Sunday, June 16, 2013

Rand Paul's Plan To Challenge Surveillance

Rand Paul lays out plans for legal action over government surveillance

By Sean Sullivan, Updated: 

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced Thursday that he is taking steps toward bringing legal action against the government over its sweeping surveillance efforts.
“The president said he want a debate. It starts today,” Paul said at a Capitol Hill news conference, where he was joined by a handful of lawmakers as well as representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union and the conservative group FreedomWorks, among others.
Paul announced Sunday that he planned to file a class action lawsuit and discussed his intention in a subsequent interview on Wednesday, so Thursday’s announcement was not a surprise.
“Well, we are asking people who have been affected by this spying if they want to sue the government and say, you know what, this is unconstitutional,” Paul told Fox News Channel on Wednesday. “And since everyone’s phone records were spied upon, I would guess that that includes millions and millions of people. … So what we’re saying is, is that the government has no right through a single warrant to search everyone’s records.”
Paul said Thursday that more than 250,000 people have signed on to a petition indicating an intent to be part of a lawsuit.
The ACLU filed a lawsuit Tuesday that challenges the constitutionality of the surveillance effort that collects the telephone records of millions of Americans.
Paul is still exploring the specific avenues through which he can file a lawsuit. For example, Paul said he is still working to determine whether he can join other lawsuits. For now, he said, the goal is to provide Americans who share his concerns with a gathering point.
“Right now we are a portal for people to come and collect and say we are unhappy with what the government’s doing with our privacy,” he said.
The senator said that discourse about the government’s surveillance efforts is a good thing, not a harmful development.
“What would be wrong is if someone released the computer programming code about how we are doing this — that’s a secret,” he said.
Imagine that one day you came home to find a shiny little bubble of one-way glass in an upper corner of every single room, and a notice left on your kitchen table: “As required by the Safe Society Act, we have installed remotely controlled cameras throughout your home. (Also your office.) But don’t worry! They’ll probably only be activated if the government believes that a non-US citizen might have entered this building.” Would that give you warm fuzzy feelings of safety and security?
I ask because that’s a pretty good metaphor for what happened this week. I refer of course to PRISM. You may have noticed the flurry of reportsfollowed by a flurry of denials regarding the “top-secret National Security Administration data-mining program that taps directly into the Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple servers among others.”
Meanwhile, with (surprisingly) much less furore, the Wall Street Journal took the previous revelationthat the NSA “is secretly collecting phone record information for all U.S. calls on the Verizon network,” and expanded it considerably.

The New York Times, apparently. Hats off to them, and to Twitter; and shame on all the PRISM companies. The NYT’s report on PRISM is revealing.
Which is appalling enough right there: but let’s not lose sight of the even bigger and uglier picture, one which includes the WSJ’s claims. Going back to my cameras-in-the-home metaphor, until this week we all knew that the government could break in and install cameras in every home if they wanted to … but now we know they’ve actually done it. Oh, the ones in your home probably haven’t been turned on yet, but they’re there. They’ve been there for years.
And how has the government responded to these revelations? Mostly with frothing fury. Senator Dianne Feinstein immediately called for an investigation….into the leak. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called this “unauthorized disclosure of information” “reprehensible.”
That’s what really gets my blood boiling. There is no reasonable justification for keeping even theexistence of FISA requests and programs like PRISM secret. Does the NSA really think that its targets currently believe that all their online activity is perfectly safe and secure? Well, in the extremely unlikely and idiotic case that that was the reason for total secrecy, then hey, that barn has sure burned down now, hasn’t it?
The powers that be can shout “national security!” and “terrorism!” as stridently as they like, but it seems patently obvious to me that they’re just afraid that the American public might not like it if they find out how much they’re being spied on — and that their blanket surveillance programs might not be legal.
As Bruce Schneier points out, what we don’t know is far scarier than what we do. 
The sad thing is, this is typical of the Obama administration, which has already prosecuted twice as many whistleblowers as all previous presidential administrations combined. “I welcome this debate. And I think it’s healthy for our democracy… I think that’s good that we’re having this discussion,”Obama said yesterday. Hours later, Reuters reported: “President Barack Obama’s administration is likely to open a criminal investigation into the leaking of highly classified documents that revealed the secret surveillance of Americans’ telephone and email traffic.”
Page and Zuckerberg say “There needs to be a more transparent approach … the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish” and “We strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent about all programs aimed at keeping the public safe,” respectively. Too right. But the current administration has shown no real interest in greater openness, much less two-way transparency.
So the only other solution is for the tech world to do what it can to normalize end-to-end encryption of all online activity. Right now HTTPS can (probably) protect your data while it’s in transit between your apps and the Apple/Google/Microsoft/Yahoo servers; but if your government insists on star-chamber surveillance, then that’s no longer enough.
Instead we’ll need to start encrypting our communications all the way from sender to recipient. Security is hard, and there aren’t many good tools for this, yet. What’s more, this would be bad for Google’s business model. But if governments continue to pass and then stretch the bounds of outrageous and draconian laws like FISA, then it’s only a matter of time before angry techies make end-to-end encryption easier to use, and its use becomes widespread.
If there’s any thin silver lining to this debacle, it’s that by insisting on secrecy, and clandestine so-called “accountability,” governments are actually hastening how fast and how thoroughly the online data they so badly want will become unreadable. Given the contempt with which they’re currently treating the populace, I for one can’t wait.

