Exclusive to MEdia Dragon "Fabulous at Fifty": the first two chapters of the new Rafael Yglesias novel
Hundred Years ago – On May 16, 1916, a secret pact carved up the floundering Ottoman Empire into spheres of British and French interest, foreshadowing the future map of the Middle East and, critics say, sowing the seeds of many of its problems a hundred years later Few are aware of a Vrbov bred secret agent born in 1958, 58 years ago
No one cares about your hashtag. Here's what consumers really want
It seems like every time we take a breath, someone is breathlessly warning us about the latest cypersecurity hit or threat. What can you do to find help? Circuit: cybersecurity-v-privacy
Pentagon Turns to Silicon Valley for Edge in Artificial Intelligence New York Times
Pentagon Turns to Silicon Valley for Edge in Artificial Intelligence New York Times
Computers Gone Wild: Impact and Implications of Developments in Artificial Intelligence on Society May 9, 2016 The following summary was written by Samantha Bates:
“The second “Computers Gone Wild: Impact and Implications of Developments in Artificial Intelligence on Society” workshop took place on February 19, 2016 at Harvard Law School. A summary of each discussion as well as the group’s recommendations for additional areas of study are included here…”
As governments get more advanced in data analytics, there have been concerns on privacy issues. Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing on the NSA raised global alarms on the extent of intrusion by government. The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer report surveying the public sector, businesses, media and NGOs across 25 countries consequently saw a 43% drop worldwide in trust toward government. However, Jacqueline Poh, Managing Director of Singapore’s IDA believes there is a middle ground that can be reached. “Citizens will have a different approach to privacy if the way in which data is used is more transparent to them,” she recently said, pointing to government research surveys. “Citizens are actually quite willing to give up quite a bit of privacy”. In 2054, John Anderton looks up at a surveillance screen and sees the face of a murderer. He barks an order to secure the perimeter, and sends out a team to arrest the criminal. But here’s the catch: the man hasn’t committed the crime yet. Taking cues from the hit movie Minority Report, perhaps we aren’t too far from that kind of a reality. Countries around the world are already using predictive technology in government Four areas for predictive public services
Like other types of IT projects, an analytics initiative can fail for a variety of factors, big and small, but several key reasons stand out 4 Reasons Dumber Data Data Analytics Endeavours Don't Succeed
On March 15, Instagram posted a note on its blog that sent the internet into a frenzy: “To improve your experience, your feed will soon be ordered to show the moments we believe you will care about the most.” Panicked Instagram users protested, afraid their posts would get lost in the revised stream, and began posting pictures with the hashtag #turnmeon, pleading with followers to turn on notifications for their accounts. In response to the uproar, Instagram posted a tweet that amounted to, “Hey, calm down. We’re not changing the algorithm yet.”
Investigating the algorithms that govern our lives
Eurocops get new cyber powers to hunt down terrorists, criminals Ars Technica
Europe’s
police agency Europol has been given enhanced cyber powers to track down
terrorists and other criminals. The new governance rules were approved by the
European Parliament’s civil liberties committee on Thursday by a massive
majority. MEPs claimed that the new powers come with strong data protection
safeguards and democratic oversight. Last November, the draft rules were given
the green light by the European Union's 28 member states. Now the panel's
politicos have overwhelmingly thrown their weight behind the measures, by 40
votes to three, with two abstentions.
A student who hacked into a public transport system to show it had flaws has been been found guilty of fraud after he and a co-convicted got $18 worth of free trips. Jack Carruthers, a student at Perth's Murdoch University, hacked into the city's SmartRider transport travel card and later owned up to TransPerth, alerting them to the issues with the system. However, he ended up being charged for his actions after the Public Transport Authority (PTA) noticed what had happened and was eventually found guilty, WA Today reported. He'd found a way in the SmartRider system to rewind charges and keep money loaded onto the card. It was part of an increasingly 'pressured and desperate' effort to have a stall for his club 'Hack the Planet', of which he is president, at a university open day. They had software which could hack into bank cards but because that was too dangerous, chose travel cards. 'It was interesting because it is a very appealing topic ... everyone in Perth has a SmartRider card,' Carruthers told WA Today.
Bangladesh's
central bank chief will meet the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
and a senior executive from global financial messaging service SWIFT next week
to seek the recovery of about $81 million stolen by hackers, officials in Dhaka
said. Two Bangladesh Bank officials said the bank believed both the New York
Fed and SWIFT bore some responsibility for the February cyber heist. The
officials spoke on condition of anonymity since they were not authorized to
brief the media. The bank's governor Fazle Kabir, New York Fed President
William Dudley and a SWIFT representative will meet in Basel, Switzerland
around May 10, they and another person briefed by the central bank said. It was
not immediately clear who would represent SWIFT. Spokeswomen for SWIFT and the
New York Fed declined comment. Hackers tried to steal nearly $1 billion from
Bangladesh Bank's settlement account at the New York Fed in early February by
sending fraudulent transfer orders through SWIFT. Of the 35 transfer orders
sent, 30 were blocked. Four transfers to a Philippine bank for a total of $81
million went through while a $20 million transfer to a Sri Lankan company was
reversed because the hackers mis-spelled the name of the firm. "There is a
responsibility the New York Fed has to accept," said one of the Bangladesh
Bank officials. "If you stopped 30 transactions, why did you not stop the
others?”
