The Douglas County Georgia Emergency 911 Center is the latest department using technology that’s like FaceTime for 911 dispatchers, and the company behind it says the lifesaving tool is long overdue.
Seconds count in any emergency and one of the hardest parts of the job for dispatchers is pinpointing a caller’s exact location for first responders.
The technology helps 911 dispatchers immediately locate where an emergency is unfolding, but that’s not all.
There is a way you can make up to $1,500 for certain robocalls you get on your cell phone. You’re entitled to that money under federal law.
| Rank | Metro | Final Score | Business Income for Women | Compared to Women’s Earnings in Metro | Women in Business | % of Businesses Owned by Women | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Median | Average | Median | Average | % of Women Workers Who Are Self-Employed | % of Self-Employed Women Who Are Incorporated | Self-Employed | Incorporated | |||
| 1 | San Francisco | 80.5 | $10,378 | $31,880 | 17.6% | 41.8% | 10.6% | 20.8% | 41.7% | 32.1% |
| 2 | Austin, Texas | 72.2 | $8,262 | $25,345 | 19.6% | 48.1% | 9.0% | 24.9% | 38.6% | 30.1% |
| 3 | San Jose, Calif. | 67 | $7,657 | $30,334 | 12.6% | 38.8% | 8.3% | 22.7% | 41.1% | 32.2% |
| 4 | Memphis, Tenn. | 65 | $9,068 | $20,399 | 24.9% | 45.5% | 5.6% | 27.0% | 35.1% | 29.8% |
| 5 | Nashville, Tenn. | 64.8 | $8,866 | $23,373 | 22.9% | 49.0% | 7.1% | 20.1% | 34.9% | 27.4% |
| 6 | Los Angeles | 63.7 | $7,758 | $20,945 | 18.6% | 37.4% | 10.9% | 24.8% | 37.9% | 30.7% |
| 7 | San Diego | 63.6 | $8,060 | $20,949 | 18.5% | 37.8% | 10.0% | 24.2% | 39.3% | 30.2% |
| 8 | Sacramento, Calif. | 61.6 | $7,053 | $23,596 | 15.0% | 41.0% | 8.4% | 21.1% | 39.1% | 31.9% |
| 9 | Seattle | 57.6 | $4,534 | $22,713 | 9.2% | 37.0% | 8.6% | 30.6% | 42.1% | 32.7% |
| 10 | Cincinnati | 56.9 | $7,556 | $21,432 | 18.6% | 42.2% | 5.4% | 29.1% | 35.4% | 28.5% |
| 11 | Raleigh, N.C. | 56.3 | $3,526 | $23,664 | 8.1% | 44.0% | 7.4% | 36.7% | 38.4% | 31.4% |
| 12 | Boston | 54.7 | $8,060 | $22,574 | 15.3% | 33.8% | 7.0% | 24.3% | 39.0% | 28.3% |
| 13 | Las Vegas | 54.3 | $5,037 | $17,566 | 13.8% | 38.5% | 6.6% | 30.6% | 39.6% | 33.4% |
| 14 | Washington | 53.4 | $5,037 | $23,448 | 8.6% | 32.7% | 7.2% | 31.3% | 41.4% | 32.1% |
| 15 | Portland, Ore. | 52.9 | $4,030 | $17,389 | 9.3% | 31.7% | 10.2% | 29.8% | 42.5% | 33.8% |
| 16 | Denver | 52.5 | $3,022 | $19,820 | 6.6% | 35.0% | 9.1% | 37.3% | 40.4% | 33.6% |
| 17 | Houston | 52 | $7,254 | $19,029 | 17.7% | 36.3% | 7.7% | 23.5% | 36.0% | 28.3% |
| 18 | Hartford, Conn. | 48.2 | $8,060 | $22,710 | 15.8% | 37.1% | 5.8% | 25.1% | 34.1% | 24.2% |
| 19 | Phoenix | 47 | $4,534 | $16,352 | 11.5% | 33.5% | 7.9% | 31.8% | 37.5% | 31.5% |
| 20 | Providence, R.I. | 46.2 | $7,053 | $18,161 | 16.1% | 33.9% | 5.5% | 28.8% | 34.9% | 27.7% |
| 21 | New Orleans | 46.1 | $6,045 | $13,475 | 16.7% | 29.8% | 7.7% | 34.5% | 34.9% | 30.2% |
| 22 | Dallas | 45.7 | $5,037 | $17,407 | 12.2% | 33.9% | 7.5% | 26.5% | 37.2% | 30.4% |
| 23 | Kansas City, Mo. | 45.4 | $3,627 | $18,160 | 9.0% | 37.3% | 6.6% | 30.8% | 38.2% | 31.0% |
| 24 | New York | 44.6 | $5,037 | $20,053 | 10.0% | 31.1% | 7.6% | 32.0% | 36.8% | 28.2% |
| 24 | Baltimore | 44.6 | $4,937 | $17,227 | 9.8% | 28.4% | 6.2% | 34.2% | 39.2% | 31.9% |
| 26 | Riverside, Calif. | 44.5 | $5,037 | $16,373 | 13.3% | 34.4% | 7.9% | 23.7% | 35.6% | 30.6% |
| 27 | Miami | 43.3 | $3,526 | $13,004 | 9.9% | 28.8% | 10.7% | 39.4% | 36.5% | 29.6% |
| 28 | Columbus, Ohio | 42.6 | $3,022 | $22,010 | 7.3% | 43.5% | 5.6% | 26.6% | 36.3% | 27.8% |
| 29 | Minneapolis | 42.3 | $4,332 | $18,113 | 9.2% | 31.1% | 6.8% | 34.0% | 37.9% | 28.7% |
| 30 | Milwaukee | 40.9 | $4,030 | $18,281 | 9.6% | 35.6% | 5.0% | 34.0% | 35.8% | 28.8% |
| 31 | San Antonio | 40.3 | $4,030 | $16,246 | 11.2% | 36.5% | 6.5% | 24.7% | 35.4% | 30.0% |
| 32 | Atlanta | 40.1 | $3,022 | $15,809 | 7.3% | 30.6% | 7.7% | 37.4% | 36.6% | 30.7% |
| 33 | Tampa, Fla. | 39.6 | $3,022 | $13,931 | 8.0% | 29.3% | 7.7% | 42.8% | 36.1% | 30.2% |
| 34 | Charlotte, N.C. | 37.8 | $4,030 | $13,470 | 10.4% | 27.1% | 6.6% | 35.2% | 36.6% | 30.7% |
| 35 | Orlando, Fla. | 35.3 | $1,007 | $13,833 | 2.9% | 31.3% | 7.5% | 43.3% | 36.8% | 31.2% |
| 36 | Richmond, Va. | 34.6 | $1,813 | $15,257 | 4.3% | 29.2% | 6.1% | 33.7% | 39.2% | 31.8% |
| 37 | Salt Lake City | 34.3 | $2,518 | $15,600 | 6.8% | 34.4% | 7.0% | 30.9% | 37.2% | 26.2% |
| 38 | Oklahoma City | 33.6 | $2,015 | $14,189 | 5.7% | 32.6% | 7.7% | 32.6% | 35.8% | 29.2% |
| 39 | Virginia Beach, Va. | 33.2 | $2,317 | $12,850 | 6.1% | 27.7% | 5.8% | 32.9% | 39.5% | 31.6% |
| 40 | Jacksonville, Fla. | 32.4 | $1,511 | $14,078 | 4.0% | 30.3% | 6.8% | 39.2% | 36.6% | 29.5% |
| 41 | Buffalo, N.Y. | 31.5 | $5,037 | $14,594 | 12.3% | 29.8% | 4.7% | 28.8% | 34.2% | 25.2% |
| 42 | St. Louis | 30.2 | $2,015 | $13,673 | 5.0% | 27.7% | 5.8% | 33.5% | 36.9% | 30.9% |
| 43 | Chicago | 30 | $2,015 | $14,622 | 4.5% | 25.8% | 6.3% | 37.8% | 36.3% | 29.4% |
| 44 | Birmingham, Ala. | 28.8 | $2,015 | $16,139 | 5.3% | 35.8% | 5.7% | 31.6% | 33.1% | |
Take-Two Interactive, which makes Grand Theft Auto Online, experienced a loss of at least $500,000 due to these programs, according to its initial complaint on March 23. Single-player mods are available with his programs, but the online community and publisher began to take issue when the online multiplayer sphere was impacted. The injunction seeks to stop sales of his product, which allows God Mode and can enable the practice of “griefing.” Online communities have engaged in substantial debate as to what qualifies as griefing, but it mostly involves creating inconvenience through level and firepower discrepancies between players.
