Pakistani Military Alleged To Have Gain Hacked Metadata From Australian Diplomats

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 redacted document detailing an itinerary for Australian diplomats. Picture: Lookout

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.

Snowden Designs iPhone Attachment

Whistleblower & Exiled Snowden, together with hacker Andrew “Bunnie” Huang, has designed a case-like attachment to modify an iPhone, where you can  monitor radio transmitters within the device. Huang is known among other things for reverse engineering parts of the original Xbox and security vulnerabilities in microSD cards.

Snowden’s said a device such as this is needed because turning off the radios via airplane mode, shutting off the phone entirely, or even sealing it within a Faraday cage are all not nearly secure enough when faced with a government-backed adversary. Snowden and Huang’s device offers an option for reporters and journalists traveling in areas that use high-level hacking methods to monitor devices, and where, they claim, governments can use exploits to trick you into thinking your phone is off while actually monitoring your conversations and locations. Snowden and Huang hope that their device will offer security to reporters in high-risk locations by preventing the monitoring or tracking of phones. The device is still in testing stages.

Andrew “Bunnie” Huang and Edward Snowden

19th Century Metadata

View Here

The NSA Today

The NSA agency was spying on phone calls and social media profiles of an unknown number of users. The NSA also infiltrated popular online gaming and social media communities such as World of Warcraft and Second Life as part of its global surveillance program of Americans and foreign nationals, an effort which collected billions of phone and electronic records, including those of close allies and other world leaders, corporations and even the Pope.

The NSA’s announced that it was ending the bulk metadata collection program was hailed as a victory by many observers.However; the NSA is still going to be collecting the metadata from millions of Americans’ phone conversations. The USA Freedom Act, which replaced the USA Patriot Act provision allowing bulk metadata collection, gave the NSA six months to complete an “orderly transition” to the new regimen. That 180-day period ended on December 1. Now, phone and Internet companies will retain customer data, which the NSA may access if it obtains a warrant from secretive courts set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

For instance, instead of bulk collection, “specific selectors” (a phone number, for example) are now required for data collection. The NSA then has six months to request these selectors before again going before the FISA court to seek renewed authority. There are exceptions to even these rules. Chief among these is a request by the NSA to retain its records for the past five years until the end of February 2016. Additionally, an executive order issued by President Ronald Reagan could be interpreted to authorize continued bulk metadata collection if it is “incidentally collected in the course of a lawful foreign intelligence investigation.”

France’s Highest Court Upholds Metadata New Intelligence Bill While (NSA) Will Stop Accessing “Historical Metadata

France’s highest court upheld a new national intelligence bill that would give them unprecedented spying power — including NSA-style metadata collection — at home and internationally.

The Constitutional Council upheld several provisions in a bill passed in May aiming at increasing digital intelligence particularly telephone metadata collection, online traffic surveillance, monitoring calls and emails of suspected terrorists, and spyware that allows the government to monitor real-time computer behavior.

The council rejected a few provisions, one of which would have permitted unauthorized surveillance requests in emergencies without approval from a government minister. Another struck-down provision would have allowed the government to intercept communications sent or received overseas.

The new law, which was drafted in response to terrorism like the Charlie Hebdo attack this year, goes against Europe’s strict adherence to privacy but also represents an effort to increase surveillance capabilities akin the U.S.

Documents leaked in June prove the NSA spied on the private communications of three French presidents from 2006 to 2012. French President François Hollande said in response to the leaks, which were part of Snowden’s revelations.

Europe has also scrutinized its relationship with American businesses and their privacy practices, making it particularly difficult for tech companies such as Facebook and Google that are a part of the NSA and other U.S. intelligence agencies’ surveillance programs. For example, Germany announced plans to end its contract with U.S. wireless carrier Verizon last year because of its legal requirements to fulfill NSA data information requests.

On the other hand – November 29, 2015, the National Security Agency (NSA) will stop accessing “historical metadata” collected under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced in a press release on Monday.

The practice of bulk telephone metadata collection, the once-secret practice uncovered by leaker Edward Snowden,came to an end in June when provisions of the post-9/11 Patriot Act expired. On June 29, however, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court gave the NSA the go-ahead to resume its controversial bulk collection of telephone metadata for six months—the amount of time allotted by Congress in the USA Freedom Act. This block is meant to give the NSA time to switch to its narrower surveillance program. After November, the agency must receive approval from the FISA Court before requesting records from phone companies on an as-needed basis.

Secret US Court Allows NSA To Resume Metadata

A secret US Court ruled late Monday that the National Security Agency is free to continue its bulk telephone metadata surveillance program—the same spying that Congress voted to terminate weeks ago.

Congress disavowed the program that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed when passing the USA Freedom Act, which President Barack Obama signed June 2. The program was allowed to be extended for six months to allow “for an orderly transition” to a less-invasive telephone metadata spying program.

Lawmakers approve a variation of the phone-records spy program Snowden revealed. However, the Obama administration needed the blessing of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court). The government just revealed the order. the FISA Court ruled that “Congress deliberately carved out a 180-day period following the date of enactment in which such collection was specially authorized. For this reason, the Court approves the application (PDF) in this case.”

The government urged the FISA Court not to acquiesce to a federal appellate court’s May decision that declared illegal the collection of metadata from every call in and out of the United States. That court had ruled that Congress did not clearly authorize the spying. The Justice Department also told the secret court that the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals’ decisions “do not constitute controlling precedent for this Court.”

