nixed its contract with IRIB, the Iranian state broadcasting company. While IRIB's programming is still mostly up and running in Iran, the decision means that 19 IRIB TV and radio channels have now been axed from Europe and much of the Middle East."


An interesting question or two. With Pineta claiming a Cyber-Pearl Harbor is near and DHS “concerned” about infrastructure, would you trust a Russian operating system? Why isn't there an American version? (Would Kaspersky's at least serve as a model?) Perhaps Russia will be the only secure nation...
Russian Anti-Virus Firm Plans Secure Operating System to Combat Stuxnet
Russian anti-virus firm Kaspersky Lab announced Tuesday that it plans to develop a secure operating system to protect critical infrastructure systems from online attacks.
Kaspersky hopes to develop a pared-down operating system that would be less vulnerable to attack from malicious programs like Stuxnet – a cyberweapon discovered in 2010 that was designed to target industrial systems that control Iran’s nuclear program.
“Today there exists neither operating systems nor software that could be applied in industrial/infrastructural environments whose produced data on processes could be fully trusted,” wrote company founder Eugene Kaspersky in a blog post. “And this left us with no other option than to begin developing something new ourselves.”


I am an Academic. All those “Hacking for fun and profit” books are purely for research purposes...
Amazon’s Next Big Business Is Selling You
Facebook knows who your friends are. Google knows what you’re interested in finding on the internet. Amazon knows what you’ve bought, and has a pretty good idea of what you might want to buy next.
If you were an advertiser, which company’s data sounds most valuable to you? If you had a product you wanted to sell, which of those things would you most want to know?

(Related) If Amazon can do it, so can Mastercard... The question becomes, “Who can't do it?”
MasterCard Is Selling Your Data Just in Time for the Holidays
Credit card companies make money by taking a cut every time you swipe your plastic at the checkout counter. Now MasterCard has found a way to make those swipes pay over and over again.
As the Financial Times first reported, MasterCard is packaging its transaction data — your transaction data — and selling it to advertisers. The story was based on an apparently confidential pitch MasterCard made to potential clients. Not too confidential, because we found a copy by googling it. [A simple illustration of “Open Source” intelligence... Bob]

(Related) Gosh and golly, maybe everyone is doing it!
Verizon Wireless is facing criticism and possibly even a lawsuit for selling customers’ phone activity to marketers. Such activity consists of geographical location, browsing habits, and app usage. The company began offering this information to marketers just recently, and it shows what Verizon subscribers are doing on their phones, including both iOS and Android devices.


I like it! Do you think we could make “failure to encrypt” a lot more costly too?
"The Information Commissioner's Office has filed a suit for £120,000 against the Greater Manchester Police because officers regularly used memory sticks without passwords to copy data from police computers and work on it away from the department. In July 2011, thousands of peoples' information was stolen from a officer's home on an unencrypted memory stick. A similar event happened at the same department in September 2010. 'This was truly sensitive personal data, left in the hands of a burglar by poor data security. The consequences of this type of breach really do send a shiver down the spine,' said ICO deputy commissioner David Smith."


Can you say, “Overreaction?”
"A row over a web article posted five years ago has led to 1.5 million educational blogs going offline. The Edublogs site went dark for about an hour after its hosting company, ServerBeach, pulled the plug. The hosting firm was responding to a copyright claim from publisher Pearson, which said one blog had been illegally sharing information it owned. ... The offending article was first published in November 2007 and made available a copy of a questionnaire, known as the Beck Hopelessness Scale, to a group of students. The copyright for the questionnaire is owned by Pearson, which asked ServerBeach to remove the content in late September."


For my Ethical Hackers... “It's not a bug, it's a feature!” Remember, some day you may be a target...
"Pacemakers seem to be hackable now too, if researcher Barnaby Jack is to be believed. And the consequences of that are deadly. Anonymous assassinations within 30 feet of the pacemaker seem to be possible. From the article: 'In a video demonstration, which Jack declined to release publicly because it may reveal the name of the manufacturer, he issued a series of 830 volt shocks to the pacemaker using a laptop. The pacemakers contained a "secret function" which could be used to activate all pacemakers and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) in a 30 foot -plus vicinity. ... In reverse-engineering the terminals – which communicate with the pacemakers – he discovered no obfuscation efforts and even found usernames and passwords for what appeared to be the manufacturer’s development server. That data could be used to load rogue firmware which could spread between pacemakers with the "potential to commit mass murder."'"