The world’s fifth-most-visited website has a long-running problem with gender bias: Only 18 percent of its biographies are of women. Surveys estimate that between 84 and 90 percent of Wikipedia editors are male. Quicksilver, is a software tool by San Francisco startup Primer designed to help Wikipedia editors fill in blind spots in the crowdsourced encyclopedia. Its under representation of women in science is a particular target. Quicksilver uses machine-learning algorithms to scour news articles and scientific citations to find notable scientists missing from Wikipedia, and then write fully sourced draft entries for them.
The summaries it generates are intended to provide a starting point for Wikipedia editors, who can clean up errors and check the sources to prevent any algorithmic slip-ups contaminating the site.
Chinese police have broken up an illegal World Cup gambling ring hosting more than 10 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) worth of cryptocurrency bets, in the first major sports betting crime involving digital money in the country. The gambling platform ran on the dark web, which isn’t indexed by traditional search engines. During the eight months of the gambling platform’s operation, the site attracted 330,000 registered users from numerous countries, and built an army of over 8,000 agents who earned commissions for recruiting new members through a pyramid scheme.
What is a ransomware attack?
Ransomware is a form of malicious software — malware — which encrypts documents on a PC or even across a network. Victims can often only regain access to their encrypted files and PCs by paying a ransom to the criminals behind the ransomware.
A ransomware infection often starts with someone clicking on what looks like an innocent attachment, and it can be a headache for companies of all sizes if vital files and documents (think spreadsheets and invoices) are suddenly encrypted and inaccessible. But that’s not the only way to get infected.
What is the history of ransomware?
While ransomware exploded last year, increasing by an estimated 748 percent, it’s not a new phenomenon: the first instance of what we now know as ransomware appeared in 1989.
Known as AIDS or the PC Cyborg Trojan, the virus was sent to victims — mostly in the healthcare industry — on a floppy disc. The ransomware counted the number of times the PC was booted: once it hit 90, it encrypted the machine and the files on it and demanded the user ‘renew their license’ with ‘PC Cyborg Corporation ‘ by sending $189 or $378 to a post office box in Panama.
How did ransomware evolve?
This early ransomware was a relatively simple construct, using basic cryptography which mostly just changed the names of files, making it relatively easy to overcome.
But it set off a new branch of computer crime, which slowly but surely grew in reach — and really took off in the internet age. Before they began using advanced cryptography to target corporate networks, hackers were targeting general internet users with basic ransomware.
One of the most successful variants was ‘police ransomware’, which tried to extort victims by claiming to be associated with law enforcement. It locked the screen with a ransom note warning the user they’d committed illegal online activity, which could get them sent to jail.
However, if the victim paid a fine, the ‘police’ would let the infringement slide and restore access to the computer by handing over the decryption key.
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What are the main types of ransomware?
Ransomware is always evolving, with new variants continually appearing in the wild and posing new threats to businesses. However, there are certain types of ransomware which have been much more successful than others.
Perhaps the most notorious form of ransomware is Locky, which terrorised organizations across the globe throughout 2016. It infamously made headlines by infecting a Hollywood hospital. The hospital gave into the demands of cybercriminals and paid a $17,000 ransom to have its networks restored.
Locky remained successful because those behind it regularly update the code to avoid detection. They even update it with new functionality, including the ability to make ransom demands in 30 languages, so criminals can more easily target victims around the world. Locky became so successful, it rose to become most prevalent forms of malware in its own right.
Cryptowall is another form of ransomware which has found great success for a prolonged period of time. Starting life as doppelganger of Cryptolocker, it’s gone onto become one of the most successful types of ransomware.
One of the most common forms of ransomware distributed in this way is Cerber, which infected hundreds of thousands of users in just a single month. The original creators of Cerber are selling it on the Dark Web, allowing other criminals to use the code in return for 40 percent of each ransom paid.
Cerber ransomware became so successful that it surpassed Locky — which appeared to mysteriously disappear over Christmas, although reemerged in April with new attack techniques — to become the most dominant form of ransomware on the web, accounting for 90 percent of ransomware attacks on Windows as of mid-April 2017.
The cryptography behind Cerber is so advanced that there’s currently no decryption tools available to help those infected by the latest versions.
Cerber now comes with the ability to steal to steal bitcoin wallet and password information, in addition to encrypting files.
In exchange for giving up some of the profits for using Cerber, wannabe cyber-fraudsters are provided with everything they need in order to successfully make money through the extortion of victims.
What is WannaCry ransomware?
In the biggest ransomware attack to date, WannaCry — also known as WannaCrypt and Wcry — caused chaos across the globe in an attack which started on Friday 12 May 2017. WannaCrypt ransomware demands $300 in bitcoin for unlocking encrypted files — a price which doubles after three days. Users are also threatened, via a ransom note on the screen, with having all their files permanently deleted if the ransom isn’t paid within a week.
More than 300,000 victims in over 150 countries fell victim to the ransomware over the course of one weekend, with businesses, governments, and individuals across the globe all affected.
Healthcare organisations across the UK had systems knocked offline by the ransomware attack, forcing patient appointments to be cancelled and hospitals telling people to avoid visiting Accident and Emergency departments unless it was entirely necessary.
Of all the countries affected by the attack, Russia was hit the hardest, according to security researchers, with the WannaCry malware crashing Russian banks, telephone operators, and even IT systems supporting transport infrastructure. China was also hit hard by the attack, with 29,000 organizations in total falling victim to this particularly vicious form of ransomware.
Other high-profile targets included the car manufacturer Renault which was forced to halt production lines in several locations as the ransomware played havoc with systems.
What all the targets had in common is that they were running unsupported versions of Microsoft Windows, including Windows XP, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2003.
The ransomware worm is so potent because it exploits a known software vulnerability called EternalBlue. The Windows flaw is one of many zero-days which apparently was known by the NSA — before being leaked by the Shadow Brokers hacking collective. Microsoft released a patch for the vulnerability earlier this year — but only for the most recent operating systems.
In response to the attack, Microsoft took the unprecedented step of issuing patches for unsupported operating systems to protect against the malware.
It was almost three months before the WannaCry attackers finally withdrew the funds from the WannaCry bitcoin wallets — they made off with a total of $140,000 thanks to fluctuations in the value of bitcoin.
But despite critical patches being made available to protect systems from WannaCry and other attacks exploiting the SMB vulnerability, a large number of organisations seemingly chose not to apply the updates.
But that’s a relatively modest loss in comparison to other victims of the attack: shipping and supply vessel operator Maersk and goods delivery company FedEx have both estimated losses of $300m due to the impact of Petya.
In February 2018, the governments of the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and others officially declared that the NotPetya ransomware had been the work of the Russian military. Russian denies any involvement.
What is Bad Rabbit ransomware?
October 2017 saw the third high profile ransomware attack of the year when organizations in Russia and Ukraine fell victim to a new variant of Petya ransomware.
