...and eventually it will be your company, Computer Security students. Interesting that the FBI had to tell them about the passwords being on the Dark Net, but they immediately knew for certain that they had not been breached.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/another-day-another-hack-up-to-320000-time-warner-cable-email-passwords

Another Day, Another Hack: Up to 320,000 Time Warner Cable Email Passwords

US telecoms company Time Warner Cable Inc announced on Wednesday that up to 320,000 customers could have had their email and password details stolen, Reuters reports.

According to the news wire, Time Warner Cable said that no evidence of a breach was found in the company's systems. Instead, the details may have been obtained by directly targeting customers themselves, perhaps through phishing emails or malware, or by reusing credentials obtained via a data breach of another company. A Time Warner Cable spokesperson told Reuters the company was notified of the issue by the FBI.

So by default they were secure, but they changed it to be less secure. What genius made that decision?

Watchdog slams laptop security at Dept. of the Interior

Greg Otto reports:

Nearly 12,000 Interior Department laptops are inadequately protected against the theft of personally identifiable information due to poorly configured software.

In a management advisory obtained by FedScoop, the department’s Deputy Inspector General Mary Kendall wrote that a large number of laptops have their full-disk encryption software configured to run post-boot user authentication, which can be hacked relatively easily. Interior laptops were previously set to run pre-boot authentication, the software’s default setting and the one recommended by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Read more on FedScoop.

Too big to care?

Does a data breach really affect your firm’s reputation?

Doug Drinkwater reports what regular readers have likely already noticed: following a data breach, customers are upset, some will be reluctant to do business again with the entity, there may be brand or reputation damage to the firm, but big businesses survive and will continue to grow or rebound. So there may or may not be reputation damage, but even if there is, it hasn’t turned out to be as impactful as previous surveys and clarion calls might suggest.

Although incident response impacts reputation damage, reputation damage may not be as damaging to the bottom line as companies had been told to fear.

Read more on CSO. They’re only talking about big corporations (not surprisingly). What about small businesses? Do they rebound or do they fold? Over the years, I’ve reported on some cases where a business did not recover from a breach and folded. And recently, I reported on two data exposures where neither company has as yet recovered and it appears at least one of them has just disappeared.

I have nothing to hide.

Meet Oscobo, a new privacy-protective search engine

Oscobo is a UK-based search engine trying to appeal to the privacy-conscious folks who do not want to be tracked. From their privacy policy:

It’s pretty simple really. We are on your side. We will NOT store or mess around with your personal data.

What we don’t do…

We DO NOT store ANY data on our users:

NOT when you use our site.
NOT when you leave.
NOT when you type words in the search box.
NOT when you come back.

No cookies, No tracking, No IP, nuttin…., zip…, nada….

We DO NOT know WHO you are, WHERE you have been or where you are GOING and we certainly DO NOT compile any profiles.

Set the fine low, settle fast, claim that a lot of victories proves you are a champion of the people!

Uber settles NYS probes, agrees to pay $20K fine, adopt data security provisions

I’m not seeing any press release from NYS Attorney General Schneiderman’s office yet, but Kenneth Lovett of the NY Daily News reports that Uber has settled two probes stemming from both its “God View” privacy breach scandal and delayed notification of a breach involving drivers’ information.

In addition to paying the $20,000 fine to settle both probes, Uber, whose latest valuation was $62.5 billion, voluntarily agreed to comply with a number of provisions, according to a source who read the agreement.

[…]

Uber also agreed to encrypt rider geo-location information and adopt “multi-factor authentication” that would be required before an employee could access riders’ personal information.

In addition, the company formally agreed to conduct annual privacy and security training for employees, designate someone to supervise a privacy and security program, and maintain reasonable security practices, the source said.

Read more on the NY Daily News.

Attorney General Schneiderman seems to be going lightly with monetary penalties. His recent settlement with U. of Rochester over another breach involved a $15,000 penalty. It looks like he’s trying to make a point and is more focused on correction rather than punitive measures.

But sometimes, you have to fight. What constitutes the “line” that Turkey crossed?

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-twitter-idUSKBN0UL13720160107

Twitter files lawsuit against Turkish fine over 'terrorist propaganda': source

Micro-blogging site Twitter filed a lawsuit in an Ankara court on Thursday, seeking to annul a fine by the Turkish authorities for not removing content Turkey says is "terrorist propaganda", a source familiar with the case told Reuters.

A Turkish official said much of the material in question was related to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which Ankara deems as a terrorist organization.

… Ankara has taken a tough stance on social media under President Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling AK Party he founded. It has temporarily banned access to Twitter site several times in the past for failing to comply with requests to remove content.

But the 150,000 lira ($50,000) fine, imposed by the BTK communications technologies authority, was the first of its kind by Turkish authorities on Twitter.

Twitter, in its lawsuit, is arguing that the fine is against the law and should be annulled, the source said.

My Data Management class was arguing about this yesterday. (This could be a fun Quarter)

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/264938-advocates-press-facebook-to-stop-disingenuous-advocacy-in-india

Groups press Facebook to stop ‘disingenuous’ advocacy in India

Dozens of Internet rights groups are pressing Facebook to clean up its “unfounded and divisive” advocacy in India around Free Basics, the social media company’s program to offer limited Internet access for free.

The groups believe the program is at odds with net neutrality. And in an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, they accuse Facebook of making “disingenuous” claims that the opposition is coming from a small group of critics.

… Facebook’s program is a partnership between the social media company and a number of mobile carriers to bring Internet access to many unconnected parts of the world. In a process known as zero-rating, the Free Basics app allows mobile phone users to have free access to dozens of different websites, including news and jobs sites, Bing search, Wikipedia, ESPN, ACCuWeather, Facebook and others.

The program has faced an uphill battle in India since being unveiled last year. Many argue the plan goes against net neutrality, the principle that no Internet traffic or app should be prioritized above another. And the business model of zero-rating — or exempting certain Internet traffic from data caps — is a controversial topic that is still being debated in the United States.

… UPDATE 3:19 p.m. — A Facebook Spokesperson responded: "We respect the authors of the letter, but strongly disagree with their facts and conclusions. First, in the only nationally representative poll conducted in India, 86% of Indians support free basics. Those who aren’t connected want inexpensive, innovative new opportunities to come online. Second, there is no credible evidence that this program discourages access to the full internet — indeed, data from more than 35 countries suggests the opposite. We do not believe it makes sense to halt a program that accelerates economic development for those most in need. Third, the Free Basics program does not discriminate between content providers. The program has transparent technical requirements and any service that meets them can participate. Fourth, while we share the signers' commitment to net neutrality, we do not believe this important principle was ever intended to deprive poor people of the opportunity to experience the benefits of basic Internet services. Finally, regulators around the world who have looked at this issue have concluded that these types of programs can exist alongside strong net neutrality rules."