The FISA Court, which has approved the snooping program 49 times in three-month intervals, agreed with the Obama administration and said it “respectfully disagrees with that court’s analysis, especially in view of the intervening inaction of the USA Freedom Act.” The court said that Congress’ approval of the USA Freedom Act was evidence that Congress wanted the bulk collection to continue for six more months.

Under the USA Freedom Act that Obama signed, the bulk phone metadata stays with the telecoms and can be accessed with the FISA Court’s blessing if the government claims a reasonable suspicion that data of a selected target is relevant to a terror investigation and that at least one party to the call is overseas. The Constitution’s Fourth Amendment standard of probable cause does not apply. The law also allows a public advocate, for the first time, in the FISA Court courtroom.

The USA Freedom Act

The USA Freedom Act passed on Tuesday, is a domestic surveillance reform bill that would extend the bulk phone metadata collection program of the National Security Agency (NSA) for another six months, after which the practice will be ended. According to the USA Freedom Act, the NSA’s controversial bulk phone metadata collection program, which expired Monday, will continue for another six months. After the six-months, the United States government will no longer be allowed to store any phone metadata of the US public. Instead, phone companies will take on the responsibility of storing phone metadata, and federal agencies will be required to get a court warrant before accessing phone metadata of certain case.

 

Rand Paul Says Replace Bulk metadata With A 1000 FBI Agents

 

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky says a good replacement for the government collecting telephone metadata on millions of Americans would be to hire 1,000 FBI agents to “go after jihadists.”

he said he’d take the billions spent on collecting all Americans records and would hire 1,000 new FBI agents to specifically go after the jihadists. The FBI said this week, they don’t have enough man power.

Paul opposed any extension of the Patriot Act and made particular emphasis on the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of data. The Senate agreed to a modified reauthorization of the Patriot Act that has small changes to intelligence agencies’ control over the bulk collection of data.

“One of them is the provision that says that the government can collect records that are relevant to an investigation,” Paul said earlier discussing provisions of the Patriot Act that had expired.

National Security Agency’s Metadata Phone Collection Expected To Cease June 1 @ 5pm Eastern Time

The Obama administration has decided not to ask a secret court for a 90-day extension of Section 215 in the Patriot Act,  putting an end to the authorized bulk collection of U.S. phone metadata by the National Security Agency.

Saturday morning, a bill called the USA Freedom Act suffered a procedural defeat in the Senate, despite having bipartisan support. If passed, it would have banned the NSA’s bulk metadata collection program, but simultaneously renewed another Patriot Act measure allowing the Federal Bureau of Investigation to access business records, plus large swaths of communications metadata.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been leading a campaign to maintain all of the domestic surveillance powers in the Patriot Act intact, and is hoping to win a temporary extension once the Senate reconvenes on May 31 after the Memorial Day holiday. The House of Representatives isn’t due to return until June 1 however, and predominantly favored the Freedom Act.
May 7 , the federal appeals court ruled that the NSA’s bulk collection program was illegal, which may explain the Obama administration’s decision. This leaves McConnell and his supporters with an uphill battle.

Attention to the dangers of Section 215 was first drawn in June 2013 by Edward Snowden, an NSA contractor who leaked numerous documents to the Guardian. Snowden’s documents continue to emerge, and have shown for example that the NSA has obtained data from major technology companies such as Apple, AT&T, Google, Verizon, and Microsoft, with or without their willing participation.

Earlier this month a secret summit was held in Oxfordshire, England with current and former intelligence officials from around the world joined by executives from Apple, Google, and Vodafone. At issue was the impact of maintaining data privacy on protecting the state.

U.S. House of Representatives Vote On Metadata

The US House of Representatives today approved the USA Freedom Act, a bill that disallows the NSA from collecting telephone metadata in bulk; only targeted approaches would be allowed by the new measure.The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of the bill, at 338-88.

The timing is important here, as Section 215 of the Patriot Act – the legal foundation the NSA uses to justify its data collection – is set to expire on June 1.

The bill now has to pass through the Senate, which is expected to vote on the bill by May 22. Tech companies such as Google have previously expressed support for the Freedom Act

Snowden’s Upcoming Film

 

Snowden is an upcoming American biographical political thriller film directed by Oliver Stone and written by Stone and Kieran Fitzgerald. The film is based on the books The Snowden Files by … MoreLuke Harding . Release date December 25, 2015

The Metadata Law: A Powerful Weapon

It seems that would-be whistleblowers and journalists seeking to reveal government information should immediately avoid almost all forms of digital and phone contact — including taking their ­mobile phone to any physical meetings — in favour of old-­fashioned letters if they want to avoid being convicted under national security legislation. The metadata issue seems to be getting traction because of this year’s changes to the law which now require such metadata to be stored for two years. And even though we’re told the new laws tighten just who can now access this sensitive data, the estimate is that about 2500 bureaucrats will still be able to sign off on accessing metadata – without a court warrant.

Some say metadata is killing investigative journalism. The use of free encrypted messaging apps has become increasingly popular to install on your phone or computer. The guarantee is that it has no metadata – it stores no data on its users at all, and it has a built in file shredder that erases all communications after a set time, normally one day. Edward Snowden used TOR to send the NSA’s secrets to the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers.