Phones Leave a Telltale Trail

Phones Leave a Telltale Trail


The April robbery at the Cartier store in Chevy Chase, Md., was brazen and quick. After grabbing 13 watches valued at $131,000, the suspects fled in a waiting car and melted into traffic. It was one of more than a dozen similar capers that had stumped police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.


But, in recent weeks, the FBI was able to arrest two men. Cellphone records from Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile USA and Sprint Nextel Corp. placed the suspects near the Cartier store at the time of the robbery, as well as near other heists, the FBI alleged in court filings. The T-Mobile records also allegedly showed the phone moving along the same path traveled by the suspects as police chased them.
image
Reuters
Paula Broadwell's affair with former CIA Director David Petraeus was uncovered last year as a result of phone metadata in a stalking inquiry.

This kind of information is at the center of the debate unleashed after a contractor leaked the details of the National Security Agency's phone-data collection program. The NSA program wasn't used in the ongoing robbery investigation, but the concept is the same. The so-called metadata represents one element of the voluminous digital trail left by most Americans in their daily lives. Each individual crumb might seem insignificant, but combined and analyzed, this data gives police and spies alike one of the most powerful investigative tools ever devised.
The data doesn't include the speech in a phone call or words in an email, but includes almost everything else, including the model of the phone and the "to" and "from" lines in emails. By tracing metadata, investigators can pinpoint a suspect's location to specific floors of buildings. They can electronically map a person's contacts, and their contacts' contacts.

The NSA, through secret court orders served to U.S. telecommunications firms, scoops up metadata relating to almost all calls made into and within the U.S., which it can later query as part of a terror investigation. U.S. officials say that kind of work, in concert with other techniques, has helped thwart "dozens" of terrorist plots in the U.S. and overseas. Critics charge it represents an invasion of privacy.

The typical smartphone user can give off a total of nearly 100 pieces of highly technical data through calls, texts and other activities, according to research by Tracy Ann Kosa, a digital-privacy expert at the University of Ontario. This information includes the time that phones make contact with cellphone towers, the direction of the tower with respect to the phone and the signal strength at the time.

Ms. Kosa said much of the data is "insignificant on its own." But "every little piece counts," she said. "Think of it like footsteps—or calories."

One of the most dramatic examples of how metadata can be used came in the criminal investigation that separately uncovered retired Gen. David Petraeus's extramarital affair and ended his tenure as Central Intelligence Agency director.

An FBI investigation into a stalking complaint led agents to obtain location data from email addresses used to send the alleged threats, according to U.S. law-enforcement officials. FBI agents discovered the sender had used computers at a several hotels. Agents asked the hotels to provide lists of guests who'd used business centers around that time. That led them to Paula Broadwell, Mr. Petraeus's biographer. The data was used as probable cause to obtain a court order to monitor Ms. Broadwell's email accounts. Agents soon realized from her emails that the two were having an affair.
image

The woman who received the allegedly harassing emails, Tampa socialite Jill Kelley, said in a lawsuit filed later against the FBI that the bureau's investigation took off after agents took a single IP address from an email sent to her last June. The FBI said it closed the stalking investigation without filing any charges.

A U.S. law-enforcement official said the Petraeus case should not lead to privacy worries. The official said law enforcement is required to have a specific investigative purpose to collect and look at metadata.

Intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have been using metadata in their investigations for decades. Central Intelligence Agency officers routinely rifle through so-called pocket litter found on captured terrorist suspects and give information such as phone numbers to the NSA.