Because symptoms are easier to address than causes. Even if they can't articulate their concern, they do know owning a gun makes them feel safer than anything politicians do.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2016/01/05/gun-stocks-surge-as-obama-issues-executive-orders-on-gun-safety/

Gun Stocks Surge As Obama Issues Executive Orders On Gun Safety

… So in the wake of President Obama’s efforts to strengthen existing gun laws, guns and ammo stocks are once again jumping.

Shares of Sturm, Ruger & Co jumped 6.8% in Tuesday trading, hitting their highest level in a full year. The 164-year-old Smith & Wesson, meanwhile, saw its stock surge more than 12% and reach its highest price since July of 2007.

Can China lead us into a recession? I kind of doubt it. Not likely to bring down the government either.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/china-stocks-plunge-7-percent-triggering-another-market-closure/2016/01/07/d6a83bf5-10b2-4289-8aab-98e485a3fe6e_story.html

World stock markets slide as panic in China spreads

… China’s share market traded for less than 30 minutes Thursday, slumping 7 percent before triggering the second emergency market closure this week and generating talk of a crisis.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index fell 2.5 percent in early London trading, while Germany's Dax index slipped 3.5 percent. In overnight trading, Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index futures in the United States were 2.2 percent lower.

Against a backdrop of a weak economy and, some argue, an overvalued currency, confidence in China had long been in short supply. But investors also blamed ill-considered and poorly explained moves by the authorities for fueling the panic this week.

Perspective. (Note that China was left out)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/business/media/netflix-expands-its-streaming-service-worldwide.html?_r=0

At CES, Netflix Adds Over 130 Countries to Streaming Service

… Yet one major region on Netflix’s world map remains dark: China, home to nearly a quarter of the world’s broadband households. And in many of the 190 countries where Netflix now is available — including Turkey, Russia and Poland — the service is available in English, but not the local language.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix, said in a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon. “Because of the number of countries, it seems like we are ahead of plan. But we still have China — we still have a quarter of the world to go.”

Want to bet that Congress jumps on this? 'cause everyone else is betting it will sink without a ripple.

40,000 Packages of Backlogged Claims Material Discovered at Single VA Office

This is absolutely disgraceful. Morgan Chalfant reports:

More than 40,000 backlogged mail packages of veterans’ disability claims material were discovered at a VA regional office in Florida, according to a new report from the VA inspector general.

Investigators also found more than 1,600 boxes of unprocessed veterans’ claims material at a scanning facility with which the St. Petersburg, Florida, regional office was contracting.

Read more on Washington Free Beacon.

Looks like hours of fun!

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/internet-rejoice/422883/?google_editors_picks=true

The New York Public Library's Remarkable New Digital Collection

… The New York Public library has digitized more than 187,000 images, all in the public domain—meaning they’re freely available for anyone to use.

Is Dilbert pointing out the major difference between my students and the managers they will work for?

http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-01-07

Interesting. How will defense lawyers react? Stay tuned.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fbis-unprecedented-hacking-campaign-targeted-over-a-thousand-computers

The FBI's 'Unprecedented' Hacking Campaign Targeted Over a Thousand Computers

… Just a month after launch, Playpen had nearly 60,000 member accounts. By the following year, this number had ballooned to almost 215,000, with over 117,000 total posts, and an average of 11,000 unique visitors each week. Many of those posts, according to FBI testimony, contained some of the most extreme child abuse imagery one could imagine, and others included advice on how sexual abusers could avoid detection online.

… A month before this peak, in February 2015, the computer server running Playpen was seized by law enforcement from a web host in Lenoir, North Carolina, according to a complaint filed against Peter Ferrell, one of the accused in New York.

… But after Playpen was seized, it wasn't immediately closed down, unlike previous dark web sites that have been shuttered by law enforcement. Instead, the FBI ran Playpen from its own servers in Newington, Virginia, from February 20 to March 4, reads a complaint filed against a defendant in Utah. During this time, the FBI deployed what is known as a network investigative technique (NIT), the agency's term for a hacking tool.

… Magistrate Judge Theresa C. Buchanan in the Eastern District of Virginia, who signed the warrant used for the NIT, did not respond to questions on whether she understood that the warrant would grant the power to hack anyone who signed up to Playpen, or whether she consulted technical experts before signing it, and her office said not to expect a reply.

But Fieman said that the warrant “effectively authorizes an unlimited number of searches, against unidentified targets, anywhere in the world.”

For my Computer Security students (and my Ethical Hacking students) Make sure you are not using the defaults!

http://www.securityweek.com/researchers-publish-default-passwords-ics-products

Researchers Publish Default Passwords for ICS Products

… The list, dubbed “SCADAPASS,” contains default credentials for industrial routers, programmable logic controllers (PLC), wireless gateways, servers and network modules

The SEC thinks there is some hanky-panky going on, but doesn't know how to detect it. So they create a non-profit to detect it and report it to the people doing it in the hope that they will stop doing it?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-05/wall-street-to-get-graded-on-how-much-spoofing-it-s-facilitating

Wall Street to Get Graded on How Much Spoofing It's Facilitating

U.S. regulators have grown so concerned that traders are using high-speed computers to manipulate markets that they’re planning a new tactic to clamp down on the practice -- rating brokers on how much spoofing flows through their order books.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said it plans to issue report cards this year that will grade firms on how many phony bids to buy or sell stock they might have a role in facilitating. Finra, a market cop funded by Wall Street, expects brokers to use the assessments to root out any misconduct, the regulator said Tuesday in its annual letter on exam priorities. The reports won’t be made public.

DHS and TSA are looking for the most favorable spin on the laws governing them. Sometimes “interpretation” becomes “wishful thinking.” Sometimes they spin out of control.

DHS posts new lies about the REAL-ID Act

From Papers, Please!:

In response to a flurry of publicity kicked off by a story last week in the New York Times in which we were quoted, the DHS has posted several new or updated pages about the REAL-ID Act on its website, including a new page headed, “REAL ID and You: Rumor Control“.

Not surprisingly, the DHS is still lying about what the REAL-ID Act requires.

Read more on Papers, Please!

I kinda thought we had not heard the end of this.

After neighbor shot down his drone, Kentucky man files federal lawsuit

Cyrus Farivar reports:

The Kentucky man whose drone was shot down by his neighbor last year has now filed a federal lawsuit, asking the court to make a legal determination as to whether his drone’s July 2015 flight constituted trespass. In the case, plaintiff David Boggs also wants the court to rule that he is entitled to damages of $1,500 for his destroyed drone.

Read more on Ars Technica.