DEA Collected Metadata Befor NSA

It appears that the NSA’s surveillance program was modeled after the precursor USTO, because it monitored almost every American’s calls from the US to other countries. It was a joint initiative by the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement. USTO would ask carriers for phone metadata. The group was only dissolved after Edward Snowden went public with the NSA’s secrets in 2013. The DEA didn’t allow anyone else, not even the FBI or the NSA to access its logs in the beginning. But over time, it gave other law enforcement agencies access to its database, especially after 9/11. Eventually, in an effort to keep this program hidden, the DEA’s Special Operations Division started passing on intel to prosecutors and feds as “tips” that they could act on. After USTO was put to a stop after Snowden’s leak, all records were reportedly purged — DEA agents had to start getting call records via more difficult means. Now, they have to send carriers subpoenas daily to get those logs, and only for numbers already linked to drug trade or other crimes.

Credit-Card Metadata & Privacy

MIT researchers report that just four fairly vague pieces of information such as  dates and locations of four purchases — are enough to identify 90 percent of the people in a data set recording three months of credit-card transactions by 1.1 million users.

When the researchers also considered coarse-grained information about the prices of purchases, just three data points were enough to identify an even larger percentage of people in the data set. That means that someone with copies of just three of your recent receipts — or one receipt, one Instagram photo of you having coffee with friends, and one tweet about the phone you just bought — would have a 94 percent chance of extracting your credit card records from those of a million other people. This is true, the researchers say, even in cases where no one in the data set is identified by name, address, credit card number, or anything else that we typically think of as personal information.

wonder why is he using racial slurs? Read More

Metadata Being Used To Spy On Celebrities

A Data analyst  filed an open records request in March 2014 for New York’s database of cab fare, tip and location information after seeing a tweet from the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission. Though that database of 174 million cab rides in 2013 includes no passenger names, software engineer  was able to link the data to other publicly available information about license plates, cab driver identities and taxi companies’ medallion numbers.

Information was  cross-referenced with publicly available photos of the celebrities getting into cabs with identifiable license plates.

News of taxi metadata being turned into individual-specific information follows similar stories that emerged since Edward Snowden’s disclosures about the National Security Agency vacuuming up metadata.

Last year, for example, Stanford University researchers showed how medical, financial and other personal information could be disclosed just by cross-referencing phone metadata with publicly available databases. Similarly, Susan Landau, former Sun Microsystems engineer and author of the book “Surveillance or Security?” told the New Yorker that metadata can reveal details about everything from upcoming corporate transactions to journalists’ sources to political negotiations

5 MillionGmail Passwords Leaked On Russian Bitcoin Site

Nearly 5 million usernames and passwords appear to have been published on a Russian Bitcoin forum.

Hackers dumped a database of nearly 5 million Gmail usernames and passwords to a Russian Bitcoin forum late Tuesday. Russia’s state-run news wire RIA Novosti reports the accounts are from English-, Russian- and Spanish-speaking users, and as many as 60 percent of them are active.

A database of what appears to be some 5 million login and password pairs for Google accounts has been leaked to a Russian cyber security internet forum. It follows similar leaks of account data for popular Russian web services.

The text file containing the alleged compromised accounts data was published late on Tuesday on the Bitcoin Security board. It lists 4.93 million entries, although the forum administration has since purged passwords from it, leaving only the logins.

The accounts are mostly those of Google users and give access to Gmail mail service, G+ social network and other products of the US-based internet giant. The forum user tvskit, who published the file, claimed that 60 percent of the passwords were valid, with some users confirming that they found their data in the base, reports CNews, a popular Russian IT news website. Google Russia said it is investigating the alleged leak, adding that it advises customers to use strong passwords and enable two-step login verification to protect their accounts

 

https://isleaked.com/en         (can tell you if your email was compromised)

Celebrity Phone Hacker “Original Guy” In Hiding

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It appears that this happened back in 2012  Read here

Apple says it is investigating the violation of its iCloud accounts. Security experts said the hacking and theft of revealing pictures from the Apple iCloud accounts of a few celebrities might have been prevented if those affected had enabled two-factor authentication on their accounts. The two-factor authentication requires users to enter a numerical code that is sent to their phone or another device, in addition to using their regular password. Since the number constantly changes, it makes it much more difficult for attackers to gain access the account, even if they know the password. The attack might be linked to software on GitHub called iBrute that is capable of carrying out automated brute-force attacks against iCloud accounts. An attacker can simply guess a password again and again until they succeed. While tedious and time-consuming for a person, it’s a simple and infinitely faster process for a computer.

Paris Hilton was the target of a hacking attack back in 2005.  Pictures and text messages from her  smartphone were hacked from a cloud storage account. A group of young men were prosecuted over that incident and another attack against the database giant LexisNexis, and most of them served time in federal prison or juvenile detention. This is bad timing for Apple there having an event Set 9.

iCloud two step verification– not so simple

Researchers Able To Hack Gmail

 

 

Researchers from the University of California Riverside Bourns College of Engineering and the University of Michigan have identified a weakness they believe to exist across Android, Windows, and iOS operating systems that could allow malicious apps to obtain personal information.

Although it was tested only on an Android phone, the team believes that the method could be used across all three operating systems because all three share a similar feature: all apps can access a mobile device’s shared memory.

 

Hackers & Internet Appliances

Security start-up Norse has been gathering shocking evidence of hackers usurping control of Internet-connected appliances, everything from web cams to climate-control systems.

This latest expansion of cybercrime revolves around the IP address assigned to each computing device connected to the Internet. Hackers are using automated programs to scan ranges of IP addresses for signs of vulnerable appliances. It’s often a simple matter to take control by installing a few lines of malicious coding.

Norse has devised innovative technology for monitoring such cyberattacks in real time. A tiny sampling of its data, extracted exclusively for CyberTruth, revealed 724 infected appliances actively carrying out fraudulent tasks.