Dubbed Bad Rabbit, it infected at least three Russian media organisations while also infiltrating the networks of several Ukrainian organisations including the Kiev Metro and Odessa International Airport – at the time, the airport said it had fallen victim to a ‘hacker attack’.
The initial attack vector used to distribute Bad Rabbit was drive-by downloads on hacked websites – some of which had been compromised since June. No exploits were used, rather visitors were told they had to install a phony Flash update, which dropped the malware.
Like NotPetya before it, Bad Rabbit spread through networks using a leaked NSA hacking tool – but this time it was via the EternalRomance SMB vulnerability, rather than the EternalBlue exploit.
Analysis of Bad Rabbit shared much of its code – at least 67 percent – with Peyta and researchers at Cisco Talos concluded that this, combined with how it uses SMB exploits, means there’s “high confidence” in a link between the two forms of ransomware – and that they could even share the same author.
Bad Rabbit was named after the text which appeared at the top of the Tor website hosting the ransom note. Some security researchers joked it should’ve been named after the lines in the code referencing characters from Game of Thrones.
How do you prevent a ransomware attack?
With email being by far the most popular attack vector for ransomware, you should provide employees with training on how to spot an incoming malware attack. Even picking up on little indicators like poor formatting or that an email purporting to be from ‘Microsoft Security’ is sent from an obscure address which doesn’t even contain the word Microsoft within it might save your network from infection. The same security policies that protect you from malware attacks in general will go some way towards protecting your company from ransom demands too.
At the very least, employers should invest in antivirus software and keep it up-to date, so that it can warn users about potentially malicious files. Backing up important files and making sure those files can’t be compromised during an attack in another key.
How long does it take to recover from a ransomware attack?
Simply put, ransomware can cripple a whole organization — an encrypted network is more or less useless and not much can be done until systems are restored.
If your organization is sensible and has backups in place, systems can be back online in the time it takes the network to be restored to functionality, although depending on the size of the company, that could range from a few hours to days.
FedEx said that it may not be able to recover all the systems affected by the Petya cyberattack, meaning that while the company is back up and running, some machines won’t ever be able to be restored.
Outside of the immediate impact ransomware can have on a network, it can result in an ongoing financial hit.
How do I get rid of ransomware?
The ‘No More Ransom’ initiative — launched in July 2016 by Europol and the Dutch National Police in collaboration with a number of cybersecurity companies including Kaspersky Lab and McAfee — offers free decryption tools for ransomware variants to help victims retrieve their encrypted data without succumbing to the will of cyber extortionists.
Initially launching as a portal offered portal offers decryption tools four for families of ransomware — Shade, Rannoh, Rakhn, and CoinVault — the scheme is regularly adding more decryption tools for even more versions of ransomware including Crypt XXX, MarsJoke, Teslacrypt, Wildfire and Nemucod.
The portal — which also contains information and advice on avoiding falling victim to ransomware in the first place — is updated as often as possible in an effort to ensure tools are available to fight the latest forms of ransomware.
No More Ransom has grown from offering a set of four tools to carrying 52 decryption tools covering hundreds of families of ransomware. So far, these tools have decrypted tens of thousands of devices, depriving criminals of millions in ransoms.
The platform is now available in over 29 languages with more than 100 partners across the public and private sectors supporting the scheme.
Individual security companies also regularly release decryption tools to counter the ongoing evolution of ransomware — many of these will post updates about these tools on their company blogs as soon as they’ve cracked the code.
A decryption tool was recently released which may be able to help if your PC has been hit by one of the original versions of the Petya malware — the so-called Red Petya, Green Petya, and GoldenEye — and may enable you to recover the lost files (although it can’t help with PetrWrap or those hit by the Petya/NotPetya global attack). However, these tools don’t always work so it is always wise to make additional backups.
Another way of working around a ransomware infection is to ensure your organization regularly backs up data offline.
Should I pay a ransomware ransom?
There are those who say victims should just pay the ransom, citing it to be the quickest and easiest way to retrieve their encrypted data — and many organizations do pay even if law enforcement agencies warn against it.
WARNING: if word gets out that your organization is an easy target for cybercriminals because it paid a ransom, you could find yourself in the crosshairs of other cybercriminals who are looking to take advantage of your weak security.
High school students from Brooklyn’s Midwood high school are taking a true crime class where teens read up on real murderers and mass shooters. Assistant Principal of English Suzane Thomas issued an edict to the school’s librarians last month that bars them from allowing students to take copies of the books home.
“I am requesting that the following list of books be placed on ‘restricted access’ to students,” Thomas said in the May 30 memo. “They have been borrowed by students in the True Crime class.
“In no way am I suggesting that these books be censored, as they are NYSTL [Text Law] approved by the DOE,’’ she wrote. “However, please do not allow students to take them home — they should be read in the library where they are supervised by a teacher or a librarian.’’
City education officials said the edict was given simply so every student could have access to the books.
“The books were available for all students to read and were kept in the library so that they could be accessible to everyone,” said Department of Education spokesman Doug Cohen. “Any other interpretation of the guidance that was shared is simply inaccurate.’’
However, It seems that some Midwood HS staffer begged to differ
The in-school-only restriction “doesn’t make sense,” said retired Midwood librarian Arlene Weber Morales, who was at the school when the crime course was created and admitted she had “mixed feelings” about offering such violent content to teens.
“The librarians order extra copies of books so students can take them home,’’ said Morales, who retired in 2015. “Don’t parents want to know what the kids are reading? I would order more copies of the books.’’
A current Midwood staffer said Thomas “clearly states that this is not book banning. But it is.
“We are waiting to see if the administration cancels this course, because most of the books used in the class are on the[banned] list,’’ the source added, noting it would be a shame if True Crime were killed because it is “a very popular class.’’
Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-Brooklyn/Staten Island) questioned why the class was even in existence.
“Sadly, this is a city in which criminals are sometimes placed on pedestals, and entrepreneurs are vilified,” she said. “How about teaching about civic and business leaders who beat the odds so they too can strive for success?
“I see why the school doesn’t want students to take the books home,’’ she added. “Parents will flip out.”
Thomas declined to comment.
Department of Justice and the FBI—has announced a major coordinated law enforcement effort to disrupt international business e-mail compromise (BEC) schemes that are designed to intercept and hijack wire transfers from businesses and individuals.
US District Judge Richard Leon ruled entirely in AT&T’s favor. The Department of Justice had sued AT&T to block the merger, but the judge’s ruling, pending a possible appeal, would let AT&T complete the purchase without spinning off any subsidiaries.
The government failed to prove that the merger would substantially lessen competition or that AT&T would use its ownership of premium content to harm rival TV providers.
AT&T said it intends to close the merger by June 20. It’s not yet known whether the government will appeal the case. AT&T has been the nation’s largest pay-TV company since it acquired DirecTV in 2015, and it is one of the largest providers of home and mobile broadband service. Time Warner owns HBO, Warner Bros., and Turner Broadcasting System. As the owner of Time Warner, AT&T would be able to set the price that other cable or satellite companies must pay for a large quantity of TV programming.
The DOJ argued that buying Time Warner and its stable of popular TV programming would give AT&T too much control over programming and distribution.
Will we see higher bills and fewer choices of programming?
ShotSpotter” technology is now up and running. The ShotSpotter technology is a series of audio sensors deployed high up on top of light posts and buildings. When a gunshot goes off the sensors triangulate the sound and pinpoints the number of shots fired and the location. ShotSpotter trained acoustic experts review and qualify all gunfire incidents and alert law enforcement immediately, all within a minute, and usually within 30 seconds, of the gunshot occurring.