[From the article:

"The United States Government has exclusive sovereignty over airspace of the United States pursuant to 49 U.S.C.A. § 40103," Boggs' lawyer, James Mackler, wrote in the civil complaint. "The airspace, therefore, is not subject to private ownership nor can the flight of an aircraft within the navigable airspace of the United States constitute a trespass."

(Related) The first of many?

http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/264757-feds-sued-over-drone-registration-rules

Drone user sues feds over registration rules

… The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, argues that the drone registration rules put in place last month violate a federal law that prohibits the FAA from regulating recreational drones.

Everyone believes that the Internet of Things means we will measure everything. I wonder if that is true.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3019557/internet-of-things/intel-embraces-internet-of-things-puts-sensors-on-everything.html

Intel embraces Internet of Things, puts sensors on everything

More sensors means more data... which means more chips to be sold... which means more revenue.

(Related) Do we really need 24/7 surveillance of our refrigerator?

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/121225/20160106/ces-2016-here-is-why-samsung-s-family-hub-is-a-fridge-of-the-future.htm

CES 2016: Here Is Why Samsung’s Family Hub Is A Fridge Of The Future

People will soon have a fridge equipped with cameras and a huge display, allowing them to see anything inside without the need to open its door.

(Related) This follows like night follows day.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/the-extortionist-in-the-fridge/422742/

The Extortionist in the Fridge

Perspective. Does this suggest the auto makers are taking this seriously?

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-tech-ces-autos-idUSKBN0UJ1UD20160105

Automakers, not Silicon Valley, lead in driverless car patents: study

… "Automakers aren’t as good as technology companies in tooting their own horns," Tony Trippe, principal author of the report, told Reuters in an interview. "But when you look at the patent data, the automakers are all over this."

Toyota is, far and away, the global leader in the number of self-driving car patents, the report found. Toyota is followed by Germany’s Robert Bosch GmbH [ROBG.UL], Japan’s Denso Corp (6902.T), Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co (005380.KS) and General Motors Co (GM.N). The tech company with the most autonomous-driving patents, Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google, ranks 26th on the list.

An interesting area of law.

Privacy and Ed-tech in 2016

Brian Schaller of InfoLawGroup provides yeoman service by recapping legislative news in 2015 in ed-tech:

There was a lot of legislative movement for the educational technology (ed-tech) industry in 2015 with states placing additional privacy regulations on the industry, and the effects of those new acts should be felt this year. The states that passed this type of legislation in 2015 were following California’s lead. California’s governor signed the Student Online Personal Information Protection Act (SOPIPA) (2014 Cal SB 1177) back in 2014. Even though these states enacted legislation after SOPIPA, at least one of these acts came into effect before SOPIPA became operative (which was January 1, 2016). Maryland’s Student Data Privacy Act of 2015 (2015 MD H.B. 298) was approved by the governor on May 12, 2015 and took effect July 1, 2015. On August 7, the influential and often business friendly state of Delaware saw its governor approve the Student Data Privacy Protection Act (2015 Del. SS 1 for SB 79). Some of the Delaware act’s provisions became effective upon its enactment into law, but the provisions that have the most impact are effective “August 1 the first full year following the Act’s enactment into law”. Georgia’s Student Data Privacy, Accessibility, and Transparency Act (2015 GA S.B. 89) was signed by the state’s governor on May 6, 2015 and will become effective July 1, 2016. Additional states passed similar legislation such as Arkansas and Virginia. According to an article by the National Association of State Boards of Education released last June, 111 state bills “were aimed at establishing better safeguards for the collection, use, and disclosure of student data.”

Read more on InfoLawGroup.

Perspective.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-staggering-email-stats-that-are-hard-to-believe/

5 Staggering Email Stats That Are Hard to Believe

Approximately 205 billion emails are sent every day.

91% of all email users check their inbox at least once a day. [Not my students Bob]

At least 72% of U.S. adults manage personal emails by smartphone.

Gmail has close to 1 billion active users.

Skilled email marketing returns around $44 for every $1 spent.

Big Data is useless by itself.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_wernicke_how_to_use_data_to_make_a_hit_tv_show

Sebastian Wernicke: How to use data to make a hit TV show

Does collecting more data lead to better decision-making? Competitive, data-savvy companies like Amazon, Google and Netflix have learned that data analysis alone doesn't always produce optimum results. In this talk, data scientist Sebastian Wernicke breaks down what goes wrong when we make decisions based purely on data — and suggests a brainier way to use it.

For my next Spreadsheet class.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/8-tips-learn-excel-quickly/

8 Tips for How to Learn Excel Quickly

(Related) Dilbert lists the errors my Spreadsheet Students make.

http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-01-06

I don't think there is anything new here.

http://www.bespacific.com/paper-staying-smart-how-todays-graduates-continue-to-learn-once-they-complete-college/

Paper – Staying Smart: How Today’s Graduates Continue to Learn Once They Complete College

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Jan 5, 2016

Project Information Literacy Research Report: “Staying Smart” | January 5, 2016 | Alison J. Head

Staying Smart: How Today’s Graduates Continue to Learn Once They Complete College – “This report presents findings about the information-seeking behavior of relatively recent college graduates used for lifelong learning in personal life, the workplace, and the local communities where they lived. Included are results from online surveys of 1,651 respondents and telephone interviews with 126 study participants who graduated from one of 10 US colleges and universities between 2007 and 2012. Findings indicated that most graduates needed to learn a combination of basic and complex life skills during the past year, such as money-management, how to make household repairs, and how to advance in their careers and communicate better on the job. They consulted friends, family , and coworkers almost as much as the Web. Graduates preferred information sources that had currency, utility, and interactivity. They also placed a high premium on curated information systems that were organized and kept up-to-date, such as libraries, museums, and bookstores. A model of shared utility is introduced for explaining graduates’ use of contemporary social media technologies as well as personal connections they had established with trusted allies. Graduates reported four barriers to their continued learning efforts: lack of time, finding affordable learning sources, staying on top of everything they needed to know, and staying motivated to keep learning after college. As a whole, graduates prided themselves on their ability to search, evaluate, and present information, skill s they honed during college. Yet, far fewer said that their college experience had helped them develop the critical thinking skill of framing and asking questions of their own, which is a skill they inevitably needed in their post-college lives. Ten recommendations are presented for improving educational strategies, resources, and services that foster lifelong learning.”

An Infographic for our “Success Coaches” to pass along?

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/studying-doesnt-have-to-be-a-struggle-if-you-do-it-right/

Studying Doesn’t Have To Be a Struggle If You Do It Right

Almost cool enough to convince me to buy a smartphone.

http://scorecloud.com/

ScoreCloud

“Like Google Translate for music”

ScoreCloud instantly turns your songs into sheet music. As simple as that!