A cat-and-mouse game has evolved, with terror suspects frequently swapping SIM cards, or phone identification cards, to confuse intelligence agencies, former officials said. The U.S. has countered by devising how to monitor the phone and the SIM card separately.

"You keep pulling the thread. It's critical stuff," one former senior intelligence official said. "In every major terrorist operation or capture operation, metadata has played a huge role."

Some of the most important metadata, cellphone location information, varies depending on the area covered by a cell tower. In rural areas, one tower may serve wide swaths of territory, but in urban areas, towers are more targeted.

The number of cellular base stations that serve a single floor of an office building equaled or surpassed the number of standard cell towers in 2010 and continues to grow, University of Pennsylvania engineering professor Matt Blaze told Congress last year.

The increase in metadata has transformed the way intelligence agencies conduct investigations with domestic data. Traditionally, investigators had to meet various legal standards to collect any data, such as connecting the data they wanted to seize with a specific suspect.

Under the NSA phone program, the government collects domestic phone metadata without a specific investigative lead. Trained analysts only search the database in conjunction with a terrorism investigation, authorities say.

Intelligence agencies "basically reimpose at the level of analysis the standards you might ideally have for collection," said Timothy Edgar, a former top national-security privacy lawyer in the Bush and Obama administrations.

Mr. Edgar said the increasingly specific location data raises concerns about potential violations of Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Once a person can be located within a building, the monitoring more closely resembles a search that would traditionally require a warrant.

The NSA program is accompanied by privacy restrictions, Obama administration officials say. To search the database, the government must have "reasonable suspicion" that the basis for the query is "associated with a foreign terrorist organization," they say. Search warrants approved by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court are required before the contents of the calls may be monitored.

Some useful metadata isn't retained very long by phone companies, according to people familiar with the evidence-gathering. That could explain why in court orders phone companies have been instructed to turn over information daily.

The program's supporters note the Supreme Court has ruled the public has no reasonable expectation of privacy for information it turns over to a third party, such as a phone company. That 1979 ruling, however, predated cellphones. Moreover, cellphone technology has changed dramatically since the inception of the NSA data program in the early 2000s.

"On one hand, this could equip the government to electronically follow you around in public," said Jeremy Bash, until recently Pentagon chief of staff. "But even if they were to physically follow you around, you would not need a warrant for that," he said.

Mr. Bash added it is nonetheless "a fair question" whether metadata should trigger heightened Fourth Amendment scrutiny, because communications technology has changed so much.

"It's possible that 'dataveillance' could come under higher judicial scrutiny," he said, using a new term of art that means the ability to surveil people through their data trail.
—Devlin Barrett and Jennifer Valentino-DeVries contributed to this article.
Write to Evan Perez at evan.perez@wsj.com and Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

6 Ways To Learn Something New Online Everyday

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-ways-to-learn-something-new-online-everyday/?utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_source=2012-06-10

6 Ways To Learn Something New Online Everyday

learn something new everydayThe Internet is a double-edged sword – it can be used to procrastinate the day away, or it can be used to learn something new everyday. Here at MakeUseOf, we’re particularly focused on the latter. There are a lot of ways you can use the Internet to learn something new everyday in a matter of minutes.
We’ve put together a list of six ways you can learn something new on the Internet on a daily basis – some of it will take no more than 10 minutes, while others are in-depth and will require at least an hour’s worth of dedication from you. No matter what you choose, you’ll walk away far more enriched than when you started.
In addition to the sites listed below, TED is of course an additional resource which, it goes without saying, is a great way to learn something new. You can find quick and interestingvideos that are no longer than 5 minutes. Aside from TED, however, there are many more resources worth considering. In no particular order they are:

iTunes

learn something new everyday
If you’d rather listen than read, podcasts are the best way to go. iTunes has a great variety ofeducational podcasts where you can learn everything from a new language to self-defense, from photography to finance. We would also recommend searching the podcasts for topics that interest you because not all of them might be classified under ‘Education’. A lot of fascinating and impressive content can be found on iTunes U, with completely free podcasts courtesy of StanfordYaleHarvard and much much more.
Because a lot of these podcasts are already readily available on iTunes, you don’t have to wait in order to get to the next lesson, but it’s definitely a good idea to pace yourself and let all the new information sink in, one day at a time. Best of all, the podcasts are free, and if you have an iPhone, iPod or iPad, you can take them with you on the go.