The corrupted appliances included firewalls, routers, modems, printers, DVRs, surveillance cams, web cams, IP cameras, VPN appliances, VOIP phone systems, FM radio transmitters, storage drives, video conferencing systems and climate-control modules. One of the big things these corrupted devices are being used for: payment card fraud.

Malicious software embedded on the web cam’s Linux operating system causes a live cam view of the homeowner’s living room to appear in the browser of anyone who clicks to the web cam’s IP address. A demo shows, a woman and then a man enter the room and sit on a couch.

The hacker embeds  malware on a baby monitor a probably doesn’t care much about snooping; the web cam’s computing power, instead, is being used to locate similar devices and help the attacker to control as many as 2,000 ABS MegaCams.This is happening at a large scale, and continues to grow every day. There’s clear logic behind methodically assembling digital appliances into niche networks, called botnets, under the control of a single operator.

Botnets have been the foundation of the cyber underground for more than a decade. Traditionally comprising infected personal and server computers, botnets are the engine that drives multibillion-dollar markets for spam, phishing, account hijacking, identity theft and denial-of-service attacks.Norse’s findings show how the advance guard of cybercriminals has started pulling digital appliances into botnet service because, its easy. Stiansen of Norse company, began thinking about a way to gain a bird’s-eye view of the teeming world of botnet activity. What he eventually came up with is IPViking, a globe-spanning network of millions of physical and virtual sensors — or honeypots — dispersed through 160 data centers in 40 countries. Each pot appears to be an Internet-connected web cam, router or other appliance — irresistible honey to hackers.

When an intruder tries to take control of a Norse honeypot, Norse grabs the attacker’s IP address and begins an intensive counterintelligence routine. The IP address is fed into automated programs, called web crawlers, that scour the bulletin boards and chat rooms where hackers congregate for snippets of discussions tied to that IP address.

Analysts also do manual research to construct a dossier on the attacking IP. Norse delivers this intelligence to its clients, which include large financial institutions. The companies are then able to cut off communications from suspicious IP addresses and be on the lookout for derivative attacks.

 

 

Hackers Steal Four & A Half Million Patient Records

A group of hackers stole records from a large American hospital. “The attacker was an ‘Advanced Persistent Threat’ who used highly sophisticated malware and technology to attack the company’s systems. The network, operates 206 hospitals across the United States.  A forensic firm part of security company FireEye, believe that the attack stemmed from China. Patients who got their data stolen will be notified by Community Health Systems. However, it’s unclear who will be notified.  There’s no federal data breach law that mandates notifications, just a patchwork of different state regulations The FBI confirmed to Reuters that it’s investigating the case

The New Rage GPS Tracking Of Employees

Wearable tech has been the rage this year, with a lot of companies emerging as players in the wearable space. Everything from activity monitors to wearable cameras to smart watches have popped into the Internet of Things (IoT) market, some making more impact than others.

Wearables in the workplace consist of employee monitoring, health and safety monitoring, and access control. Hitachi, for example, has already introduced what looks like an elaborate employee ID badge embedded with sensors that track who employees talk to — as well as where and how actively. “A manager can monitor who speaks up at meetings and who spends more time at the coffee machine than their desk,reported by Forbes. As more devices in the workplace become connected and have embedded sensors, then the work environment will become increasingly data rich.

The reason the devices around us will need to have embedded sensors is simple. We just don’t have the real estate on our body to wear a sensor to tell us everything we might want to know. Imagine going to a meeting with people who you not know. As you walk into the room, your smart watch triggers a sensor in the doorway, which now lets everyone in the room know you have arrived. As a portfolio about you flashes in front of their eyes, a quick introduction to each person in the room simultaneously scrolls inside your specially enabled eyeglasses.

More Here

 

Data & Visualizations

 

 

View It

Are Robots Taking The Jobs ?

 

 

 

They’re coming to your house, to your doctor’s office, to your car, and to your favorite eatery. By 2025, technologists believe artificial intelligence will permeate  day-to-day life. obviously. Robots are going to take some human jobs. Machines have been displacing humans this way for centuries. What’s less clear is whether the overall economic and employment picture for humans will be bleaker or brighter as a result. On one hand, giving robots some human jobs will free up humans to focus on things that only we can do. Then again, while some highly-skilled workers will thrive in this robot-filled future, many, many others are likely to be forced into lower-paying jobs at best—”or permanent unemployment at worst. Experts are  evenly split on what this will mean for society. About 48 percent of them said they believe robots will have displaced “significant” number of blue-collar and white-collar workers in the next 10 years, which will widen the income gap, exacerbate unemployment, and make life generally worse for a lot of people. But 52 percent of those surveyed predict that robots won’t displace more jobs than they create by 2025. While many existing jobs will be turned over to the machines, this cohort says, “human ingenuity will create new jobs, industries, and ways to make a living, just as it has been doing since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.”

HP’s IOT State Of The Union Study

It appears that two thirds of Internet of Things can be hacked. HP when using IOT devices found 70% of the most commonly used of these gadgets contain serious vulnerabilities.

Internet of Things State of the Union Study

Borrow A Robot At The Public Library

Peters Township Public Library is the first in Pennsylvania to offer the robots for borrowing.

The Chicago Public Library received 500 Finches donated by Google Chicago It is  the first library in the nation to have them available for people to take home. Finch was designed at CMU partially by Lauwers, who commercialized the technology in 2011 once he earned his doctorate in robotics from the university.  The robots were invented by a lab at Carnegie Mellon University. They are set up for use with more than a dozen of the most commonly used computer languages. Users hook the robots up to their home computer or laptops and download instructional tutorials from the company’s website

Each Finch is bound on a 15-foot cable that plugs into a USB port. Young children can work with the robot using a simple drag-and-drop system, while high school and college students can use programming languages such Java and Python. Peters Township Public Library purchased 10 Finches about a month ago. It allows users to check them out like library books.