• Instant Score from MIDI or Audio
• Arrange and Edit your Score
• Print, Export and Share

Again? Sony doesn't know what is going on?

http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/04/psn-is-down-for-gamers-around-the-world/

PSN is down for gamers around the world (update: it’s back up)

… PlayStation Network is down, according to Sony Computer Entertainment America. The company has updated its status page to confirm the outage. This is preventing gamers on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 from loading up online multiplayer sessions in blockbusters like Destiny: The Taken King and Call of Duty: Black Ops III. It’s even causing issues with some players trying to log into primarily single-player experiences like Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. On top of that, PlayStation owners are running into problems launching video apps, such as Hulu and Netflix.

… It’s also worth noting that while both PSN and Xbox Live.have gone offline a number of times over the last 12 months, cyberattackers had nothing to do with most of those incidents.

Unfortunate, unless you're a hacker.

http://www.securityweek.com/users-lax-mobile-security-survey

Users Lax on Mobile Security: Survey

… According to the study (PDF), which had nearly 12,000 respondents from 27 countries, users are increasingly concerned about online threats, and many are looking install security software on their devices. Furthermore, the report reveals that consumers use more connected devices than before, with an average of 8 connected devices per household.

Them Dutch guys, they be pretty smart, you betcha.

http://www.securityweek.com/dutch-government-opposes-encryption-backdoors

Dutch Government Opposes Encryption Backdoors

… The government in the Netherlands believes authorities should seek new solutions to address the issues posed by the use of encryption during their investigations, but weakening encryption is not the answer. Dutch officials have pointed out that introducing a backdoor that would allow authorities to access encrypted data could also be abused by criminals, terrorists and foreign intelligence services, and it could have undesirable consequences.

For my Computer Security students.

http://www.bespacific.com/data-security-and-breach-notification-legislation-selected-legal-issues/

Data Security and Breach Notification Legislation: Selected Legal Issues

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Jan 4, 2016

CRS – Data Security and Breach Notification Legislation: Selected Legal Issues, Alissa M. Dolan, Legislative Attorney. December 28, 2015. “Recent data breaches at major U.S. retailers have placed a spotlight on concerns about the security of personal information stored in electronic form by corporations and other private entities. A data breach occurs when data containing sensitive personal information is lost, stolen, or accessed in an unauthorized manner, thereby causing a potential compromise of the confidentiality of the data. Existing federal laws, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act), and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, impose security and breach notification requirements on specific industries or types of data. Additionally, 47 states, the District of Columbia (D.C.), and three territories have enacted laws requiring breach notification, while at least 12 states have enacted data security laws, designed to reduce the likelihood of a data breach. Alabama, New Mexico, and South Dakota have not enacted breach notification laws.”

Some articles start me giggling before I read beyond the headline.

http://www.bespacific.com/can-robots-be-lawyers-computers-lawyers-and-the-practice-of-law/

Can Robots Be Lawyers? Computers, Lawyers, and the Practice of Law

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Jan 4, 2016

Remus, Dana and Levy, Frank S., Can Robots Be Lawyers? Computers, Lawyers, and the Practice of Law (December 30, 2015). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2701092 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2701092

“We assess frequently-advanced arguments that automation will soon replace much of the work currently performed by lawyers. Our assessment addresses three core weaknesses in the existing literature: (i) a failure to engage with technical details to appreciate the capacities and limits of existing and emerging software; (ii) an absence of data on how lawyers divide their time among various tasks, only some of which can be automated; and (iii) inadequate consideration of whether algorithmic performance of a task conforms to the values, ideals and challenges of the legal profession. Combining a detailed technical analysis with a unique data set on time allocation in large law firms, we estimate that automation has an impact on the demand for lawyers’ time that while measureable, is far less significant than popular accounts suggest. We then argue that the existing literature’s narrow focus on employment effects should be broadened to include the many ways in which computers are changing (as opposed to replacing) the work of lawyers. We show that the relevant evaluative and normative inquiries must begin with the ways in which computers perform various lawyering tasks differently than humans. These differences inform the desirability of automating various aspects of legal practice, while also shedding light on the core values of legal professionalism.”

The pendulum swings back. ...and I don't understand the logic.

Bucking Clapper? Massachusetts court holds patients have standing to sue based on mere exposure of data alone

In August, 2014, I noted a report involving a transcription contractor of Boston Medical Center exposing patient information on the Internet. BMC notified approximately 15,000 patients and fired MDF Transcription Services because of the incident. Of note, BMC told patients in a notification letter that it had no reason to believe their information had been misused – or even accessed. The incident, which had been reported to HHS in April 2014, appears on HHS’s breach tool under MDF’s name as the Business Associate. There is no indication in the breach tool that OCR has closed its investigation into that incident as of today’s date.

Unbeknownst to me, there was a lawsuit that followed the incident: Walker et al v. Boston Medical Center Corp. Not surprisingly, the defendants moved to dismiss for lack of standing. After all, there was no evidence the data had even been accessed, much less misused, and because… Clapper.

BMC must have gotten a real shock when the opinion was issued. Kevin M. McGinty of Mintz Levin explains:

A Massachusetts Superior Court judge held that a plaintiff has standing to sue for money damages based on the mere exposure of plaintiff’s private information in an alleged data breach. The court concluded that the plaintiff had pleaded a “real and immediate risk” of injury despite failing to allege that any unauthorized persons had even seen or accessed that information.

Read more on Mintz Levin.

[From the article:

Although the Walker plaintiffs did not allege that their medical records had been accessed, or their personal information used, by any unauthorized person, the court’s holding indicates that the mere exposure of patient data to the potential to be accessed by unauthorized persons may still adequately plead an injury. In this case, the plaintiffs alleged facts that, if true “suggest[ed] a real risk of harm from the data breach at BMC” (internal quotations omitted) because BMC’s letter notifying the plaintiffs of the data breach supported an inference that “plaintiffs’ medical records were available to the public on the internet for some period of time and that there is a serious risk of disclosure.” Based on this inference, the court found it was reasonable to draw the further inference that the records “either were accessed or likely to be accessed by an unauthorized person.” This “general allegation of injury from the data breach” was sufficient to demonstrate standing.

Play with this a bit. Could be very interesting.

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/reddit-ngram/?keyword=privacy.security&start=20071015&end=20150831&smoothing=10

How The Internet* Talks

*Well, the mostly young and mostly male users of Reddit, anyway.

… To get a sense of the language used on Reddit, we parsed every comment from late 2007 through August 2015 and built the tool above, which enables you to search for a word or phrase to see how its popularity has changed over time.