For my Geeky Gawkers... Some photos plus a tour via “Street View”
Google Throws Open Doors to Its Top-Secret Data Center


A way to “Push” information to the troops. (Employees, students, whatever...)
Amazon’s New Whispercast Service Provides Organization-Wide Kindle Content Deployment
Amazon today unveiled its new its new Whispercast for Kindle service, which provides businesses and other organizations like schools a way to easily deploy Kindle content to members, students and employees across not only Amazon hardware, but also Kindle apps for iOS and Android devices. Right now, it allows administrators to buy Kindle books and documents and spread them around, and in the future, Amazon plans to add the ability to push out Kindle Fire apps to the company’s Android-powered tablets as well.
The initiative is clearly designed to give Kindle a greater foothold in the education market, where Amazon is saying that Whispernet allows not only widespread distribution of content, including free classic titles whose copyrights have expired, but also remote device management for Kindles owned by educational organizations. Already, there are programs that have seen Kindles deployed in school systems, including via Amazon’s own community outreach programs. Whispercast provides an easy way for organizations to more effectively deploy those programs, and also support students who may be bringing their own devices from home.


Free is good, but be sure to backup!
… And now if you’re a college student anywhere in world, you qualify as part of Dropbox’s Space Race Program for an extra 3 GB of Dropbox space for two years, plus up to 25 GB of space for your school for two years.
Of course, while Dropbox offers all this free, it does want some of its freeloading customers to make a premium upgrade, but as one of the leading cloud services on the Internet, Dropbox is being pretty generous. Note also, the 3 GB of storage is in addition to the 2 GB of free space given to everyone who signs up for Dropbox.
To be eligible for the Space Race Program, you must meet the following the criteria:
  • You must be an actively enrolled in a college or university or the equivalent of a university.
  • You need to sign up with active email address from the school you attend (note: you also qualify if you already have existing Dropbox account).
  • Your higher education institution must also have at least 25 participants sign up for the program (so announce it in one of your classes).
The program runs from October 15 to December 10, 2012. You sign up by visiting www.dropbox.com/spacerace. Any additional storage space earned through the program will expire on January 15, 2015, and thus accounts will downgrade to the users’ original, initial free space.


For those of us who can't type worth a darn...
Two Handy Speech to Text Tools
Speech recognition software can be very pricey, but adding a speech recognition option to your computer doesn't have to be expensive. Here are two free speech to text tools to try.
In Google Chrome you can use the Speech Recognizer app available for free through the Chrome Web Store. To use the Chrome Speech Recognizer just install it from the Chrome Web Store, launch it, then click the microphone to start taking and recording your voice. The Speech Recognizer will type out your text when you finish recording. You can then copy and paste your text to the paragraph box below the Speech Recognizer or to a document you have open in Google Docs.
Online Dictation is a free site that will transcribe your speech for you. To use the site just visit it, click on the microphone icon, and start talking. If the transcription inserts the wrong word (for example it inserted "number" instead of "mumble" when I tried it) just click on that word to replace it. You can copy the transcript and paste it anywhere you like.

(Related) Handy for all those new math words students run into in my classes...
Word Talk - A Free Text to Speech Plugin for Microsoft Word
… One podcast that I still consider a must-listen is Tom Grissom's Tech Talk 4 Teachers. During the most recent episode Tom shared Word Talk.
Word Talk is a free text to speech plugin for Microsoft Word. Word Talk highlights text as it is narrated for you. An audio dictionary is also included in Word Talk.
Applications for Education
For students that need to hear a word pronounced or need sentences read to them for clarification, Word Talk could be a handy plugin to have installed in Microsoft Word.