ShotSpotter helps police departments transform policing practices from reactive to proactive by instantly notifying officers of gunshot crimes in progress with real-time data delivered to dispatch centers, patrol cars and even smartphones. First responders receive precise gunfire incident information, allowing informed decisions for faster emergency response while also improving situation intelligence and increasing first responder safety. ShotSpotter gunfire data also enables law enforcement agencies to improve evidence collection, prosecution and overall police effectiveness. ShotSpotter is installed in more than 90 cities across the United States and the world.
The Pakistani military is alleged to have hacked information from Australian diplomats potentially gaining access to sensitive metadata, texts and photos and tracking their movements.
The hacking is thought to have occurred after the Australians interacted with those whose phones were compromised after they downloaded apps or had their phones physically accessed by the hackers.
A United States mobile phone data security company, Lookout, detailed the hacking which it said it had reported to the appropriate authorities and may have links back to an individual previously associated with a Sydney-based company.
Lookout’s report said it had identified over 15 gigabytes of compromised data that included call records, audio recordings, device location information, text messages and photos.
It said analysis of the exfiltrated data found details of trips to the Pakistani cities of Quetta, and Balochistan by Australian diplomats.
The report contains an image of what appears to be a document detailing an itinerary for Australian diplomats.
“Visit of Australian diplomats” is the heading of the document which has been redacted by Lookout but appears to reference the names of the individuals undertaking a visit and discuss security arrangements.
The report says the tools were part of a “highly targeted intelligence gathering campaign we believe is operated by members of the Pakistani military” using surveillanceware families Lookout referred to as Stealth Mango (Android) and Tangelo (iOS).
“Our research shows that Stealth Mango is being actively managed by Pakistani based actors that are likely military,’’ it says. “We determined that government officials and civilians from the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and Iran had their data indirectly compromised after they interacted with Stealth Mango victims.’’
It says the Australians may have had their data stolen after they associated with users who had been compromised by the Stealth Mango surveillanceware.
They further identified content from other countries officials and diplomats, including the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and Iran, and believe this data may have been stolen when these victims interacted with Stealth Mango victims.
Among data that is believed to be uploaded and tracked from infected phones was installed packages and device information, changes in SIM card or phone numbers on the device, picture, video and audio files, SMS logs and deleted incoming messages, GPS tracking, functionality to detect when a victim is driving, calendar events and reminders and contact lists for various third party applications such as Yahoo and Google Talk among others.
The report notes that the developer of the spyware may have at one point been associated with a company headquartered in Sydney that develops similar legal applications that track devices.
It suspects the developer is part of a group of developers selling mobile surveillance ware and is based in a specific area in the Pakistani capital Islamabad — potentially a government building associated with the Pakistani ministry of education.
The Department of Home Affairs has been contacted for comment.
The American Civil Liberties Union wants Amazon to stop offering their new facial recognition system” to governments and law enforcement.
The service, called “Rekognition,” uses artificial intelligence to identify, track and analyze faces in real time. According to Amazon, the service can “analyze billions of images and videos daily, and requires no machine learning expertise to use.”
The ACLU said in a blog post about the program: “People should be free to walk down the street without being watched by the government. By automating mass surveillance, facial recognition systems like Rekognition threaten this freedom, posing a particular threat to communities already unjustly targeted in the current political climate. Once powerful surveillance systems like these are built and deployed, the harm will be extremely difficult to undo.”
Rekognition was released in late 2016, with the sheriff’s office in Washington County, Oregon, as its first customers, according to the Associated Press. The department uses the service about 20 times per day.
Deputy Jeff Talbot, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office told the AP. “We want our local community to be aware of what we’re doing, how we’re using it to solve crimes – what it is and, just as importantly, what it is not.”
The Orlando Police Department began a pilot program last year with the Rekognition technology in what police chief John Mina called a “first-of-its-kind public-private partnership.”
In a presentation from a developer conference in Seoul, South Korea, Amazon’s Ranju Das said, “It’s about recognizing people, it’s about tracking people, and then it’s about doing this in real time, so that the law enforcement officers … can be then alerted in real time to events that are happening.”
In an email to the AP, the Orlando Police Department said they are “not using the technology in an investigative capacity or in any public spaces at this time.”
“The purpose of a pilot program such as this, is to address any concerns that arise as the new technology is tested,” the statement said. “Any use of the system will be in accordance with current and applicable law. We are always looking for new solutions to further our ability to keep the residents and visitors of Orlando safe.
Qiaoqiang Gan, PhD, associate professor of electrical engineering in the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences says currently, there is a great demand for on-site drug testing, and the high-performance chip they designed is able to detect cocaine within minutes. An inexpensive that can be produced using raw materials that cost around 10 cents.
Gan developed the new chip with a team that included first authors Jun Gao, a research associate of Material Sciences at Fudan University in China, and Nan Zhang, a PhD candidate at the University of Buffalo, along with colleagues from the UB Department of Electrical Engineering; the UB Research Institute on Addictions; and the UB Department of Community Health and Health Behavior in the UB School of Public Health and Health Professions.
The new chip is an engineered nanostructure that traps light at the edges of gold and silver nanoparticles. When biological or chemical molecules land on the chip’s surface, some of the captured light interacts with the molecules and is “scattered” into light of new energies. This effect occurs in recognizable patterns that act as fingerprints, revealing information about what compounds are present.
Because all chemicals — cocaine, opioids, and active ingredients in marijuana — have their unique light-scattering signatures, researchers can use the technology to quickly identify a wide range of chemicals.
This sensing method is called surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), and it’s not new. But the chip that Gan’s team developed is noteworthy for its high performance and low cost.”SERS holds a lot of promise for rapid detection of drugs and other chemicals, but the materials required to perform the sensing are usually quite expensive,” Zhang says. “The chips used for SERS are typically fabricated using expensive methods, such as lithography, which creates specific patterns on a metal substrate. The chip was created by depositing various thin layers of materials on a glass substrate, which is cost-effective and suitable for industrial-scale production.
Hagens Berman, a law firm with a long track record of class-action advocacy, believes that Samsung, Hynix, and Micron have colluded to limit the supply of certain DRAM products, which has driven an increase in prices. The firm is filing a class-action on behalf of US consumers of smartphones and computing devices, saying that anyone who purchased a smartphone or computer between July 1, 2016 and Feb. 1, 2018 may have overpaid and could be due restitution.
First there’s a shortage due to lack of technological skills now it’s opioid addiction.
A provision in a bipartisan Senate package, the Opioid Crisis Response Act, addressing the workforce shortage created by the addiction crisis was secured Tuesday.
The provision is based on legislation U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) introduced earlier this month called the Collectively Achieving Recovery and Employment (CARE) Act. The bipartisan package passed out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Tuesday.
The Opioid Crisis Response Act is a wide-ranging, bipartisan package aimed at stemming the tide of the nationwide opioid crisis. The bill includes a provision based on Brown and Capito’s CARE Act that targets federal workforce training grants to address the workforce shortages and skill gaps caused by the opioid epidemic.
Since December, 21 members of New York City’s Chinese community have lost a total of $2.5 million, according to the New York Police Department, with individuals reporting losses ranging from $1,800 to $1.4 million, according to Voices of NY. Some have lost their life savings.
The caller IDs make it seem like it’s coming from a local number, but investigators say it’s actually coming from a location in China.
The FTC reminded people never to send money to anyone who asks you to do so over the phone.
“Never give your Social Security number, your bank or credit card number, or other sensitive information to anyone who calls and asks for it,” the commission said.
The Justice Department says that it will put $2 million towards research on AI, which it believes could be used to fight human trafficking, illegal border crossings, drug trafficking, and child pornography.
“Crimes such as gang violence, migrant smuggling, and human and opioid trafficking generate volumes of data resulting from the use of various communications and social media technologies by gang members, traffickers, smugglers; and financial transactions related to illicit activities,”
NIJ also wants to fund research on detecting encrypted child pornography files without breaking encryption, according to its call for proposals.