Perspective.

http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-rise-of-visual-content-online/

The Rise of Visual Content Online

While the explosion of data and information has been a topic of considerable interest in recent years, another phenomenon has received comparably less attention: The explosion of visual content. To put this growth in perspective, it is estimated that 3.8 trillion photos were taken in all of human history until mid-2011, but 1 trillion photos were taken in 2015 alone. And that’s without counting the number of people making, viewing, or sharing videos [YouTube alone boasts over a billion users worldwide], Vines [40 million users], and gifs.

This may have happened in earlier Presidential election years, but back then they probably used 3X5 cards and quill pens. (Read the whole thing!)

Did a Christian right-wing organization expose private details of millions of people?

First someone left our voter registration details exposed to the world, but those were “just public records,” some argued. Now a second misconfigured database has been uncovered by Chris Vickery. This one, however, not only includes some states’ voter lists, but it also includes 19 million profiles with private information on religion, household values, gun ownership and more. Are you outraged now?

So Much for a Quiet Christmas

Five days after finding a misconfigured database with 191 million voters’ records, and only hours after he woke up the owner of Three Lock Box in the middle of the night to ask him why their database still wasn’t secured, Chris Vickery emailed DataBreaches.net and Salted Hash. He had found yet another misconfigured database with voters’ information. It was 7:30 am on Christmas morning.

Oh, the horror! Is nothing sacred? (Thanks for the list of sites!)

Porn Sites Hit By Malware: Malwarebytes

Payal Patak reports a malvertising attack on hundreds of porn sites left millions of people’s devices infected, beginning in November. In this case, the ads were hosted and served by AdExpansion, an adult ad network:

US-based security firm Malwarebytes detected popular websites such as xHamster, RedTube, PornHub and the likes to have been seriously attacked, which caused their data being compromised. These websites are moderately popular and attract several million visitors each day.

Other porn-sites recordely hit by malware were DrTuber, Nuvid, Eroprofile, IcePorn and Xbabe.

Read more on Korea Portal.

Malwarebytes had reported the problem at the beginning of December. AdExpansion had confirmed it, noting that although they had disabled the ads within hours of notification, they had been unable to prevent the malvertiser from creating new accounts.

So malvertising on porn sites and ElSurveillance hacking escort services and porn sites. And Ashley Madison data getting dumped.

How safe do you feel engaging in online pursuits of these kinds? By now, you should be prepared that any account you use may wind up compromised and that you may wind up exposed.

Surely someone can make a more thoughtful argument?

Time for a Rigorous National Debate About Surveillance

Congressman Mike Pompeo and constitutional lawyer David B. Rivkin, Jr., have an OpEd in the Wall Street Journal today. Let me cut to their point:

Congress should pass a law re-establishing collection of all metadata, and combining it with publicly available financial and lifestyle information into a comprehensive, searchable database. Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed. That includes Presidential Policy Directive-28, which bestows privacy rights on foreigners and imposes burdensome requirements to justify data collection.

I’m kind of wishing that was The Onion and not the WSJ.

[From the OpEd:

… Forcing terrorists into encrypted channels, however, impedes their operational effectiveness by constraining the amount of data they can send [Absolute nonsense. Bob] and complicating transmission protocols, a phenomenon known in military parlance as virtual attrition. Moreover, the use of strong encryption in personal communications may itself be a red flag.

Still, the U.S. must recognize that encryption is bringing the golden age of technology-driven surveillance to a close, which necessitates robust human intelligence

For my Computer Security and Forensics students.

http://www.bespacific.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-silk-road/

The Rise and Fall of Silk Road

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Jan 3, 2016

Via Wired – “In October 2013, a young entrepreneur named Ross Ulbricht was arrested at the Glen Park branch of the San Francisco Public library. It was the culmination of a two-year investigation into a vast online drug market called Silk Road. The authorities charged that Ulbricht, an idealistic 29-year-old Eagle Scout from Austin, Texas, was the kingpin of the operation. They said he’d reaped millions from the site, all transacted anonymously with Bitcoin. They said he’d devolved into a cold-blooded criminal, hiring hit men to take out those who crossed him. The story of how Ulbricht founded Silk Road, how it grew into a $1.2 billion operation, and how federal law enforcement shut it down is complicated, dark, and utterly fascinating. This two-part series tells that story.”

• The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 1 – Joshuah Bearman
• The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2 – Joshuah Bearman

Once you get on Putin's Enemies List, you can expect continuous harassment.

http://www.securityweek.com/blackenergy-group-uses-destructive-plugin-ukraine-attacks

BlackEnergy Malware Used in Ukraine Power Grid Attacks

The BlackEnergy malware has been around since at least 2007 and it has been used in numerous targeted attacks, including ones aimed at Ukrainian government organizations and critical infrastructure companies in the United States.

Security firm ESET has been monitoring attacks involving the threat and recently discovered that the Trojan had been used to target news media and electrical power companies in Ukraine.

The news comes just days after Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, accused Russian special services of planting malware on the networks of several regional power companies. The agency also said attackers flooded the targeted firms’ technical support phone lines.

Will disparaging terms keep people from joining? Could this be done to ISIS recruiters?

http://www.businessinsider.com/social-media-mocking-oregon-militia-by-calling-them-yallqaeda-and-vanillaisis-2016-1?google_editors_picks=true

People are mocking the Oregon 'militia' on social media by calling them 'YallQaeda' and 'VanillaISIS'

A tense standoff at an Oregon wildlife center led by armed, primarily white, antigovernment protesters captivated social media on Sunday as users alternately debated their motives and ridiculed them.

… While #YallQaeda has been used intermittently since at least 2011 to refer to various right-wing, Tea Party, or other antigovernment groups, it caught fire with users commenting on the Oregon standoff. It is currently trending with over 35,000 tweets so far.

After that, the terrorism-related puns really took off. The next biggest was #VanillaISIS, which some users have been using over the last month to refer to Donald Trump and his supporters, following "Daily Show" host Trevor Noah's dubbing of Trump as "White ISIS" or "WHISIS."

Perspective. The year of the bear?

http://www.wsj.com/articles/australias-energy-sector-higher-on-oil-gains-1451871455

China Stocks: Trading Halted for the Day as Circuit Breaker Kicks In

Asian markets tumbled on the first day of trading in 2016, with declines so steep in China that authorities halted all mainland trading before the end of the day.

Analysts cited a number of reasons for the selling, including China’s disappointing manufacturing data, reported earlier Monday, and the coming removal of a ban on major shareholders from selling stakes, put in place during the summer stock crash.

The Shanghai Composite Index fell 6.9%, its biggest decline on record for the first trading day of the year, before trading was halted. The smaller Shenzhen Composite fell 8.2%.