Reddit

learn something new
For a less traditional approach to your learning process, Reddit can actually provide a unique and fun way to learn new things online. We’ve already pointed out 5 subreddits you should follow to learn cool stuff. The kind of information you’re going to find on these pages isn’t anywhere near the kind of information you’ll learn from a Harvard podcast. But it’s still fascinating, entertaining, and thought-provoking. And just because it’s Reddit doesn’t mean you won’t find interesting, serious and often-times controversial topics to learn about.

Wikipedia

learn something new
Any list about Internet learning would not be complete without the online encyclopedia - Wikipedia. Crammed with a wealth of information accessible on your computer or that you cansave for offline viewing, Wikipedia is a great source of information. Wikipedia alone can keep you busy for months on end, learning something new, to the point that MakeUseOf’s Dave Parrack came up with a list of 7 ways to learn something new everyday with Wikipedia.

HowStuffWorks

learn something new
If out of the ordinary knowledge is what you’re after – HowStuffWorks is the place to go. The site adresses topics you might never have thought of in the first place, like  10 cover ups that made things worse or the 10 worst things to donate after a disaster. HowStuffWorks is divided into a variety of categories including adventure, money, science, culture, and more.
A special mention goes to ZidBits for answering even more questions we never would have thought of asking. We just wish the site was updated more often. (There is still a significant backlog to go through though.)

Instructables

learn something new each day
Prefer to get your hands dirty? Instructables takes a hands-on approach and teaches you how to do all sorts of handy things. Recipes, crafts, jewelry, handy work, gardening, lifehacks and more are available on the website. What we love about Instructables is that there’s a little something in there for everyone – complicated tech hacks and outdoor fun and everything in between. And if you’re looking for a bit of inspiration (and motivation) check out theInstructables contest page. Enter the Chinese food contest to win a Kindle or the Fix It contestto win a MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer.
A site that deserves a special mention here if you’re particularly interested in complex tech hacks is Hack A Day, but the site is certainly not for the faint of heart.

Khan Academy

learn something new everyday
Khan Academy is right up there with Wikipedia as one of the most amazing treasure troves of information you can find online. In their own words, Khan Academy has a  library of over 4,100 videos ”on everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and hundreds of skills to practice.” Best of all – you can subscribe to specific courses or topics and have the content sent to your email in easy-to-digest sections. Khan Academy is the ultimate resource in free learning, and you can engage with other Khan Academy users in the comments section.
A special mention here goes to Coursera and its almost 400 courses from the likes of Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Brown University and more.
What sites would you add to this list to learn something new everyday? Let us know in the comments.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Word for the Day: Skeuomorphs

skeuomorph is a physical ornament or design on an object made to resemble another material or technique. Examples include pottery embellished with imitation rivets reminiscent of similar pots made of metal,[1] or a software calendar application which displays the days organised on animated month pages in imitation of a paper desk calendar.[2]

Skeuomorphs are deliberately employed to make the new look comfortably old and familiar, or are simply habits too deeply ingrained to wash away

Apple, while under the direction of Steve Jobs, was known for its wide usage of skeuomorphic designs in various applications. The debate over the merits of Apple's extensive use of skeuomorphism became the subject of substantial media attention in October 2012, a year after Jobs' death, largely as the result of the reported resignation of Scott Forstall, described as "the most vocal and high-ranking proponent of the visual design style favored by Mr. Jobs". Apple designer Jonathan Ive, who took over some of Forstall's responsibilities and had "made his distaste for the visual ornamentation in Apple’s mobile software known within the company", was expected to move the company toward a less skeuomorphic aesthetic.[15]  

more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph

Skeuomorph


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Simulated woodgrain on automobiles is a skeuomorph, such as this station wagon which uses no actual wood construction
skeuomorph is a physical ornament or design on an object made to resemble another material or technique. Examples include pottery embellished with imitation rivets reminiscent of similar pots made of metal,[1] or a software calendar application which displays the days organised on animated month pages in imitation of a paper desk calendar.[2]

Contents

  [hide

Pronunciation and etymology [edit]

Skeuomorph is pronounced /ˈskjuːəmɔrf/ or [skyoo-uh-mawrf]. It is compounded from the Greekskeuos, σκεῦος (container or tool), and morphê, μορφή (shape). The term has been applied to material objects since 1890,[3] and is now used to describe computer interfaces.[4]

Definition and purpose [edit]