Snowden Plans To Work On Privacy Technology

 

Edward Snowden has plans to work on technology to preserve personal data privacy and called on programmers to join his efforts. He spoke  via a Google Hangout  from Russia at the Hackers on Planet Earth Conference in New York.

More on This here

 

Library of The Year

Edmonton Public Library (EPL) of Alberta, Canada has been chosen, the 2014 Library of the Year by Library Journal magazine and Gale, part of Cengage Learning. Each year, this prestigious recognition goes to a public library that most profoundly demonstrates service to community, creativity, leadership and innovation in developing community programs. EPL serves one of Canada’s fastest growing cities through its 17 branches operated by more than 600 employees who last year answered nearly 2.5 million questions and facilitated 5.2 million library visits (with another 4.7 million visits via their website). Every three seconds someone is borrowing from EPL. Their social media popularity – with 20,000 Twitter followers and 9,000 Facebook fans – leads almost all North American urban libraries.

 EPL lacks the stereotypical image of library as a book repository and serves as a center of civic engagement. Community librarians at each branch integrate deeply with local institutions such as school districts, health centers and outreach groups in order to understand needs, eliminate barriers, and inform services and policies. their  makerspace – is a location dedicated to creating with technology such as 3D printers, game development software, a sound and recording studio and more. New branches have been designed or redesigned to focus on open space, collaboration, and sustainability, and a focus on lifelong learning, including online learning, helps ensure the success of individuals as well as the community.

 Cengage Learning is a leading educational content, technology and services company, that empowers educators and driving learner engagement through personalized services and course-driven digital solutions that bridge from the library to the classroom. Gale, part of Cengage Learning, serves the world’s information and education needs through its vast and dynamic content pools, which are used by students and consumers in their libraries, schools and on the Internet.

Library Journal  was founded in 1876, Library Journal is one of the oldest and most respected publications covering the library field. Over 75,000 library directors, administrators, and staff in public, academic, and special libraries read LJ. Library Journal reviews over 8000 books, audiobooks, videos, databases, and web sites annually, and provides coverage of technology, management, policy, and other professional concerns.

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American Libraries Vintage Posters

Take A Look At The American Library Association Archives Poster Collection@ The University of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign. The vintage collection  includes printed posters, rotogravures and architectural drawings of ALA divisions, committees, projects and events. Subjects include the work of the ALA during World War I and II, the 50th Anniversary of the ALA in 1926, the Andrew Carnegie Centenary in 1935, librarianship recruitment, and general library and readership promotion.

 

Summer Reads

 

I Said Yes to Everything

A Memoir

Lee Grant

Academy-Award winning actress Lee Grant writes of her early success on the New York stage, the devastating effects of being blacklisted in the 1950s and her glamorous return to Hollywood. (July)

Stand Up Straight and Sing!

Jessye Norman

Opera singer Jessye Norman chronicles her years in music, the challenges she faced and the strong women who gave her the tools and inspiration to succeed. (May)

Mambo in Chinatown

Jean Kwok

A young Chinese-American woman is torn between her family duties and tradition in New York’s Chinatown and the contemporary life she discovers through ballroom dancing. (June)

I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You

 Courtney Maum

After basking in the brief glow of a successful solo exhibition in Paris, a British artist continues to pine for his mistress while attempting to reignite his marriage. (June)

The Good Girl

Mary Kubica

A young art teacher’s one-night stand turns into a failed abduction in this twist-filled debut thriller narrated from four perspectives — one of them the kidnapper’s. (July

The Director

David Ignatius

In this post-Edward Snowden thriller from a Washington Post columnist, the new CIA director’s attempt to stop a leak lands him in a shadowy world of hackers and murder. (June)

The Farm

Tom Rob Smith

Daniel doesn’t know who to trust when his dad calls to say his mother had a breakdown, and then his mother tells him of a crime that implicates his father in this thriller from the author of “Child 44.” (June)

Eyes on You

Kate White

This thriller set in the New York media world, from the former editor of Cosmopolitan, features a TV host who must figure out why someone is stalking and undermining her in increasingly dangerous ways. (June)

The Silkworm

A Cormoran Strike Novel

Robert Galbraith, read by Robert Glenister

J.K. Rowling returns under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. This second in the Cormoran Strike series features the case of a missing novelist whose tell-all manuscript, if published, would ruin lives. (June)

Think Like a Freak

The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain

By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, read by Stephen J. Dubner

The authors of “Freakonomics” continue their mission of changing the way people solve problems, applying advice to business, politics and personal issues. (May)

Uncertain Justice

The Roberts Court and the Constitution

Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz

Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe and SCOTUSblog.com contributor Joshua Matz take a hard look at how the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has reinterpreted the Constitution. (June)

France’s Interactive media Library

 

 

The ‘Mont de Marsan Mediatheque‘ an interactive media library located in the south-west of France. The project was recently nominated for the London Design Museum‘s ‘Designs of the Year 2014 Award’ in the category of architecture.

A clean envelope of pure geometric lines, a 197 ft x 197 ft square, the building complies with the classical layout yet contrasts with its austerity by offsetting the system with a corner opening onto the city. Its facades reflect the surrounding barracks with a respectful, deferential mirror.