(Related) It can't hurt!
… Road To Grammar offers a multitude of games and quizzes to help you practice your grammar skills in a way that is fun. The quizzes are broken down by category, so you can work on exactly the part of grammar you need to practice. In all, there are 365 quizzes available, so you can do one a day for a year, and greatly improve your writing skills.

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Tuesday, October 16, 2012

I wonder why the average police force needs a drone costing a few hundred dollars. Is this the best use of MY tax dollars? I'm sure all the questions raised in this article (and many more) will be answered this Friday at the “Domestic Privacy and Drones” seminar the Privacy Foundation (http://privacyfoundation.org/) is sponsoring at the Sturm College of Law at DU. (Yes it's a shameless plug, but these seminars are interesting!)
As Drone Debate Rages, Police Move on to Million-Dollar Spy Planes
While the nation disputes if, when and where the government should use drones over U.S. soil, Texas state police are taking their surveillance efforts to the next level.
In a little-noticed July purchase, officials at the Texas Department of Public Safety inked a $7.4 million contract with the Swiss company Pilatus Aircraft Ltd. for a high-altitude spy plane. Unique technology affixed to the state’s new aircraft could raise the ire of civil libertarians and privacy advocates.
Among its features is a $1 million array of surveillance cameras with high-resolution and thermal-imaging capabilities, and a $300,000 downlink system that enables the plane’s crew to send real-time surveillance images anywhere in the state, according to records obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting through the Texas Public Information Act.
… Texas state police spokesman Tom Vinger said most of the plane’s missions will be carried out on the border between the United States and Mexico, and “serve as a tool in assisting specific joint operations [Joint with whom? Bob] that are clearly defined by area and duration.”
… Leonard Luke, vice president of government business for Pilatus, which has operations in Colorado, said the aircraft was developed because both federal and local law enforcement “inquired about the possibility of a surveillance-type platform.”
… Texas politicians have long asserted that Washington wasn’t doing enough to secure the nation’s boundary with Mexico. The Lone Star State has reportedly devoted $600 million in taxpayer money to beef up the border since 2007, according to news accounts.
No one has benefited more than the Texas Department of Public Safety, which formed military-esque Ranger Reconnaissance Teams, constructed intelligence command centers and procured high-speed gunboats with .30-caliber, fully automatic machine guns.
… Congressional researchers in September examined (.pdf) how the Fourth Amendment might affect the use of drones domestically and the surveillance technology that accompanies them. In a 2001 case, the Supreme Court ruled police cannot use thermal imaging to “look” inside someone’s home for heat produced by marijuana cultivation. Other rulings have held that police can use aircraft to hunt for illegal activity in a resident’s yard if anyone else could easily witness it by flying overhead.
“Piloted or unpiloted, the issues posed are the same,” said Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology in San Francisco. “Does the use of the technology constitute a ‘search’ under the Fourth Amendment? Regardless of whether it does or not, what checks and balances do we think are appropriate for the use of such technology?”
… Experts are now asking what 21st-century law enforcement tools may require a warrant.
“Currently, (drones) carry high-megapixel cameras and thermal imaging, and will soon have the capacity to see through walls and ceilings,” reads a September report from the Congressional Research Service, which provides nonpartisan legal and policy analysis to lawmakers. “These technologies are not generally available to the public, and under current jurisprudence, their use by law enforcement would probably constitute a search covered by the Fourth Amendment.”
However, public access might not be an issue for long. High-powered digital technologies evolve rapidly enough that costs will decrease, argued Tomas Mijares, a Texas State University criminal justice professor and former Detroit police officer. Thermal imagery, he added, is often critical for locating injured and stranded people when visibility is poor.
… Not to be outdone by Texas, the Phoenix Police Department acquired its own $4.1 million Pilatus PC-12 in 2009 complete with an $800,000 high-definition camera that operates in the dark and features “ultra long-range imaging performance,” according to the surveillance system’s manufacturer and records obtained from the Federal Aviation Administration. It’s also capable of transmitting live video feeds to the ground “for surveillance tasks and other public safety applications,” FAA documents show.
… Using a private company, police in Los Angeles began surveillance flights (.pdf) in August with a small Cessna plane that can linger in the air for as long as 10 hours a day and send live video to a dispatch center. The program will reportedly cost taxpayers $90,000 per month after an initial one-year $1.3 million contract expires.