A similar alternative definition of skeuomorph is "an element of design or structure that serves little or no purpose in the artifact fashioned from the new material but was essential to the object made from the original material".[5] This definition is narrower in scope and ties skeuomorphs to changes in materials, as it focuses on the cultural history behind the physical object and how that influences the evolution of the object's design.[6]
Skeuomorphs are deliberately employed to make the new look comfortably old and familiar, or are simply habits too deeply ingrained to wash away.[4] Donald Norman, an academic in the fields of design, usability, and cognitive science describes cultural constraints, interactions with the system in question that are learned only through culture, which give rise to skeuomorphism. Norman also popularized perceived affordances, where the user can tell what an object affords, or will do, based on its appearance, which skeuomorphism can make easy.[6]
The concept of skeuomorphism overlaps other design concepts as well. Mimesis is an imitation, coming directly from the Greek.[7] Another, archetype, is the original idea or model that is emulated, where the emulations can be skeuomorphic.[8] Skeuomorphism is parallel to, but different from, path dependence in technology, where functional behavior is maintained when the reasons for its design no longer exist.

Physical skeuomorphs [edit]

Historically, high-status items such as the Minoans' very elaborate and rare silver cups were often recreated for the mass market using ceramics, a cheaper material, allowing the common man to have the appearance of elite status.[9] In certain cases, efforts were made to recreate the rivets in the metal originals by adding pellets of clay to the pottery version. There is also evidence of skeuomorphism in material transitions. Leather and clay pottery often carry over traits from the wooden counterparts of previous generations. Clay pottery has also been found bearing rope shaped protrusions, pointing to craftsmen seeking familiar shapes and processes while working with new materials.[10] In this context, skeuomorphs exist as traits sought in other objects, either for their social desirability or psychological comforts.[4]
In the modern era, cheaper plastic items often attempt to mimic more expensive wooden and metal products though they are only skeuomorphic if new ornamentation references original functionality,[11] such as molded screw heads in molded plastic items.

Digital skeuomorphs [edit]

The note-taking application Evernoteemploys a skeuomorph of physical notebooks to represent digital collections defined by the user.
Many computer programs have a skeuomorphic graphical user interface that emulates objects in the physical world. An example of this trend was the 1998 RealThings package.[12] A more extreme example is that many music synthesis and audio processing software packages closely emulate physical musical instruments and audio equipment. Functional input controls like knobs, buttons, switches and sliders are often careful duplicates of the ones on the original physical device being emulated. Some software even includes graphical elements of the original design that serve no user interface function: handles, screws and ventilation holes for example.
Even systems that do not employ literal images of some physical object frequently contain skeuomorphic elements such as slider bars that emulate linear potentiometers and tabs that behave like tabbed file folders. Skeuomorphs need not be visual. The shutter-click sound emitted by most camera phones when taking a picture is an auditory skeuomorph - it does not come from a mechanical shutter, which camera phones lack, but from a sound file in the phone's operating system. Another example is the swiping hand gesture for turning the "pages" or screens of a tablet.

Arguments for skeuomorphism in digital design [edit]

The arguments in favor of skeuomorphic design are that it makes it easier for those familiar with the original device to use the digital emulation, and that it is visually appealing. Interactions with computer devices are purely cultural and learned, so once a process is learned in society, it is difficult to remove. Norman describes this process as a form of cultural heritage.[6]

Arguments against skeuomorphism in digital design [edit]

The arguments against skeuomorphic design are that skeuomorphic interface elements use metaphors that are more difficult to operate and take up more screen space than standard interface elements; that this breaks operating system interface design standards; that it causes an inconsistent look and feel between applications;[13] that skeuomorphic interface elements rarely incorporate numeric input or feedback for accurately setting a value; that many users may have no experience with the original device being emulated; and that skeuomorphic design limits creativity by grounding the experience to physical counterparts.[14]
Apple, while under the direction of Steve Jobs, was known for its wide usage of skeuomorphic designs in various applications. The debate over the merits of Apple's extensive use of skeuomorphism became the subject of substantial media attention in October 2012, a year after Jobs' death, largely as the result of the reported resignation of Scott Forstall, described as "the most vocal and high-ranking proponent of the visual design style favored by Mr. Jobs". Apple designer Jonathan Ive, who took over some of Forstall's responsibilities and had "made his distaste for the visual ornamentation in Apple’s mobile software known within the company", was expected to move the company toward a less skeuomorphic aesthetic.[15]

Gallery