The Legislative Explorer Data & Visualization

 

Legislative Explorer is an interactive visualization site, where you can  explore actual patterns of lawmaking in Congress, compare bills and resolutions introduced by Senators and Representatives. Follow their progress from the beginning to the end of a two year Congress. You can filter by topic, type of legislation, chamber, party, member, or even search for a specific bill.

Best Free AntiVirus Tools Today

 

AVAST-This antivirus tool also protects against spyware. Has “Remote Assistance,” which means the software can help a third-party access your computer if it becomes infected. This software also updates itself, so you don’t have to worry about updating your antivirus software

AVG-The AVG Antivirus free 2013 software is the industry standard when it comes to free, easy-to-download antivirus software. It’s exceptional at blocking malware, and the setup is easy; you can access the download and setup malware protection in under five minutes. AVG is compatible with most operating systems, from Windows to Linux to Mac OS. The free package offers basic malware protection and is a phenomenal zero-cost option, but there is also a premium version if you want a more comprehensive Internet security system that protects your files, links, and personal data.

BITDEFENDER-Removes and defends against viruses, Trojans, rootkits, spyware, and all types of malicious software is totally doing its job.

 

COMODO-Comodo runs on Windows and Mac. It’s a good free program for identifying viruses, but you must delete any of the viruses it detects yourself. The software automatically updates for you.

MALWAREBYTES ANTI MALWARE–This antivirus tool also protects against spyware. One of its strongest features is “Remote Assistance,” which means the software can help a third-party access your computer if it becomes infected. This software also updates itself, so you don’t have to worry about updating your antivirus software

 

 

Google Technology & Captcha

Different CAPTCHA services will differentiate humans and bots in different ways. For example, distorting and skewing a series of letters making them too difficult for automated programmes to decipher, but not so difficult for humans to figure them out. Researchers have found that Google’s Street View technology can decipher them with 99 percent accuracy. A company that Google bought in 2009, reCAPTCHA, takes a different approach that not only provides the security of a CAPTCHA form, but actually serves another purpose. reCAPTCHA is used to digitize old printed materials such as books. It presents the user with two words that could not initially be read by computers – one that has previously been verified by a number of users and one that has not. It can simultaneously determine if a user is human and partially verify a new word.
With CAPTCHAs, it’s understandable that individuals with malicious intent may want to crack them. Google does its own research into this so that it can improve the security of the reCAPTCHA service. As part of its research, it has applied the technology it uses for identifying house numbers in Street View to identifying CAPTCHA words.
The research found that the technology could “decipher the hardest distorted text puzzles from reCAPTCHA with over 99 percent accuracy.”As a result, Google suggests that answering a distorted image puzzle should not be the only factor used to distinguish a human from a machine.

Digital Public Library Of America

The Digital Public Library of America (http://dp.la),is one year old this week. In celebration, DPLA is proud to announce the addition of six major new partners and other significant milestones as it enters its second year.

The New York Public Library (NYPL) this week expanded access to the full breadth of its digital collections through its partnership with DPLA, a major increase over its initial contribution of 14,000 records at DPLA’s launch. Over 1 million digitized items from throughout the Library’s research holdings are available, significantly increasing DPLA’s offerings by nearly 20%.

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http://dp.la/

The Heartbleed Bug

Several websites running SSL encryption, such as Airbnb, Pinterest, USMagazine.com, NASA, and Creative Commons, among others, were exposed to a major security bug called Heartbleed on Monday. A member of Google’s security team and a software security firm called Codenomicon discovered the bug. A list  on GitHub, exposed sites vulnerable to the bug as well.

The bug affects web servers running Apache and Nginx software, and it has the potential to expose private information users enter into websites, applications, web email and even instant messages.

The Heartbleed bug has the ability to allow malicious operators to defeat this security layer and capture passwords as well as forge authentication cookies and obtain other private information.

The bug has affected many popular websites and services  such as Gmail and Facebook .

A security patch for the bug was announced on Monday, but many websites are still playing catch up.

Obama Administation Cedes Control Of The Internet

The Obama Administration announced plans to cede control of the  Internet to the Internet  Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an international body  and non-profit group based out of California,  that seeks larger control, over the Internet.

ICANN’s primary role is over the registration of domain names.  The  ability to allow or delete a domain name effectively allows ICANN to choose who  can, and cannot, maintain an Internet site. Who can, and cannot, publish content  online.

This change lets the contract between the Commerce Department and the  Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to expire.

Newt Gingrich has tweeted about this announcement:

International groups have been pressuring the United States for years to cede  control of the Internet to an “International” body.  Everyone can  understand why these groups want that.  It erodes American power and it  degrades liberty online.
We’ll wait and see what happens next

 

A government motion to retain metadata that it collects as part of its dragnet approach was denied. A judge for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) cited that the government’s argument for permission to retain the data was “unpersuasive”.

The Court recognized that, while there is a need to protect and preserve data in litigations, the existing law is sufficient and there is no need to continue to expand the government’s ability to spy on Americans. It also pointed out that the dragnet approach that the government uses to collect this data almost certainly includes data pertaining to individuals who are not the subject of an investigation.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of decisions that are calling into question the spying practices that have been brought into light by the Edward Snowden document revelations. Toward the end of last year, another judge made a decision that calls into question the legitimacy of the government’s metadata program as a whole. The judge granted an injunction that would require the termination of the metadata program and the government to destroy all of the metadata it had collected.The decision about whether to continue with metadata collection is now in the hands of the  Appellate Court.