Privacy advocates have warned that AI could be abused by law enforcement agencies—it’s difficult to keep bias from creeping into algorithms, as ProPublica recently documented in software designed to predict recidivism.
A smuggling ring has been using DJI drones to enable the transport of refurbished iPhones into Shenzhen, China. According to customs officials in the city, those responsible were caught after flying 500 million yuan ($79.8 million) worth of smartphones from Hong Kong to Shenzhen.
Chinese authorities have arrested 26 people who were part of an iPhone smuggling operation between Hong Kong and the mainland city of Shenzhen. The criminals used aerial drones to connect two 660-foot cables between two high-rise buildings, and then passed as many as 15,000 iPhones per night across the border.
The FBI is warning of an increase in new scams that try to trick taxpayers and employers into sending employee records, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and other sensitive information.
The scams are most often directed at human resources departments in an attempt to trick workers into sending records for large numbers of employees. Often, the people perpetrating these crimes impersonate executives inside a targeted company by compromising or spoofing a trusted email account that asks for all W-2 information on record.
Last he San Carlos Cooperative equipped around 2,000 buses in Ecuador with a text message alarm system that responds to sexual harassment reports. When harassment occurs, victims can text ‘ACOSO’ (‘harassment’) to a designated number, along with the number of the bus they’re traveling on. The organization immediately notifies the driver, who makes a loudspeaker announcement. At the same time, police are called to board the bus at the next bus stop, and a psychologist reaches out to the victim.
The issue of sexual harassment on public transport is particularly horrifying in Latin America. But this is a global issue, too. Research suggests 80% of all women experience harassment on public transport, while 90% of these incidents go unreported.
EFF filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice in May 2017 seeking records about the FBI’s training and use of Best Buy Geek Squad employees to conduct warrantless searches of customers’ computers.
A federal prosecution of a doctor in California revealed that the FBI has been working for several years to cultivate informants in Best Buy’s national repair facility in Brooks, Kentucky, including reportedly paying eight Geek Squad employees as informants.
EFF sent a FOIA request to the FBI in February 2017 seeking agency records about the use of informants, training of Best Buy personnel in the detection and location of child pornography on computers, and policy statements about using informants at computer repair facilities.The FBI denied the request, saying it doesn’t confirm or deny that it has records that would reveal whether a person or organization is under investigation. A suit was filed after the Department of Justice failed to respond to our administrative appeal of the FBI’s initial denial.
SAN ANTONIO – Texas saw 1,186 opioid-related deaths in 2015 and experts say the problem is only getting worse.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and the Addiction Policy Forum have announced a new four-year plan. Some doctors are skeptical but hopeful that PhRMA’s vision becomes a reality.
Some of the approaches in mind
Take an opioid and alter its chemical structure so it won’t be addictive.
Another way is to look at entirely new drugs and how they may alleviate pain.
Comment:
They should make note that many of opioid addicts take pills to get high and not for pain. IT’S LIKE THEY HAVE A CHOICE OR PREFERENCE ON HOW THEY WANT TO GET HIGH. They might use pain as a cop out so they won’t be judged harshly. If caught early enough someone such as a therapist, counselor, social worker etc may help alleviate serious addiction.
AFP/Getty Images
Some Police Officers in China will receive China, glasses equipped with facial-scanning technology.
The glasses, issued to officers at a highly populated train station in the Henan province, are part of a security push leading up to Chinese New Year. So far, according to the state-media report, seven wanted criminals have been caught with the glasses, as well as 26 people using fake IDs.
LLVision Technology, the company behind the tech, told the Wall Street Journal that the glasses can recognize 100,000 different faces, and can identify a person in 100 milliseconds.
The New York Police Department is moving away from Windows Phones after two years with the platform and replacing some 36,000 Windows phones with iPhones, which are now being rolled out to police officers…
The Officers get to choose between an iPhone 7 and an iPhone 7 Plus. Currently, officers in Manhattan are taking part in the transition, but once that is complete, the rollout moves to Brooklyn and then Queens.
The iPhones also improve functionality that smartphones bring to officers in general. For instance, smartphone use by police officers can respond to scenes much quicker than relying on the traditional radio:
The New York Daily News reports that the NYPD has been rolling out about 600 phones per day to its officers, who get to choose between an iPhone 7 and an iPhone 7 Plus. Currently, officers in Manhattan are taking part in the transition, but once that is complete, the rollout moves to Brooklyn and then Queens.
The move to iPhone is already being heralded as a major success by some officers. “I truly feel like it’s the ultimate tool to have as a patrol cop,” said Police Officer Christopher Clampitt.
The iPhones also improve functionality that smartphones bring to officers in general. For instance, smartphone use by police officers can respond to scenes much quicker than relying on the traditional radio:
Waymo sued Uber, accusing it of ripping off key pieces of its self-driving car technology in 2016. Uber paid $680 million for a startup run by Anthony Levandowski, one of the top engineers in a robotic vehicle project that Google began in 2009 and later became in Waymo.
Google was also an early investor in Uber, the relationship eventually soured. Its parent company Alphabet also owns Waymo.
Waymo has drawn a sordid picture, contending that Levandowski stole thousands of documents containing Google trade secrets before defecting to Uber. Waymo says Levandowski conspired with former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick to use the pilfered technology in Uber’s own fleet of self-driving cars.
Uber has boldly denied the allegations in the civil case, which has also triggered a criminal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. It’s not clear whether that probe is focused on Uber or Levandowski, who has consistently exercised his right against self-incrimination and is expected to do so again if called to testify during the trial.
Levandowski’s refusal to relinquish his Fifth Amendment rights eventually led Uber to fire him last May, even though he had developed a close relationship with Kalanick.
The stakes in the trial are humongous. Waymo is demanding damages estimated at nearly $2 billion. It also wants a court order that would prevent Uber from using any of the technology that it says was stolen, a move that could hobble the ride-hailing service’s push to design self-driving cars.
The courtroom drama will feature an intriguing cast of characters. The list of expected witnesses includes both the combative Kalanick and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Bill Gurley, an early Uber backer who later helped engineer Kalanick’s departure as Uber’s CEO. (Kalanick resigned under pressure last June.)
Two of the world’s richest people, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, may also be called to testify about the importance of Waymo’s self-driving project and Levandowski’s role in it.
Both Waymo and Uber each will have only have a total of 16 hours to make their case. That time restraint could prove more daunting for Waymo. It will have to educate a 10-person jury about the intricacies of the eight trade secrets that Uber is accused of stealing, then prove the ride-hailing service used the technology in its vehicles or improperly shared it with others.
The lawsuit has already established internal documents and sworn testimony that exposed spying programs and other shady tactics deployed by Uber to expand its business.
Furthermore, Uber has acknowledged allowing rampant sexual harassment to occur within its ranks, a yearlong cover-up of a major computer break-in and a $100,000 ransom paid to the hackers, and the use of duplicitous software to thwart government regulators.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup has emphasized that Waymo faces the difficult challenge of proving that the ride-hailing service used stolen technology in its self-driving cars.
Cleveland and a growing number of other local and state courts, judges are now guided by computer algorithms before ruling whether criminal defendants can go free have to stay locked up awaiting trial.
A bipartisan bail reform movement has found an alternative to cash bail: AI algorithms that can scour through large sets of courthouse data to search for associations and predict which people are most likely to flee or commit another crime.
Experts say the use of these risk assessments may be the biggest shift in courtroom decision-making since American judges began accepting social science and other expert evidence more than a century ago.
Critics, however, worry that such algorithms could end up superseding a judges’ own judgment, and might even perpetuate biases in ostensibly neutral form.
States such as New Jersey, Arizona, Kentucky, and Alaska have adopted these tools. Defendants who receive low scores are recommended for release under court supervision.