Those who do not study Big Brother are doomed to live under Big Brother?
Does Surveillance Affect Us Even When We Can’t Confirm We’re Being Watched? Lessons From Behind the Iron Curtain
October 15, 2012 by Dissent
Jay Stanley writes:
During the Cold War, as I argued last week, the totalitarian governments of the Soviet bloc functioned as a standing warning to Americans of the dangers of unchecked surveillance—lessons that we would do well to remember despite the fall of the Iron Curtain.
As it happens, a coalition of civil liberties organizations from around the world has made a similar point in a very interesting amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court as it prepares to hear arguments two weeks from today in Amnesty et al. v. Clapper, our challenge to the FISA Amendments Act. (That legislation retroactively legalized much of the Bush administration’s unconstitutional warrantless NSA spying program.)
Read more on ACLU.


“It's so easy we just can't NOT do it...”
Verizon draws fire for monitoring app usage, browsing habits
Verizon Wireless has begun selling information about its customers' geographical locations, app usage, and Web browsing activities, a move that raises privacy questions and could brush up against federal wiretapping law.
The company this month began offering reports to marketers showing what Verizon subscribers are doing on their phones and other mobile devices, including what iOS and Android apps are in use in which locations. Verizon says it may link the data to third-party databases with information about customers' gender, age, and even details such as "sports enthusiast, frequent diner or pet owner."
"We're able to view just everything that they do," Bill Diggins, U.S. chief for the Verizon Wireless marketing initiative, told an industry conference earlier this year. "And that's really where data is going today. Data is the new oil."


Looks like they will have to search for a better way...
Google told to fix privacy policy by EU data regulators
October 16, 2012 by Dissent
BBC reports:
EU watchdogs have said Google’s privacy rules do not comply with their laws.
It follows the firm’s decision in March to consolidate 60 separate privacy policies into a single agreement.
The move allowed it to pool data from across its products, including use of its video site YouTube, social network Google+ and web email service Gmail – potentially helping it target adverts.
French data privacy regulator CNIL – which led the inquiry – said the US company had “months” to make changes.
Google has been told it should give clearer information about what data is being collected and for what purpose. It has also been told to give users more control over how the information is combined.
It has been warned that if it took no action, CNIL would “enter a phase of litigation”.
The company has not issued a statement at this time.
Read more on BBC.
Over on this side of the pond, Kevin J. O’Brien reports:
Regulators in Europe, Canada and Asia asked Google on Tuesday to change aspects of its 10-month-old global privacy policy, which combines data on individuals from its range of online services, to better protect personal data.
[...]
Mr. Kohnstamm [chairman of the Article 29 panel] said by telephone that privacy regulators in all 27 European Union countries, plus Canada and some countries in Asia, had signed the letter, which outlines areas for changes to improve protection of personal data.
Read more on New York Times.
Direct link to the letter to Google.


On the other hand, it's good to have a friend in the White House... “If you insist on doing your job, we'll change the law so it's no longer your job!”
Congressman to FTC: Don't mess with Google
A congressman has told the Federal Trade Commission that it better not do anything to hurt Google's business or Congress might have to step in and reduce the agency's power.
Rep. Jared Polis, a democrat from Colorado, weighed in on the FTC's antitrust probe into the search giant's dominance in the industry -- and the reported lawsuit that may come next -- in a letter sent to the commission last week (see letter below). The agency is looking into whether or not Google is using its dominance to hurt rivals.
… See the letter: [Via The Hill]


Perhaps a guideline for Google?
Singapore finally passes personal data protection bill
October 16, 2012 by Dissent
Jamie Yap reports:
The Singapore parliament on Monday night finally passed the personal data protection bill that is designed to safeguard an individual’s personal data against misuse. It encompasses a national Do-Not-Call registry and a new enforcement agency will be tasked to regulate the management of personal data by businesses and impose financial penalties.
In his speech, Yaacob Ibrahim, the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA), said Singapore had adopted a sectoral approach to data protection, but there was need for a general data protection framework to ensure a baseline standard of protection for personal data across the economy.
Read more on ZDNet for some of the background and a summary of some of the key provisions of the new law.