Metadata & The East German Secret Police

In her book” Dragnet Nation”, Julia Anwgin of the Wall Street Journal, provides a report on the East German secret police aka Stasi. She says the East German secret police, known as the Stasi, were an infamously intrusive secret police force. But their spycraft — while incredibly invasive — was also technologically primitive by today’s standards. While researching her book Dragnet Nation, she obtained hand drawn social network graph and other files from the Stasi Archive in Berlin, where German citizens can see files kept about them and media can access some files, with the names of the people who were monitored removed

The graphic shows forty-six connections, linking a target to various people (an
“aunt,” “Operational Case Jentzsch,” presumably Bernd Jentzsch, an East German
poet who defected to the West in 1976), places (“church”), and meetings (“by
post, by phone, meeting in Hungary”).

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Austin Texas To Host SXSW Interactive Festival-Assange/Snowden Virtual Live

 

This year, NSA leaker Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks founder and secret spiller Julian Assange will hold a live video conference March 8, 2014 11:00 a.m.  Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and Anne Wojcicki, CEO of genetics testing company 23andMe.

Snowden and Assange will be appearing appear on live video since both are living as fugitives, in Moscow and the Ecuadorian embassy in London. 

A Virtual Conversation With Julian Assange video conference -March 8, 2014 11:00 a.m. Texas time

A Virtual Conversation With Edward Snowden  video conference-March 10,2014 11:00 a.m. Texas time

The South by Southwest Conferences & Festivals offers original music, independent films, and emerging technologies. Fostering creative and professional growth alike, SXSW is the premier destination for discovery of emerging trends.

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Boeings Self Destructing Smartphone

Boeing is launching a self-destructing smartphone to help spies, diplomats and others keep secrets secure.the phone has are no serviceable parts and any attempted servicing or replacing of parts would destroy the product.
The Boeing Black phone is manufactured as a sealed device both with epoxy around the casing and with screws, the heads of which are covered with tamper proof covering to identify attempted disassembly.

Attempting to break open the casing of the device would trigger functions that would delete the data and software contained within the device and make the device inoperable.”

The US-based aerospace group says its Boeing Black phone, which uses encryption both in its stored data and transmission will use the Google Android system with “enhanced software security.” . In addition to encrypting calls, attempting to open the casing of the Boeing Black Smartphone deletes all data and renders the device inoperable. The secure phone marks an extension of the communications arm of the Chicago-based aerospace and defense contractor, which is best known for jetliners and fighter planes. 

“Boeing’s Black phone will be sold primarily to government agencies and companies engaged in contractual activities with those agencies that are related to defense and homeland security,” Boeing says “The device will be marketed and sold in a manner such that low level technical and operational information about the product will not be provided to the general public. Detailed technical information distributed at trade shows will be limited or protected by non-disclosure agreements.”Boeing has not announced when the phone would be available, but a spokeswoman said it would be “soon.”

The device is not be confused with the new encrypted Blackphone, developed by the US secure communications firm Silent Circle with Spanish manufacturer Geeksphone. The Blackphone, which is on sale to the general public, offers encrypted communications and protection against snooping.

Top College & University Majors

American colleges are still the number one choice for international students and have the highest number of world ranked universities. Studying in the USA gives you the chance to expand your career options, explore a huge and diverse nation, and learn from internationally-renowned teachers and researchers at US colleges and Graduate schools.

The choice of universities in the USA is the largest in the world. An American college is usually smaller and offers only undergraduate degrees, while a university also offers graduate degrees.

Top Majors

1. Business Administration and Management/Commerce

2. Psychology

3. Nursing

4. Biology/Biological Sciences

5. English Language and Literature

6. Education

7. Economics

8. Communications Studies/Speech Communication and Rhetoric

9. Political Science and Government

10. Computer and Information Sciences

Hot Degrees

Bachelor’s in Finance

Bachelor’s in Computer Science

Bachelor’s in Marketing

Bachelor’s in Health Care Administration

Bachelor’s in Business Administration

Technology Trends For 2014

 

Major companies are working on data encryption to detour NSA from snooping

Smartphones will be able to connect with our homes

No-Touch interfaces

3D printing

Wearable technology

Cloud services

 

When You Just Cant Mind Your own Business

The biggest fool is one who minds the business of others rather than minding his very own

NSA,GCHQ,Squeaky Dolphin, Snowden, Lookout James Bond/Our Man Flint

 

Snowden docs revealed  how the NSA and GCHQ are collecting unencrypted data concerning YouTube views, Facebook likes and Twitter messages via the taps they have on various internet backbone cables. These are not from the companies themselves, but rather from unencrypted across the internet, which the NSA and GCHQ  can easily grab.

GCHQ insists that when it’s scooping up this kind of data, it’s just using it in the aggregate to look up interesting data, connections and trends, rather than spying on anyone individually.

Surveillance On One & Not The Other?

 

President Barack Obama is expected to announce recommended changes to the National Security Agency’s surveillance policies this Friday, as a debate continues about a controversial phone-number collecting policy. The revelations last year by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that the NSA kept phone metadata (phone numbers, phone locations, and phone-call durations) in large data warehouses, using blanket permission from a secret court, set off a firestorm of controversy and debate.

In the meantime a new Smartphone aka Blackphone  claims to be NSA proof. Blackphone comes from cryptographer Phil Zimmermann, whose company Silent Circle is partnering with Spanish start-up Geeksphone for the project. Blackphone, powered by a security-oriented Android build named PrivatOS, is a carrier- and vendor-independent smartphone giving individuals and organizations the ability to make and receive secure phone calls, exchange secure texts, transfer and store files, and video chat without compromising user privacy on the device.