Perspective. The year the auto industry died and was reborn as “Transportation As A Service”

http://www.buzzfeed.com/johanabhuiyan/lyft-driverless-cars#.qnq8A2BK6

Lyft And General Motors Are Partnering To Bring You On-Demand Driverless Cars

… General Motors, which announced late last year that it expects to have a fleet of autonomous Chevy Volts on the road by the end of 2016, has invested $500 million in Lyft as part of a $1 billion round of funding at a $5.5 billion post-money valuation. As part of that investment, GM is partnering with Lyft to provide a fleet of on-demand autonomous vehicles that can be hailed exclusively on the Lyft platform.

The very definition of “over sharing.”

http://www.bespacific.com/new-on-llrx-deep-web-research-and-discovery-resources-2016/

New on LLRX – Deep Web Research and Discovery Resources 2016

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Jan 3, 2016

Via LLRX.com – Deep Web Research and Discovery Resources 2016 – Marcus Zillman has a longstanding and comprehensive expertise pertaining to the Deep Web. The Deep Web or Dark Web covers trillions of pages of information held in dynamically generated repositories throughout the global web that remain inaccessible through popular applications and search engines. Searching for this information using deeper search techniques and the latest algorithms allows researchers to obtain a vast amount of information that was previously unavailable or inaccessible, in fields that include the sciences and maths, corporate and financial data, and data only surfaced using file sharing applications. Zillman’s new guide documents a wide range of sources to improve your research results, including articles and paper, cross database search services and tools, peer to peer and file sharing engines, and semantic web resources.

Always looking for sources to add to my RSS feed.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/dont-like-podcasts-read-17-alternatives-popular-shows/

Don’t Like Podcasts? Read 17 Alternatives to the Most Popular Shows

For my students. (Also editorial cartoons)

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/read-newspaper-comics-online-now-free/

How to Read Newspaper Comics Online Now for Free

… Once you’ve had your fill of reading comics, find out how you can make your own comic strips.

I doubt most Americans could evaluate corn flakes, let alone Privacy vs Security.

http://www.apnorc.org/projects/Pages/HTML%20Reports/americans-evaluate-the-balance-between-security-and-civil-liberties1222-4187.aspx

Americans Evaluate the Balance between Security and Civil Liberties

… In the latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, 54 percent of Americans say it can be necessary for the government to sacrifice freedoms to fight terrorism; 45 percent disagree. About half of Americans think it is acceptable to allow warrantless government analysis of internet activities and communications—even of American citizens—in order to keep an eye out for suspicious activity. About 3 in 10 are against this type of government investigation.

Perspective.

http://fortune.com/amazon-india-jeff-bezos/

Amazon Invades India

… It is not hard to see why the battle for India is this fierce, nor why Bezos, famously obsessed with analytics, would see it as essential for Amazon’s future. The numbers alone are dizzying. India’s population of 1.25 billion is four times as big as the U.S.’s and more than double Europe’s. And since the median age is 27—a full decade younger than Americans’—the trajectory will be steep. India will overtake China as the world’s most populous country in just seven years, according to the UN. It is now the world’s fastest-growing major economy, and the IMF projects 7.5% growth next year. The roads and railways might be creaking under the strain. Many laws governing business are a confounding tangle, including a law forbidding foreign companies from selling products directly to Indians. That law effectively renders Amazon India a platform for vendors—akin to its “fulfillment by Amazon” program in the U.S.—rather than the company so familiar to Americans, which buys wholesale items in bulk and sells them directly in a Brobdingnagian online store.

… Barely one-quarter of India’s population has access to the Internet at home, whether on a smartphone or computer, and only a small fraction of those have ever shopped online.

We get the leaders we deserve. Scary, isn't it.

http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-created-isis-obama-2016-1?google_editors_picks=true

TRUMP: 'Hillary Clinton created ISIS with Obama'

(Related) It was different back in ye olde days.

http://www.bespacific.com/fdr-presidential-library-new-digital-speech-collections/

FDR Presidential Library – New Digital Speech Collections

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Jan 2, 2016

Mary E. Stuckey – “The FDR Library, with support from AT&T, Marist College and the Roosevelt Institute launches online one of its most in-demand archival collections – FDR’s Master Speech File – over 46,000 pages of drafts, reading copies, and transcripts created throughout FDR’s political career. Presented alongside the Speech File is the Library’s complete digital collection of Recorded Speeches of FDR.”

More like hacker “wanna be”

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35213415

'Anti-IS group' claims BBC website attack

… The group, calling itself New World Hacking, said it had carried out the attack as a "test of its capabilities".

… "We realise sometimes what we do is not always the right choice, but without cyber hackers... who is there to fight off online terrorists?

"The reason we really targeted [the] BBC is because we wanted to see our actual server power."

Earlier, New World Hacking had said: "It was only a test, we didn't exactly plan to take it down for multiple hours. Our servers are quite strong."

… Ownz said his group used a tool called Bangstresser - created by another US-based "hacktivist" - to direct a flood of traffic against the BBC, and had supplemented the attack with requests from its own personal computer servers.

A cautionary tale for my Computer Security students.

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/12/2016-reality-lazy-authentication-still-the-norm/

2016 Reality: Lazy Authentication Still the Norm

My PayPal account was hacked on Christmas Eve. The perpetrator tried to further stir up trouble by sending my PayPal funds to a hacker gang tied to the jihadist militant group ISIS. Although the intruder failed to siphon any funds, the successful takeover of the account speaks volumes about why most organizations — including many financial institutions — remain woefully behind the times in authenticating their customers and staying ahead of identity thieves.

On Christmas Eve morning, I received an email from PayPal stating that an email address had been added to my account. I immediately logged into my account from a pristine computer, changed the password, switched my email address back to to the primary contact address, and deleted the rogue email account.

I then called PayPal and asked how the perpetrator had gotten in, and was there anything else they could do to prevent this from happening again? The customer service person at PayPal said the attacker had simply logged in with my username and password, and that I had done everything I could in response to the attack. The representative assured me they would monitor the account for suspicious activity, and that I should rest easy.

Twenty minutes later I was outside exercising in the unseasonably warm weather when I stopped briefly to check email again: Sure enough, the very same rogue email address had been added back to my account. But by the time I got back home to a computer, my email address had been removed and my password had been changed. So much for PayPal’s supposed “monitoring;” the company couldn’t even spot the same fraudulent email address when it was added a second time.

… In my second call to PayPal, I insisted on speaking with a supervisor. That person was able to tell me that, as I suspected, my (very long and complex) password was never really compromised. The attacker had merely called in to PayPal’s customer support, pretended to be me and was able to reset my password by providing nothing more than the last four digits of my Social Security number and the last four numbers of an old credit card account.

Might make an interesting student paper: “What are your employees authorized to do?”