I wonder why no one noticed this 10 years ago?
U.K. blocks extradition of Gary McKinnon
Gary McKinnon, the British hacker who allegedly broke into NASA's computers, will not be extradited to the U.S., ending his 10-year fight against the process.
Home Secretary Theresa May blocked the extradition on human rights grounds, saying she has "carefully examined the medical evidence" and concluded that his extradition would "give a high risk that he would end his life," the BBC reports.


For my Disaster Recovery students...
October 15, 2012
Identifying Threats to Successful Digital Preservation: the SPOT Model for Risk Assessment
Identifying Threats to Successful Digital Preservation: the SPOT Model for Risk Assessment, Sally Vermaaten, Brian Lavoie and Priscilla Caplan. D-Lib Magazine, September/October 2012. Volume 18, Number 9/10
  • "Developing a successful digital preservation strategy amounts to accounting for, and mitigating, the impact of various threats to the accessibility and usability of digital materials over time. Typologies of threats are practical tools that can aid in the development of preservation strategies. This paper proposes a new outcome-based model, the Simple Property-Oriented Threat (SPOT) Model for Risk Assessment, which defines six essential properties of successful digital preservation and identifies a limited set of threats which, if manifested, would seriously diminish the ability of a repository to achieve these properties. We demonstrate that the SPOT Model possesses the attributes of conceptual clarity, balanced granularity, comprehensiveness and simplicity, and provide examples of practical uses of the model and suggestions for future work."


Perspective
October 15, 2012
OECD Internet Economy Outlook
  • "The Internet is now a fundamental infrastructure supporting the economy and is firmly in its second stage of development, having evolved from a data network connecting PCs with wires to a much broader network of new portable devices from mobile phones to tablet computers. It is also on the cusp of a much larger expansion to objects that typically did not have communications capabilities: the “Internet of things” is projected to have more connections than the people using them. This raises many important socio-economic and political issues for stakeholders to consider, as economies and societies become increasingly inter-meshed."


Free is good!
Hundred Zeros is a web service that book lovers are going to highly appreciate. The web service provides an up-to-date list of bestselling books that have been made free on Amazon. You can either browse the titles available on the site or search books by entering their name or browsing the many available categories.

(Related) What to do with all those free books... All kinds of tools including DRM removal!
First off, there is an abundant amount of articles about Calibre on MakeUseOf. This is because the entire eBook manager cannot be contained in one article – there’s so much it can do and so much to cover that it literally needed its own guide on MakeUseOf. Simon wrote an excellent article regarding the first initial steps of using Calibre from creating and managing your library using Metadata to converting different eBook formats. That’s one thing I want to briefly say - Calibre supports pretty much every eBook format imaginable.
… We all know that Calibre is a great program for all platforms, but maybe you don’t know that you can throw it on a flash drive and bring your library with you – brilliant. What’s even more brilliant is using it along with PortableApps, which if you don’t know what that is, I highly recommend you check it out.
It is important to note, however, that the portable version only runs on Windows. Again, this is only the case for the portable version – the normal version runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.


For my students who create Infograms...
Infogr.am Launches To Kill The Careers Of Struggling Infographic Designers
Infogr.am wants to create a sort of Adobe Illustrator in the Cloud, allowing anyone to create cool info-graphics on the fly. Back in February European accelerator HackFwd invested in the startup from Riga, Latvia, and now it’s fully launched its service. It’s competing in the space with Piktochart and Easel.ly. And not to mention one or two infographic designers out there…
It’s launched with 20 new data visualization formats from the simple like pie charts and graphs to the complex like multi-layer data-grids.