Among other things, such algorithms aim to reduce biased rulings that could be influenced by a defendant’s race, gender or clothing — or maybe just how cranky a judge might be feeling after missing breakfast.
The AI system used in New Jersey, developed by the Houston-based Laura and John Arnold Foundation, uses nine risk factors to evaluate a defendant, including age and past criminal convictions. But it excludes race, gender, employment history and where a person lives.
It also excludes a history of arrests, which can stack up against people more likely to encounter police — even if they’re not found to have done anything.
An investigative report by ProPublica found that a commercial system called Compas used to help determine prison sentences for convicted criminals, was falsely flagging black defendants as likely future criminals almost twice as frequently as white defendants.
Other experts have questioned those findings, and the U.S. Supreme Court last year declined to take up a case of a Wisconsin man who argued the use of gender as a factor in the Compas assessment violated his rights.
Advocates of the AI approach argue that the people in robes are still in charge. Others worry the algorithms will make judging more rote over time. Research has shown that people tend to follow specific advisory guidelines in lieu of their own judgment, said Bernard Harcourt, a law professor at Columbia.
The judge in the $1.86 billion legal battle between ride-hailing giant Uber and Alphabet’s self-driving unit Waymo case, released a damning letter based on the account of a former Uber employee. The letter alleges that a special division within Uber was responsible for acts of corporate espionage, the theft of trade secrets, the bribery of foreign officials and various means of unlawful surveillance.
The company solicited undercover agents to collect intelligence against the taxi groups and local political figures. The agents took rides in local taxis, loitered around locations where taxi drivers congregated, and leveraged a local network of contacts with connections to police and regulatory authorities..
The “Jacobs letter” was written by the attorney for Richard Jacobs, who previously worked as Uber’s manager of global intelligence before being fired in April. The highly detailed account brings about accusations of systematic illegal activity inside Uber’s Strategic Services Group (SSG) which allegedly sought to surface other companies’ trade secrets through eavesdropping and data collection. The letter alleges that some of the information gathered was relayed to then-CEO Travis Kalanick.
The trial has been delayed until February 2018 to give the Waymo legal team more time to investigate claims Jacob’s claims.
The New York City Council yesterday passed legislation seeking to address problems with Algorithms which can determine which school a child can attend, whether a person will be offered credit from a bank, what products are advertised to consumer, and whether someone will receive an interview for a job. Government officials also use them to predict where crimes will take place, who is likely to commit a crime and whether someone should be allowed out of jail on bail. The algorithms used in facial recognition technology, for example, have been shown to be less accurate on Black people, women, and juveniles.
The new bill seeking the signature of Mayor Bill de Blasio. States:
This bill would require the creation of a task force that provides recommendations on how information on agency automated decision systems may be shared with the public and how agencies may address instances where people are harmed by agency automated decision systems.
The task force would need to be formed within three months of the bill’s signing, and importantly it must include “persons with expertise in the areas of fairness, accountability and transparency relating to automated decision systems and persons affiliated with charitable corporations that represent persons in the city affected by agency automated decision systems.”
The New York division of the ACLU has argued in favor of it.
It appears that it is very easy to get a fake academic certificate from any major urban centers. The buyer of the fake certificate dont have to worry about the authenticity of the signatures or paper quality – all that is sorted out by the fraudsters.
The discussion is often about whether you want a PhD, master’s or bachelor’s degree. Additionally, the more prestigious the university you want to claim to have graduated from , the more money you will be required to pay for the fake certificate.
Once you have the fake paper in your hands, you can apply for prominent jobs, particularly in the public sector, where job security is so high that getting fired at a later stage is more complicated and costly.
Employers find it time-consuming to authenticate or verify that glimmering certificate from the purported universities for various reasons.
In developed economies, the data protection laws do not allow universities to disclose the private credentials of students to third parties – unless the students expressly and explicitly ask them to make the disclosure.
MIT and the University of Melbourne are pioneering this approach and solution to this problem. Blockchain technology-providing a decentralised ledger that is globally accessible, immutable, secure and with the support of anonymity. Universities can record student academic certificates into the global blockchain, allowing graduates to access their credentials from anywhere across the globe and share them with potential employers.
The Justice Department sued to block the company’s AT&T’s $85.4 billion bid to buy Time Warner Inc.
A judge will determine whether the combination of AT&T and Time Warner would give the new entity too much power in the fast-changing media landscape.
The first major antitrust enforcement action to be brought by the Trump administration — dealt a blow to a tie-up that appeared to be sailing toward approval as recently as a month ago. That was before Makan Delrahim, was appointed to head the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
Delrahim contents that the merger would harm American consumers enormously. Resulting in higher monthly television bills and fewer of the new, emerging innovative options that consumers are beginning to enjoy.
The White House has traditionally stayed at arm’s length from merger reviews. Trump told reporters during his recent trip to Asia that the deal might be challenged in court.
Time Warner and AT&T combined, could use its control over programming like CNN and HBO to harm rivals by forcing them to pay hundreds of millions of dollars more per year for the right to distribute the content, according to the 23-page complaint. The deal also would enable AT&T to impede competition from online video distributors, which would reduce choices for consumers, according to the complaint.
The government is open to dropping the lawsuit if the companies offer a proposal to fix the competitive harm from the deal, a Justice Department official said.
Currently there have been accusations that the Justice Department, driven by political meddling from the Trump White House, is pursuing a risky case that it’s bound to lose.
The list of occupations that will be decimated by artificial intelligence and automation is becoming larger and larger with drivers, translators and shop assistants under threat from the rise of the robots,.Now you can add lawyers to the list.
A contest that took place last month pitched over 100 lawyers from many of London’s ritziest firms against an artificial intelligence program called Case Cruncher Alpha.
Both the humans and the AI were given the basic facts of hundreds of PPI (payment protection insurance) and asked to predict whether the Financial Ombudsman would allow a claim.
In all, they submitted 775 predictions and the computer won hands down, with Case Cruncher getting an accuracy rate of 86.6%, compared with 66.3% for the lawyers.
Case Cruncher is not the product of a tech giant but the brainchild of four Cambridge law students. They started out with a simple chatbot that answered legal questions – a bit of a gimmick but it caught on.
Two judges oversaw the competition, Cambridge law lecturer Felix Steffek and Ian Dodd from a company called Prediction, which runs one of the world’s biggest databases of legal cases. He says the youthful Case Cruncher team chose the subject for the contest well.
Ian Dodd thinks AI may replace some of the grunt work done by junior lawyers and paralegals but no machine can talk to a client or argue in front of a High Court judge. He puts it simply: “The knowledge jobs will go, the wisdom jobs will stay.”
Counterfeit Clues: A high-demand textbook sold for way below Amazon’s price on a non-Amazon site like eBay.
If you’re sourcing online, this is a big one to look for. Counterfeiters love bootlegging the most popular textbooks, then unloading them for cheap(ish) prices on off-Amazon sites like Alibris, eBay, and more.
I would advise you to scrutinize any listing closely, but fact is no seller is going to admit their book is counterfeit. So if it seems too good to be true, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is (good mistakes do happen). But you’re taking your chances.
Thin, low-quality paper.
Big red flag: Paper that is so thin you can see text on one side of the page through the other side of the page.
Poor quality distorted cover art.
Art that looks slightly distorted or “off.”
Major textbook publishers will never publish a book with fuzzy or weird cover art. They have whole art departments who make sure this doesn’t happen.
Counterfeit Clue #5: Fuzzy barcode.
The first place to look when determining if a textbook is counterfeit is the barcode. If the barcode is distorted or fuzzy – it’s a fake. 100% of the time.
Note: Countefeiters only bootleg expensive, high-demand textbooks.
If you’re not holding a textbook ranked in the top 10,000, it’s probably not counterfeit.