North Carolina Employees are not “Authorized” to Divert Employer Data

Amy R. Worley writes:

As the year draws to a close, employer claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) against departing employees for stealing or otherwise diverting employer information without authorization to do so are dying slow deaths in many federal courts across the nation. As noted over on the Non-Compete and Trade Secrets Report, the U.S. federal circuits are split regarding whether an employee acts “without authorization” under CFAA when he or she steals employer confidential data at or near termination. The Second, Ninth and Fourth Circuits hold that as long as the employee was permitted to be on a computer for any purpose, diversion of employer information is “authorized” under CFAA. In contrast, the First, Fifth, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits have adopted a broad construction, allowing CFAA claims alleging an employee misused employer information that he or she was otherwise permitted to access.

Now, in North Carolina at least, employers may have better luck under fighting malevolent employees under the North Carolina statutory corollary to CFAA.

Read more on Jackson Lewis Workplace Privacy, Data Management & Security Report.

What is “appropriate?” What can the software do and what is inappropriate?

ACLU slams Fresno police for testing social media surveillance software

Andrea Castillo reports:

The American Civil Liberties Union recently slammed Fresno Police Department for testing social media screening programs, suggesting police could use them to monitor protest groups and accusing the department of keeping the public in the dark about the testing.

But police say they’ve only been testing services for possible use in monitoring violent crime and terrorism – not for spying on critics. They add that the public will get a chance to weigh in when a final recommendation goes before the City Council.

Read more on The Fresno Bee.

[From the article:

Fresno police last year participated in free trials from the social media monitoring programs Geofeedia, LifeRaft and Media Sonar. They remain on an extended free trial for Beware, a data-mining program that includes social media and, upon request, assigns a “threat rating” to people and addresses.

Fresno activists alerted ACLU representatives about Beware earlier this year. So the ACLU sent out a Public Records Act request to find out how the police department was tracking social media, and got 88 pages of documents in return.

… Casto said social media is currently used only once officers have the name of a suspect and can look them up like anyone else would.

“If someone was threatening to bring a gun to a specific high school or mall we could do a geofence (using Google maps) and monitor for a gun or mass shooting,” he said. [Doesn't that contradict the previous sentence? Bob]

Does this kill those “shoplifter identification” databases? How about known card sharps in casinos?

Illinois Privacy Law Covers ‘Faceprints,’ Judge Says

Wendy Davis reports:

In a first, a federal judge has ruled that a biometric privacy law in Illinois potentially prohibits Web companies from compiling databases of faceprints.

U.S. District Court Judge Charles Norgle in Illinois this week rejected online photo service Shutterfly’s bid to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that it violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. That law, which dates to 2008, prohibits companies from storing people’s “biometric identifiers,” including scans of face geometry, without their consent.

Read more on MediaPost. This could be a game-changer.

In short, “It depends...”

http://www.bespacific.com/measuring-privacy-using-context-to-expose-confounding-variables/

Measuring Privacy: Using Context to Expose Confounding Variables

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Jan 1, 2016

Martin, Kirsten E. and Nissenbaum, Helen, Measuring Privacy: Using Context to Expose Confounding Variables (December 31, 2015). Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2709584

“Past privacy surveys often omit important contextual factors and yield cloudy, potentially misleading results about how people understand and value privacy. We revisit two historically influential measurements of privacy that have shaped discussion about public views and sentiments as well as practices and policies surrounding privacy: (1) Alan Westin’s series of surveys establishing that people in their valuations of privacy persistently fall into three categories: fundamentalists, pragmatists, and unconcerned and (2) Pew Foundation’s survey of individuals’ ratings of ‘sensitive’ information. We find, first, the relative importance of types of sensitive information on meeting privacy expectations is highly dependent on the contextual actor receiving the information as well as the use of information. Respondents differentiate between contextual, appropriate use of information and the commercial use of information. Second, Westin’s privacy categories were a relatively unimportant factor in judging privacy violations of different scenarios. Even privacy unconcerned respondents rated the vignettes to not meet privacy expectations on average, and respondents across categories had a common vision of what constitutes a privacy violation. While groups differed slightly, contextual factors explained the tremendous variation within Westin’s groups. In sum, respondents were highly nuanced in their judgments about information by taking into consideration the context, actor, and use as well as the type of information. In addition, respondents had common concerns about privacy across Westin’s privacy categories. Significant for public policy we demonstrate that teasing out confounding variables, reveals significant commonality across respondents in their privacy expectations. For firms, our work reveals that respondents’ judgments of privacy violation are highly sensitive to how the information is shared and used after disclosure.”

Gosh, does TSA know about this? What does the Constitution say?

You don’t have to show any ID to fly

Papers, Please! wants you to know that no matter what the TSA suggests, you don’t need to show any ID to fly:

We’re quoted in an article today in the New York Times about the Federal government’s efforts to use the threat of denial of air travel to scare state legislators into connecting their state drivers license and ID databases to the distributed national “REAL-ID” database through the REAL-ID “hub” operated by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA).

We welcome the Times’ coverage of this issue. But some readers might be misled by the Times’ headline, “T.S.A. Moves Closer to Rejecting Some State Driver’s Licenses for Travel“.

As Edward Hasbrouck of the Identity Project, who was quoted in the New York Times story, discussed in detail in this presentation earlier this year at the Cato Institute in Washington, the most important thing you need to know about this issue is that you do not — and you will not, regardless of how or when the TSA “implements” the REAL-ID Act — need to show any ID to fly. People fly, legally, every day, without showing any ID, and that will continue to be the case. You have a legal right to fly, and the REAL-ID Act does not and cannot deprive you of that right.

Read more on Papers, Please!

Perspective.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-internet-usa-speed-idUSKBN0UD19820151230

U.S. says its Internet speeds triple in three-and-a-half years

… The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said in a report on Wednesday average download connection speeds had increased to nearly 31 megabits per second (Mbps) in September 2014 from about 10 Mbps in March 2011.

… The FCC says video accounts for more than 60 percent of U.S. Internet traffic, a figure that may rise to 80 percent by 2019.

Still, the United States only ranks 25 out of 39 nations in 2013, according to the FCC.

… To read the complete 2015 Measuring Broadband America report, visit:

https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/measuring-broadband-america/measuring-broadband-america-2015

Inevitable. Pander to the Great Unwashed and eventually someone will notice the smell.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/02/world/africa/al-qaeda-uses-video-of-trump-for-recruiting.html

Qaeda Affiliate Uses Video of Donald Trump for Recruiting

Al Qaeda’s branch in Somalia released a recruitment video on Friday that criticized racism and anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States and contained footage of the Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump announcing his proposal to bar Muslims from entering the country.