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Monday, October 15, 2012

What defines a "cyber-Pearl Harbor?" Would everyone immediately recognize an act of cyberwar?
"American intelligence officials are increasingly convinced that Iran was the origin of a serious wave of network attacks that crippled computers across the Saudi oil industry and breached financial institutions in the United States, episodes that contributed to a warning last week from Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta that the United States was at risk of a "cyber-Pearl Harbor." After Mr. Panetta's remarks on Thursday night, American officials described an emerging shadow war of attacks and counterattacks already under way between the United States and Iran in cyberspace. Among American officials, suspicion has focused on the "cybercorps" that Iran's military created in 2011 -partly in response to American and Israeli cyberattacks on the Iranian nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz -though there is no hard evidence that the attacks were sanctioned by the Iranian government. The attacks emanating from Iran have inflicted only modest damage. Iran's cyberwarfare capabilities are considerably weaker than those in China and Russia, which intelligence officials believe are the sources of a significant number of probes, thefts of intellectual property and attacks on American companies and government agencies."

(Related)
State-Sponsored Malware ‘Flame’ Has Smaller, More Devious Cousin
Researchers have uncovered new nation-state espionage malware that has ties to two previous espionage tools known as Flame and Gauss, and that appears to be a “high-precision, surgical attack tool” targeting victims in Lebanon, Iran and elsewhere.
Researchers at Kaspersky Lab, who discovered the malware, are calling the new malware miniFlame, although the attackers who designed it called it by two other names – “SPE” and “John.” MiniFlame seems to be used to gain control of and obtain increased spying capability over select computers originally infected by the Flame and Gauss spyware.
It is the fourth piece of nation-state malware discovered in the last year that appears to have been created by the same group behind Stuxnet, the groundbreaking cyberweapon that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear program and is believed to have been created by the U.S. and Israeli governments. The others – all designed for espionage rather than destruction – are DuQu, Flame, and Gauss.
The new malware adds to the arsenal of cyber tools that are quickly becoming the mark of nation-state intelligence gathering and warfare methods and provides new clues into how such operations are conducted.


This was relatively harmless before the Internet. Why should it be more harmful now?
"An interesting case touching on privacy in the Internet age has erupted in Kennebunk, Maine, the coastal town where the Bush family has a vacation home. When a fitness instructor who maintained a private studio was arrested for prostitution, she turned out to have maintained meticulous billing records on some 150 clients, and had secretly recorded the proceedings on video files stored in her computer. Local police have begun issuing summons to her alleged johns, and have announced intentions to publish the list, as is customary in such cases. Police believe such publication has a deterrent effect on future incidents of the kind. However, the notoriety of the case has some, including newspaper editors, wondering whether the lives of the accused johns may be disproportionately scarred (obtaining or keeping a job, treatment of members of their families within the community) for a the mere accusation of having committed a misdemeanor. Also, the list of names will be permanently archived and indexed by search engines essentially forever."

(Related) We better find and answer quickly... (Do you think they would go so far as to suggest “Vote for us or we'll call back when your spouse is home...”)
Campaigns chew on cookies to see if you watch porn
Is he one of us?
That's the question both the Romney and Obama campaigns will be asking as election time rolls near.
Every last vote will count. Every last nuance will matter in determining which candidate will steer America through the next four joyous years.
So how are the campaigns trying to identify those who might be on their side? Why, cookies.
According to the New York Times, many, many voters can look forward to calls from campaign workers who will, for once, be armed with very personal details about their targets' predilections.
The Times boldly declares that these callers will know...
...details like whether voters may have visited pornography Web sites, have homes in foreclosure, are more prone to drink Michelob Ultra than Corona or have gay friends or enjoy expensive vacations.


Is reliance on education sufficient? How often does Facebook change policy and therefore require re-education?
"The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Facebook revealed the sexual preferences of users despite those users have chosen 'privacy lock-down' settings on Facebook. The article describes two students who were casualties of a privacy loophole on Facebook—the fact that anyone can be added to a group by a friend without their approval. As a result, the two lost control over their secrets, even though both students were sophisticated users who had attempted to use Facebook's privacy settings to shield some of their activities from their parents. Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes responded with a statement blaming the users: 'Our hearts go out to these young people. Their unfortunate experience reminds us that we must continue our work to empower and educate users about our robust privacy controls.'"