That’s not to say that old counterfeit textbooks won’t stay in circulation, but the bulk of the business in counterfeits is the latest hot new high demand textbooks. They print a bunch of them, sell them quickly, and move on. Those are the books most likely to end up in your Amazon inventory (and be flagged by Amazon).
An independent panel pulled together by the Australian government released a report this week trying to hash out the difficulties that governing bodies will face in rewriting laws for humans engaging self-driving systems. That panel, called the National Transport Commission (NTC), wants to develop a clear set of laws by 2020, and its paper (PDF) solicited feedback from key industry players as the panel moves forward.
Though it may seem obvious that a drunk person should be allowed to be taxied home by a fully autonomous car, the question is less clear if you have to determine just how autonomous an autonomous vehicle needs to be for a drunk person to operate it. The government should want drunk people to engage a high-level autonomous driving system if the alternative is driving themselves home, but if they’ll be penalized for being drunk while they’re “in control” of an autonomous vehicle, uptake of self-driving systems may be slow.
Instead, the NTC argues, drunk driving offenses should only apply to drunk people who are manually operating their vehicles but not to people who have merely started an autonomous car. The present rules “exist because a person who starts or sets in motion a conventional vehicle while under the influence clearly has an intention to drive,” the NTC writes.
The questions are being raised in the US, too. At the Governors’ Highway Safety Association meeting this week, US authorities discussed open container laws in autonomous vehicles. Currently, it’s illegal to have an open alcohol container in a car while you’re driving US roads. But should that apply in fully autonomous systems where no one is driving?
Who makes these rules and enforces them is its own debate in the US, too, with the Trump administration largely calling for a continuation of the Obama administration’s “light regulatory touch” philosophy when it comes to automakers building self-driving cars. In Congress, the House passed a bill last month directing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to adopt some guidelines for self-driving cars analogous to its regulation of manually driven cars.
Three billion Yahoo accounts — including email, Tumblr, Fantasy, and Flickr — or three times as many as the company initially reported in 2016 were hacked.
Names, email addresses, and passwords, but not financial information, were breached, Yahoo said last year
The new disclosure comes four months after Verizon (VZ, Tech30) acquired Yahoo’s core internet assets for $4.48 billion. Yahoo is part of Verizon’s digital media company, which is called Oath.
Verizon revised the number of breached accounts to three billion after receiving new information.
“The company recently obtained new intelligence and now believes, following an investigation with the assistance of outside forensic experts, that all Yahoo user accounts were affected by the August 2013 theft,” Verizon said in a statement.
Verizon would not provide any information about who the outside forensics experts are.
Yahoo will send emails to the additional affected accounts. Following the hacking revelations last year, Yahoo required password changes and invalidated unencrypted security questions to protect user information.
According to experts, it’s not uncommon for forensic investigations to expose a greater number of victims than initial estimates.
A South Carolina couple has filed a federal class-action lawsuit claiming Amazon sold defective eclipse-watching glasses that partially blinded them during the historic coast-to-coast solar eclipse on August 21. the couple states in their lawsuit that because of the eyewear Payne purchased from Amazon, the couple is now suffering from “blurriness, a central blind spot, increased sensitivity, changes in perception of color, and distorted vision.”
Amazon issued a recall of defective and perhaps counterfeit eclipse eyewear in an e-mail sent out to customers before the event. Payne said he did not receive the message. His suit seeks to represent others who were injured or may be injured from the eyewear purchased on Amazon. The alleged Tennessee-based maker of the glasses, American Paper Optics, is not named in the suit.”Amazon’s August 19, 2017 e-mail ‘recall’ was tragically too little, too late. Its e-mail notification was insufficient to timely apprise customers of the defective nature of their glasses, and resulted in Plaintiffs and members of the proposed class using defective Eclipse Glasses,” according to the lawsuit. (PDF)
The suit seeks funds “for medical monitoring” because “Plaintiffs and members of the proposed class have or will experience varying degrees of eye injury ranging from temporary discomfort to permanent blindness.” The suit also demands unspecified monetary damages, punitive damages, and legal fees and costs.
Hackers who posted several of HBO’s new episodes and a “Game of Thrones” script online in late July have published a month’s worth of emails from the inbox of one of the entertainment company’s executives. The Hackers also addressed a video letter to HBO CEO Richard Plepler that demands the company demand payment of money, although the figure was redacted, according to the report. The hackers said HBO marked their 17th victim, and only three have failed to pay. HBO said its forensic review of the incident is ongoing and noted that it believed further leaks were forthcoming.
HBO private emails in the hands of hackers, came Monday in an email message to The Hollywood Reporter that also contained nine files with such labels as “Confidential” and “Script GOT7.” The hackers also delivered a video letter to HBO CEO Richard Plepler that says, “We successfully breached into your huge network. … HBO was one of our difficult targets to deal with but we succeeded (it took about 6 months).”
They say that the frequency of the attacks has overwhelmed the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, which has been unable to properly investigate all of them. The FBI’s surprising advice, according to industry sources: Pay the ransom.
FBI spokesperson in the L.A. office denied that the agency is telling companies to cough up the bitcoins in cases of ransomware. “The FBI does not encourage payment of ransom as it keeps the criminals in business,” says Laura Eimiller. “Of course, the individual victim must weigh their options.”
“The FBI will say it’s easier to pay it than it is to try to fight to get it back,” says Hemanshu Nigam, a former federal prosecutor of online crime in L.A. and onetime chief security officer for News Corp. “And if one company pays the ransom, the entire hacking community knows about it.”
In a technique called spindle nuclear transfer, the nucleus of a donor egg is removed and the DNA of another woman’s egg is injected.
The New York-based doctor who helped a couple have a child using DNA from three people has been told by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to stop the clinical trials meant to test the technique.
Last year, John Zhang, the founder of New Hope Fertility Center, pioneered a new type of in-vitro fertilization that involves transferring DNA from the mother’s egg into a hollowed-out egg donated by a younger woman. But the work violates federal legislation that forbids implanting genetically modified embryos, so after fertilizing the egg with the father’s sperm, Zhang went to Mexico, where he inserted the embryo into the mother’s womb. A healthy baby boy was born in April 2016.
Zhang then requested a meeting with the agency to ask permission to carry out a clinical trial using the technique in the U.S. The agency subsequently denied the meeting. Zhang has since been marketing his fertility procedure to women with certain genetic diseases and older women having trouble conceiving through a new company called Darwin Life. Modifying embryos in a lab is not illegal under U.S. law as long as federal funds are not used to carry out the work. But implanting one in a woman’s womb so that a baby can develop is prohibited.
An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University, has used genetic engineering on human sperm and a pre-embryo. The group says is doing basic research to figure out if new forms of genetic engineering might be able to prevent or repair terrible hereditary diseases. Congress has banned federal funding for genetic engineering of sperm, eggs, pre-embryos or embryos. That means everything goes on in the private or philanthropic world here or overseas, without much guidance. It should be determined who should own the techniques for genetic engineering. Important patent fights are underway among the technology’s inventors. Which means lots of money. is at stake. And that means it is time to talk about who gets to own what and charge what. Finally, human genetic engineering needs to be monitored closely: all experiments registered, all data reported on a public database and all outcomes — good and bad — made available to all scientists and anyone else tracking this area of research. Secrecy is the worst enemy that human genetic engineering could possibly have. Today we need to focus on who will own genetic engineering technology, how we can oversee what is being done with it and how safe it needs to be before it is used to try to prevent or fix a disease. Plenty to worry about.
There’s unsurety as to what the Government is doing with the images. They say, Facial-recognition systems may indeed speed up the boarding process, however, the real reason they are cropping up in U.S. airports is that the government wants to keep better track of who is leaving the country, by scanning travelers’ faces and verifying those scans against photos it already has on file. The idea is that this will catch fake passports and make sure people aren’t overstaying their visas. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has partnered with airlines including JetBlue and Delta to introduce such recognition systems at New York’s JFK International Airport, Washington’s Dulles International, and airports in Atlanta, Boston, and Houston, among others. It plans to add more this summer.