Interesting. Because I'm cheap enough to appreciate free stuff. (And because Winston Churchill is on the list.)

http://www.bespacific.com/the-public-domain-review-class-of-2016/

The Public Domain Review Class of 2016

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Jan 1, 2016

“Founded in 2011, The Public Domain Review is an online journal and not-for-profit project dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas. In particular, as our name sugggests, the focus is on works which have now fallen into the public domain, that vast commons of out-of-copyright material that everyone is free to enjoy, share, and build upon without restriction. Our aim is to promote and celebrate the public domain in all its abundance and variety, and help our readers explore its rich terrain – like a small exhibition gallery at the entrance to an immense network of archives and storage rooms that lie beyond…”

• “Pictured [here] is our top pick of those whose works will, on 1st January 2016, be entering the public domain in many countries around the world. Of the eleven featured, five will be entering the public domain in countries with a ‘life plus 70 years’ copyright term (e.g. most European Union members, Brazil, Israel, Nigeria, Russia, Turkey, etc.) and six in countries with a ‘life plus 50 years’ copyright term (e.g. Canada, New Zealand, and many countries in Asia and Africa) — those that died in the year 1945 and 1965 respectively. As always it’s a sundry and diverse rabble who’ve assembled for our graduation photo – including two of the 20th century’s most important political leaders, one of Modernism’s greatest poets, two very influential but very different musicians, and one of the most revered architects of recent times…”

The fun never stops.

http://hackeducation.com/2016/01/01/hack-education-weekly-news/

Hack Education Weekly News

… Happy New Year. From US News & World Report: “For technology companies in California, ringing in the New Year will mean adjusting to a new privacy law that limits how they can collect and use student data. The data privacy legislation was originally signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2014 and goes into effect Jan. 1. It prohibits the operators of education websites, online services and apps from using any student’s personal information for targeted advertising or creating a commercial profile, as well as the selling of any student’s information.”

It's just practice and “proof of concept.” When they get serious, everything will go offline at the same time.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35204915

Web attack knocks BBC websites offline

All the BBC's websites were unavailable early on Thursday morning because of a large web attack.

The problems began about 0700 GMT and meant visitors to the site saw an error message rather than webpages.

Sources within the BBC said the sites were offline thanks to what is known as a "distributed denial of service" attack.

(Related)

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/264523-whatsapp-service-goes-down-temporarily

WhatsApp suffers outage on New Year's Eve

Popular free messaging service WhatsApp was temporarily down on Thursday for users across the globe.

The New Year’s Eve outages were mostly concentrated in Europe, but the service was also briefly unavailable in several U.S. and South American locations, according to Down Detector, which tracks Internet sites and mobile apps in real time.

As of early afternoon, WhatsApp said it had gotten the Facebook-owned service back up and running.

Worth a read.

5 Big Developments in Privacy Class Actions in 2015, and 3 to Look for in 2016

Paul Karlsgodt writes:

The burgeoning area of privacy class action litigation showed no signs of slowing down in 2015. Here are some of the most significant developments from the past year, as well as some things to watch for in the coming year. For purposes of this article, we include in the definition of “privacy” class action litigation class actions arising out of data security breaches; litigation involving the collection, use, or transfer of consumer information; and litigation involving alleged intrusions upon privacy interests.

Read more on BakerHostetler Data Privacy Monitor.

What is it that a company like Carrier IQ knows (or can do) that a company that has been in the phone business since the phone business started (1875) does not know?

http://www.engadget.com/2015/12/31/atandt-acquires-parts-of-phone-monitoring-company-carrier-iq/

AT&T acquires parts of phone-monitoring company Carrier IQ

Carrier IQ came under scrutiny in 2011 as the public learned about its practices of capturing the user data on more than 140 million mobile devices. The company logged where and when people made calls or sent text messages, which apps they used, how they used the web and other mobile habits, and it was employed by major carriers including Sprint, Apple, AT&T and HTC. Now, in a post-Snowden world, Carrier IQ appears to have shut down, and AT&T has picked up its software and some staff, a spokesperson tells TechCrunch.

"We use CIQ software solely to improve the customer's network and wireless service experience," the AT&T spokesperson says.

?We are fully automated. Nothing can go wrong. ...go wrong. ...go wrong.” (It's actually a Y2K kind of problem.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/12/31/why-facebook-is-saying-you-and-your-friends-go-back-46-years/

Why Facebook is saying you and your friends go back 46 years

Like many of you out there in Internet land, I woke up this morning to an interesting bug on my Facebook page. According to my own account, I had a lot to celebrate today, as I'd apparently become friends with 226 people 46 years ago today, on Dec. 31, 1969:

… That, by the way, is just shy of two decades before I was born. I've been called an old soul before, but this seems ridiculous — especially given that Facebook itself is only 11 years old.

A Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement that the company has "identified this bug and the team's fixing it now so everyone can ring in 2016 feeling young again."

… That term refers to the way that systems with a Unix base, such as Macs and many servers, calculate time. The start of time, according to Unix, is midnight, GMT on Jan. 1, 1970 — apparently a mostly arbitrary starting point — and these systems keep track of time by calculating the number of seconds that have elapsed since then. (Excluding leap seconds, in case you're wondering.) When systems don't have a time for something, they will sometimes reset to zero. That results in emails occasionally being sent from 1970 — or late 1969, depending on your time zone.

Let the hilarity begin!

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/264497-twitter-to-allow-politwoops-back-online

Twitter to restore tool that tracks deleted tweets

Twitter has reached an agreement with transparency organizations to restore the tool that archived lawmakers’ deleted tweets around the world.

The company announced Thursday that it had negotiated an agreement with the Sunlight Foundation and the Open State Foundation — the two groups that ran the archiving tool known as Politwoops.

Perhaps this could be next – after we get the self-driving cars debugged.

Is Digital Justice The Cure For Affluenza?

Do you suspect someone in your congregation of plotting mass murder? Your fear is illogical and very irritating. It is frightening the children and those with childish minds.

Churches are conducting “Holy Ghost pat-downs”

Joe Cadillic writes:

Police State America has invaded churches and places of worship in America. Churches now join private companies, schools, colleges, sports stadiums, malls and hospitals that are conducting active shooter drills. For more information, read my December article titled: ‘Hospitals and private companies are conducting mass shooter drills with police.’

In Alabama, a Presbyterian church wanted to be able to hire its own police for protection. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been holding specialized training for congregations for active shooter incidents.

Police across the country are speaking at places of worship, drumming up fear and telling churches to have greeters (security) welcome worshippers and look for anything that might be out of the ordinary.

On a FEMA webinar last Wednesday on protecting houses of worship, the chief security executive at The Potter’s House, the Rev. TD Jakes’ megachurch in Dallas, gave tips about behavior that should raise concern, such as a congregant arriving in a long coat in hot weather. If needed, church greeters could give a hug and feel for weapons, said the executive, Sean Smith.

“I call it the Holy Ghost pat-down,” Smith said.

Read more on MassPrivateI.