Adam Chodorow (Arizona State), Bitcoin and the Definition of Foreign Currency, 19 Fla. Tax Rev. ___ (2016):
The
IRS recently dealt a blow to Bitcoin enthusiasts by ruling that Bitcoin
and other similar currencies should be treated as property – and not
foreign currency – for income tax purposes. As a result, those who use
bitcoins to purchase goods or services must report gain or loss on each
transaction if the bitcoins have changed value between the time they
were acquired and spent. Treating Bitcoin as a foreign currency would
have permitted individuals to take advantage of the personal use
exemption, which could facilitate Bitcoin’s adoption, and required
taxpayers to adopt a formulaic system for tracking the basis of
commingled bitcoins. The IRS’s decision seems correct as a matter of
positive law, but laws can always be changed.
What
Happens When Canadian Cops Find a Software Security Flaw? Vice
Motherboard
When law
enforcement and intelligence agencies in Canada discover flaws in computer software—say,
a bug that could help hackers steal messages from a smartphone, or spy on
unsuspecting victims via internet-connected webcams—do they disclose those
holes to the software's creator so they can be plugged? Or do they keep such
flaws secret for their own use in future investigations, with the hope that no
one else will find and use them maliciously first?
Hackers
repeatedly picked an odd target two years ago inside the National Research
Council: Canada’s official time signal. At one point, the unknown cyber
attackers shut down access to a server that tells NRC clients what the precise
time is. Some of the attacks were fended off. Some simply ended on their own.
Together, though, the incidents raise the spectre of hackers using the time
signal to get at more sensitive government servers.
Hundreds of millions of hacked user names and passwords for email
accounts and other websites are being traded in Russia's criminal underworld, a
security expert told Reuters. The discovery of 272.3 million stolen accounts
included a majority of users of Mail.ru, Russia's most popular email service,
and smaller fractions of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft email users, said Alex
Holden, founder and chief information security officer of Hold Security. It is
one of the biggest stashes of stolen credentials to be uncovered since cyber
attacks hit major U.S. banks and retailers two years ago.
Algorithms for Moravian culture
The U.S.
and South Korea have agreed to help one another develop technology to combat
cyber threats, the two nations said on Monday. The agreement, although not
legally binding, states that the two countries will seek to make “best use of
their respective best practices, eliminate unnecessary duplication of work, and
obtain the most efficient and cost effective results through cooperative
partnerships.” Both South Korea and the U.S. have been in the digital
crosshairs of Seoul’s neighbor to the north. North Korea is widely believed to
be behind the infamous hack on Sony Pictures, perceived as retaliation for
"The Interview," a 2014 comedy that depicted the assassination of
leader Kim Jong Un. And Seoul in March accused Pyongyang of trying to hack into
government websites and smartphones amid rising tensions between the neighbors.
North Korea is also thought to be behind a series of attacks on South Korean
banks and broadcasting companies in 2013, according to researchers.
Following a
massive data leak, Qatar National Bank has confirmed that its systems may have
been hacked. A group with Turkish ties has claimed credit for the attack and
reportedly threatened to release information from a second bank hack. In a
statement provided to Information Security Media Group May 1 confirming that
its systems may have been breached, the bank also commented on compromised data
that was posted online. "While some of the data recently released in the
public domain may be accurate, much of it was constructed and contains a
mixture of information from the attack as well as other non-QNB sources, such
as personal data from social media channels." The bank also says it
believes that the leak wasn't targeted at its customers, but instead designed
only to damage the bank's reputation - although it offered no evidence to back
up that assertion. QNB says it's hired a third-party expert to review its
systems.
"Does Size Matter? The Latest Battle Over State Supreme Courts; Over the past decade, legislators in several states have sought to expand or reduce the number of justices on their highest courts; In some cases, they admit their intent to tilt the ideological balance." Governing.com has this report today.
"Sex Offenders Don't Have a Right to Facebook": Law professor Noah Feldman has this essay online at Bloomberg View
"Does Size Matter? The Latest Battle Over State Supreme Courts; Over the past decade, legislators in several states have sought to expand or reduce the number of justices on their highest courts; In some cases, they admit their intent to tilt the ideological balance." Governing.com has this report today.
"Sex Offenders Don't Have a Right to Facebook": Law professor Noah Feldman has this essay online at Bloomberg View
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How the
Pwnedlist Got Pwned Krebs on
Security
Last week,
I learned about a vulnerability that exposed all 866 million account
credentials harvested by pwnedlist.com, a service designed to help companies
track public password breaches that may create security problems for their
users. The vulnerability has since been fixed, but this simple security flaw
may have inadvertently exacerbated countless breaches by preserving the data
lost in them and then providing free access to one of the Internet’s largest
collections of compromised credentials. Pwnedlist is run by Scottsdale, Ariz.
based InfoArmor, and is marketed as a repository of usernames and passwords
that have been publicly leaked online for any period of time at Pastebin,
online chat channels and other free data dump sites. The service until quite recently
was free to all comers, but it makes money by allowing companies to get a live
feed of usernames and passwords exposed in third-party breaches which might
create security problems going forward for the subscriber organization and its
employees.
Social media firm cuts access to Dataminr, a service used to
identify unfolding terror attacks, political unrest
Twitter Bars Intelligence Agencies From Using Analytics Service
Algorithms for Moravian culture
Huge embarrassment over fisting site data breach The Register. I do not get out enough. I have heard e of vaginal fisting, but anal fisting? Dr. Kevin adds, “Amazing that fisting is so normalized that people would sign on from their .gov or .mil email accounts!”