“As It Searches for Suspects, the FBI May Be Looking at You”). Privacy advocates also point out that research has shown the technology to be less accurate with older photos and with images of women, African-Americans, and children (see “Is Facial Recognition Accurate? Depends on Your Race”).
New Yorkers have the chance to vote whether they want to hold a constitutional convention to amend, tweak or otherwise improve the founding document of the state every twenty years. Voters have demuurred for the past 50 years. Come November, however, academics, good-government groups and others believe the outcome of the ballot question may be different. But before voters confront the ballot question, they will no doubt be barraged by aka “Con-Con”, campaigns for and against a constitutional convention. Nonprofit groups interested in issues including campaign finance reform, redistricting, term limits and the legalization of marijuana have come out in favor of a convention. At the same time, unions like the United Federation of Teachers and state legislative leaders have argued against a convention, saying it could repeal hallowed protections.
Speakers waiting their turn at the opening session of the New York State Constitutional Convention in 1967 included, seated from left, Senator Jacob K. Javits, Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, Chief Justice Earl Warren and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Credit Bettmann, via Getty Images
If voters approve a convention, delegates would be elected in 2018, with the convention held the next year. It remains to be seen.
Western New York police department has purchased a drone for $9,994.99.
It will be flying the skies of West Seneca to help officers solve crimes and keep the community safe. The grant was secured by State Senator Patrick Gallivan.
West Seneca Police have been training for eight months on how to use this new technology, which officers say will assist in many different police missions including search and rescues, creek levels during flooding and crime scene analysis.
The drone is equipped to drop items to those in need, such as a during a hostage situation. They can put a cell phone in it for delivery to someone in need, during a hostage situation which will help our hostage negotiators maintain communication with them.The drone can travel up to 400 feet high, with a speed up to 50 miles per hour, with a rotating camera that captures video from all angles.
The drone also can give the investigators an indicator of where a fire started,” according to Lt. McNamara. “Accident investigation, that can be used to show the weather conditions at the time of an accident.”
The department is ready to start flying, but is waiting for final approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to use the drone at night.
Special rules apply to the official Twitter account of the president of the United States (@POTUS) that do not currently apply to his personal account (@realDonaldTrump). The rules are described under the Presidential Records Act, which states that certain records generated by the White House do not belong to the US president, but are instead a matter of public record.
A new bill introduced in Congress this week is looking to enforce those rules with regard to Trump’s personal account since he often uses it to make announcements altering US policy, both foreign and domestic—even though there’s a zero chance in hell anything Trump tweets will ever disappear online.
It’s called the “Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement” THE COVFEEFE ACT
https://quigley.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/quigley-introduces-covfefe-act
It was introduced by Rep. Mike Quigley, the Illinois Democrat who in March brought us the MAR-A-LAGO Act, which would require the publication of White House visitor logs. (The Trump White House has decided to keep the logs secret, reversing an Obama administration policy of publishing them automatically.)
Wheel chair bound Samsung employee is alleged to have stolen 8,474 smartphones from the company over the course of two years to pay off his gambling debt. Authorities claim his spree took place between December 2014 and November 2016 at the Samsung headquarters in Suwon, South Korea . It took them a long time to notice what was going down, since he was wheelchair bound and wasn’t required to pass thru the scanner. The phones were sold to a second-hand phone retailer for 800 million won or(US$711,743) dollars. The employee was arrested.
The United States is a global leader in science and technology innovation and discovery. Americans invented the electric light bulb, photographic film, the machine gun, Third rail, Street light, skyscrapers, the airplane, mousetraps, the nuclear submarine, the laser printer, personal computers, the mobile phone and much more.
Over 19,000 American professionals, researchers, librarians, students etc. have contributed to an IGI Global publication, approximately 5,000 of them are associated with journals, while about 14,000 were involved in a book project. Of these esteemed contributors, over 250 will have their research featured in the upcoming Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, Fourth Edition. Not only have American scholars provided significant contributions, but they also come from some of the most highly acclaimed institutions, including Harvard University, Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Princeton University, Yale University, Dartmouth University, Stanford University and over 5,000 total institutions across the United States.
IGI Global partners with all major US distributors, including Baker & Taylor, Ingram Content Group and EBSCO. IGI Global ebooks are available for purchase though GOBI Library Solutions, OASIS and hosted on popular platforms, such as ProQuest’s E-Book Central and Ebrary, as well as EBSCOHost.
Additionally, IGI Global’s InfoSci platform, favored by librarians and researchers, includes more than 3,900 books, 169 journals and 100 streaming videos. The award-winning platform also includes no DRM, unlimited simultaneous users, no platform or maintenance fees and full-text PDF and XML.
As a leader in innovation, IGI Global works closely with many US consortia. Following are select consortia that are also diverse regionally: NERL, PALCI, SCELC and Amigos.
View IGI Global research pertaining to the United States here, and check out select US titles below.
The librarians at the Needle Park location in Kensington have had to learn how to administer Narcan to some people. This location is known for being surrounded by a neighborhood rampant with drugs and addicts. Many patrons to come to the library for refuge and to have a safe haven. This library has been such a thing for many patrons in the neighborhood. In the past, the library has not had to take care of such things, but then the heroin epidemic hit.
The library started doing overdose drills for the last thirty years, and until recently, having to rely on those skills did not happen very often. There have been four overdoses in the library since the epidemic spread, and thankfully, none of them have been fatal. Some people come to this location to do their drugs for the sake of having a safe, quiet place to do what they will. In one case, a man shot up while he was in the adult reading room, and when he slid to the floor, help was there to take care of him. Much of the same can be said about the man who passed out in the bathroom while gasping for air.
There is now a monitor system in the bathroom. Adults are required to leave a library card or some other form of ID at the front desk. People are limited to bathroom time for between three and five minutes. After that time frame, a guard will knock before coming in to check on anyone that might have disappeared into the room.
SHAMEFUL!
A bill that would empower Donald Trump to appoint the next Register of Copyrights was easily passed this year by the House of Representatives on , and is headed to the Senate. The final vote was 378-48.
The vote came just a month after the bill, the Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act, (H.R. 1695) was first introduced on March 23. The bill would block Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden from appointing the next Register of Copyrights and instead transfer the authority to appoint the Register to the President, with Senate confirmation.
The bill happened after Hayden ousted Maria Pallante from her post as Register of Copyrights last October, a move that outraged many in the entertainment industry, and in Congress, who had counted Pallante as a close ally.
In January, Pallante was named President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers. Currently, Karyn Temple Claggett is leading the Copyright Office on an interim basis.
Hayden, has over 40 years of experience in library science and administration, was appointed by President Obama as the 14th librarian of Congress, and is both the first woman and the first Black American to serve in this role.
Hayden has also been an open advocate of balancing the rights of content creators and corporate copyright owners to adequately and fairly reap the benefits of their creative labors with the general public’s interest in broadening public access to this content in a fair and equitable manner.
Courtesy BELVILLE NEWS DEMOCRAT
Hundreds of people aka “Heroin Tourist” are traveling to Philadelphia every month in dorves because of its reputation for having purer heroin than any other city.
As a result, overdoses in public places have surged, including public libraries, where librarians have begun to stock Narcan to counteract overdoses that occur there.
Librarians have been called into duty so often to revive overdose victims, they have learned to tell the difference between a regular heroin overdose and a more deadly fentanyl overdose, by the sound the victim makes while collapsing, a story in Philly.com reports.
But they are not just using bathrooms, overdoses occur on the lawns and property of public libraries, and other public places, one of which has been dubbed “needle park” for its use by addicts to shoot up.
Ongoing Information & Trends: A Weblog 
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