What should we call this? Mini-surveillance? The electronic equivalent of a “house arrest ankle thingie?”
Truth In Geolocation
Lying’s a lot harder than it used to be. Examples —
Boss: “Where are you?”
Employee: “On my way to the office.”
Boss: “Show me.”
Mom: “Where are you?”
Son: “At Jimmy’s house”
Mom: “Show me.”
With geo-coded messages, you have to be where you say you are. Whether it’s a parent, employer, or spouse, anyone with a little power over you can demand you verify your location.
… Now, someone could request a screenshot of your blue dot on your mobile map. Or that you send a geo-coded Facebook message that shows your current location. Hell, they could force you into a video call and request you to show the traffic you’re supposedly stuck in, or the house you’re supposed to be at.


Censorship is a response to fear (of inconvient facts) so this should be no surprise...
"Internet censorship is common in conservative majority-Muslim countries, but it may have more to do with politics and technology than with religion. I.e., Iran is not so different from Cuba and China. From the article: 'n an attempt to uncover the various reasons -- and ways -- that countries clamp down on Internet freedoms, the U.S.-based watchdog Freedom House investigated the issue in 47 nations and released a study of its findings this year. Employing a number of factors ranging from blogger arrests to politically motivated website blockades, the study ranked each country according to its degree of online freedom. And, as it happens, Islamic countries do not stand out for their degree of censorship.'"
[The report:


Geeky stuff... Search in the age of big data...
October 14, 2012
Dremel: Interactive Analysis of WebScale Datasets
Dremel: Interactive Analysis of WebScale Datasets - Sergey Melnik, Andrey Gubarev, Jing Jing Long, Geoffrey Romer, Shiva Shivakumar, Matt Tolton, Theo Vassilakis - Google, Inc.
  • "Dremel is a scalable, interactive ad-hoc query system for analysis of read-only nested data. By combining multi-level execution trees and columnar data layout, it is capable of running aggregation queries over trillion-row tables in seconds. The system scales to thousands of CPUs and petabytes of data, and has thousands of users at Google. In this paper, we describe the architecture and implementation of Dremel, and explain how it complements MapReduce-based computing. We present a novel columnar storage representation for nested records and discuss experiments on few-thousand node instances of the system."


Perspective Well, we did go from 16th to 15th
October 14, 2012
2012 edition of Measuring the Information Society
Measuring the Information Society 2012: "New figures released today by International Telecommunications Union (ITU) show that information and communication technology (ICT) uptake continues to grow worldwide, spurred by a steady fall in the price of telephone and broadband Internet services. The new data, released in ITU’s flagship annual report Measuring the Information Society 2012, rank the Republic of Korea as the world’s most advanced ICT economy, followed by Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland. Of the ten top-ranked countries, eight are from Europe. The two remaining countries both come from the Asia-Pacific region, with the Republic of Korea in first place, and Japan ranked 8th. The top five countries have not changed their rank between 2010 and 2011. The only new entrant in the top ten is the UK, which moved up from 14th place last year to 9th place in 2012. ITU’s ICT Development Index (IDI) ranks 155 countries according to their level of ICT access, use and skills, and compares 2010 and 2011 scores. All countries in the IDI top 30 are high-income countries, underlining the strong link between income and ICT progress. There are large differences between developed and developing countries, with IDI values on average twice as high in the developed world compared with developing countries. The report identifies the group of countries with the lowest IDI levels – so-called ‘Least Connected Countries’ – and highlights the need for policy makers to pay keen attention to this group."