The smartphone will run a modified version of Android called PrivatOS, built with the intent of making all standard tasks secure.

“You can make and receive secure phone calls; exchange secure texts; exchange and store secure files; have secure video chat; browse privately; and anonymise your activity through a VPN,” the Blackphone website says.

The Blackphone handset is unlocked and works with any GSM carrier. Though it’s unclear exactly what’s going on under the hood, the company claims that the hardware is a “top performer” if you look at benchmarks. More importantly, there isn’t a lot of detail yet about how the privacy measures are going to work other than encrypted messaging, “secure telephony”, and privacy measures baked into the hardware, including on the CPU. Pricing has not been announced, but Blackphone will open up pre-orders on February 24 during the first day of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It is not known if the device will be available in Australia

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CES 2014

Check This One Out

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Programming Trends: “Hello World”

 

Whats Hot: Preprocessors

Not: Full language stacks

 Whats  Hot: JavaScript MV* frameworks

Not: JavaScript files

 

Whats   Hot: CSS frameworks
Not: Generic Cascading Style Sheets

Whats Hot: Almost big data (analysis without Hadoop)
Not: Big data (with Hadoop)

Hot: Android
Not: iOS

 

 

The Growth of STEM Jobs

 

 Science,Technology, Engineering,  Math 
The map also reveals pockets of the U.S. where key industries are clustered among the largest cities:
• Motor vehicles parts manufacturing traditionally focused in Rust Belt cities, but Southern metros such as Birmingham, Louisville and Nashville are emerging in this sector.
• Oil and gas extraction is a major driver of high-wage job growth in Texas, Oklahoma and the surrounding region. It’s also becoming a driver of job growth in Denver.
• General freight trucking is concentrated in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast (Nashville, Memphis, Jacksonville, etc.), where transportation routes are plentiful and huge population centers are in close range.
• Software publishing has a big presence in Silicon Valley, but is also growing in major markets such as Seattle, Boston, Atlanta and Denver.
• General medical and surgical hospitals are driving jobs in Columbus, Chicago, Baltimore, Boston, Rochester and St. Louis, among others.
• Highway, street and bridge construction has seen an uptick in jobs in Baton Rouge, Oklahoma City and San Antonio as cities rebuild after natural disasters and address other public concerns.

In a separate study of the same 100 metros, CareerBuilder and EMSI discovered which metros have added the most jobs per capita post-recession:

1. Salt Lake City, UT – added over 62,000 jobs since 2010, up 9 percent (534 new jobs per 10,000 people)
Originally a farming community, Salt Lake City has grown into an industrial center for the state. Industries that have experienced strong job growth in this metro include electronic shopping and mail order houses (up 43 percent), software publishing (up 28 percent), specialized freight trucking (up 23 percent) and credit intermediation (up 22 percent).

2. Grand Rapids-Wyoming, MI – added over 39,000 jobs since 2010, up 10 percent (513 new jobs per 10,000 people)
This manufacturing heavyweight has benefitted from the rebound of production jobs after the recession. The metro saw job increases in various manufacturing segments such as plastics product (up 35 percent), motor vehicle parts (up 33 percent), metalworking machinery (up 30 percent) and office furniture (up 12 percent). Hospitals also accounted for an upswing in jobs (up 16 percent).

3. San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara, CA – added over 91,000 jobs since 2010, up 10 percent (498 new jobs per 10,000 people)
It’s no surprise that software publishing (up 30 percent), computer systems design (up 19 percent), data processing and hosting (up 16 percent), computer manufacturing (up 12 percent) and scientific research (up 9 percent) are big contributors to employment for this Silicon Valley metro.

4. Austin–Round Rock– San Marcos, TX – added over 90,000 jobs since 2010, up 11 percent (488 new jobs per 10,000 people)
Austin has made a name for itself as a technology and business hub, fueling job growth in management, scientific and consulting services (up 35 percent), computer systems design (up 35 percent), data processing and hosting (up 35 percent) and semiconductor manufacturing (up 17 percent).

5. Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown, TX – added over 281,000 jobs since 2010, up 10 percent (451 new jobs per 10,000 people)
Energy-rich Houston continues to see job growth in utility system construction (specifically, oil and gas pipeline, up 45 percent), mining support (up 38 percent), metal and mineral (except petroleum) wholesalers (up 31 percent), oil and gas extraction (up 25 percent), and architectural and engineering services (up 21 percent).

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Two Stanford Students Reveal NSA Metadata Threat Is Bigger Than Admitted

One of the main issues concerning  metadata is  that data  does not overtly identify the caller or the content of the call.  Two graduate students at Stanford University decided to  conduct a small study and quickly determined that it was irrelevant whether the NSA database of metadata had names, because the associated names were readily obtainable. The study was conducted using 5,000 phone numbers obtained from interested participants via crowd sourcing. Using just Facebook, Google Places and Yelp, the two were able to put names with 27.1% of the numbers. 

They then took 100 random names from their crowdsourced list, 13 of which had names attached from the  social media hunt, and ran various Google searches on them. They nailed another 60 names. Then they ran the 100 numbers through Intelius, a cheap (and not always reliable) online aggregator, and snagged another 18 names.

So after spending a few hours of research and even fewer dollars, the student snoopers identified names for 91 out of 100 numbers.

Their conclusion? “If a few academic researchers can get this far this quickly, it’s difficult to believe the NSA would have any trouble identifying the overwhelming majority of American phone numbers.”