...and I thought they would buy WalMart to improve their delivery. Still, driving down your costs (of the Kindle) isn't a bad idea either...
Report: Amazon In Advanced Talks To Buy Texas Instruments’ Mobile Chip Business In Deal Worth Billions


Fine tuning my teaching methods...
October 14, 2012
How College Graduates Solve Information Problems Once They Join the Workplace
  • "Qualitative findings about the information-seeking behavior of today’s college graduates as they transition from the campus to the workplace. Included are findings from interviews with 23 US employers and focus groups with 33 recent graduates from four US colleges and universities, conducted as an exploratory study for Project Information Literacy’s (PIL’s) Passage Studies. Most graduates in our focus groups said they found it difficult to solve information problems in the workplace, where unlike college, a sense of urgency pervaded and where personal contacts often reaped more useful results than online searches. Graduates said they leveraged essential information competencies from college for extracting content and also developed adaptive information-seeking strategies for reaching out to trusted colleagues in order to compensate for what they lacked. At the same time, employers said they recruited graduates, in part, for their online searching skills but still expected and needed more traditional research competencies, such as thumbing through bound reports, picking up the telephone, and interpreting research results with team members. They found that their college hires rarely demonstrated these competencies. Overall, our findings suggest there is a distinct difference between today’s graduates who demonstrated how quickly they found answers online and seasoned employers who needed college hires to use a combination of online and traditional methods to conduct comprehensive research."

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Sunday, October 14, 2012

There are hints this is much more extensive than what is mentioned here. The bad guys could have pulled money from city employee deposit accounts (reversing their paychecks) and pulled from any Utility company using automatic withdrawal. Either would have increases the likelhood of detection...
More than $400,000 stolen from Burlington, Washington city bank account; other accounts compromised
October 13, 2012 by admin
Lynsi Burton reports that Burlington, Washington lost $400,000 to hackers who transferred city funds over a two-day period to various accounts around the country. City workers were also notified that their direct deposit bank account information was compromised and that they should cancel or red flag their accounts. The city’s bank account with Bank of America has been frozen, but there’s no indication as to why the fraudulent transfers weren’t detected and blocked sooner than two days.
The news coverage also does not mention that any customer accounts were affected, but in digging into this story a bit more, I found a notice on the city’s Finance Department web site that indicates customers using autopay are also affected:
EMERGENCY ALERT! ATTN: UTILITY CUSTOMERS
It has come to the City’s attention that the City’s Utility Billing Automatic Withdrawal information (for sewer and storm drain charges) has been compromised. If you are enrolled in Autopay, you should assume that your name, bank, bank account number and routing number have been compromised.
ALL AUTOPAY CUSTOMERS SHOULD IMMEDIATELY CONTACT THEIR BANK OR FINANCIAL INSTITUTION.
The City immediately closed the affected bank account and will not be withdrawing the funds owed for your July/August 2012 City of Burlington Utility Bill on October 15, 2012 as previously stated on your bill.
Please make arrangements to do one of the following to pay your bill by October 31, 2012:
1. Use your online bill pay option through your banking institution
2. Pay by check (mail to 833 S Spruce Street, Burlington, WA 98233)
3. Call 360-755-0531 and pay with a VISA , MasterCard or Discover credit or debit card
WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE!
Bryan Harrison, City Administrator


No bias here!
Google search for 'completely wrong' yields page of Romney photos
To the amusement of Mitt Romney's critics, a Google Image search for the phrase "completely wrong" on Wednesday returned a page nearly full of images of the Republican presidential candidate.


I can't imagine where I get the idea that “self surveillance” is becoming a big market...
Your webcam can record and transmit video feeds even when you are not at your house. You can use this action of an IP camera to make a simple video surveillance system for your home or office. Here to help you do this using an IP camera and your iPhone is a service called Cam on Duty.
Also check out our articles:


How can I turn this into “Students do Math homework during commercials?”
I immediately identified with today’s infographic, provided by Realplayer, because it describes my wife and I to a tee. When we are both watching television, we are alternating between looking at the screen and looking at our phones. It’s comforting to know that this is a widespread practice, and not something anti-social, as someone once told me. I wasn’t listening though as I was checking my phone at the time.


Cute! Perhaps we could use this as a background when we talk about Computer Security...
Your Real-Time Cyber-Attack Map
I have no idea how reliable the info shown here is, but it certainly is interesting. Especially to me, as I climb onto a plane bound for southern China via Japan. It's an animated real-time visualization of (it says) attempted cyber-attacks. Click below for a more detailed view or on the link above to see the real-time map.

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