Nujna orodja sodobnega novinarja?

As a journalist, Laura Poitras was the quiet mastermind behind the publication of Edward Snowden’s unprecedented NSA leak. As a filmmaker, her new movie Citizenfour makes clear she’s one of the most important directors working in documentary today. And when it comes to security technology, she’s a serious geek.
In the closing credits of Citizenfour, Poitras took the unusual step of adding an acknowledgment of the free software projects that made the film possible: The roll call includes the anonymity software Tor, the Tor-based operating system Tails, the anonymous upload system SecureDrop, GPG encryption, Off-The-Record (OTR) encrypted instant messaging, hard disk encryption software Truecrypt, and GNU Linux. All of that describes a technical setup that goes well beyond the precautions taken by most national security reporters, not to mention documentary filmmakers.
(Vir: Laura Poitras on the Crypto Tools That Made Her Snowden Film Possible | WIRED)

Crowd-Sourcing, Surveillance, and the Era of the Synopticon


LSE, 17.3.2015, London

LSE IDEAS is organising the final public lecture in the Philippe Roman Lecture Series 2014-15, entitled ‘Crowd-Sourcing,Surveillance, and the Era of the Synopticon’ on Tuesday, 17th March 2015.

“Big data” poses a massive challenge to the democratic accountability. Over the last four years the U.S. has quadrupled the amount of information that it classifies annually. This growth has become unmanageable, causing massive leaks, an unprecedented number of prosecutions, and a dysfunctional declassification system that is breaking under the strain. Luckily, the information revolution has also provided citizens with the means to address these challenges, such as crowd-sourcing the otherwise impossible task of creating a virtual archive of declassified government documents. By mining this data, we can detect patterns in classification and declassification, and automated tools to identify records that really do have to be kept secret. No longer just a tool of surveillance, data-mining can also help preserve the principle of open government.




Zaradi Facebooka v samico? Bizarna zaporniška pravila v letu 2015!

V zaporih v ameriški Južni Karolini je uporaba socialnih omrežij prekršek. Če bi ostali le pri tem, bi najbrž zadevo sprejeli, a zadeva gre veliko globlje. Zapis na facebooku je kategoriziran kot prekršek prvega nivoja (Level 1), kjer se druži skupaj z umori, posilstvi, tatvinami ipd. znotraj zapora. Vsak dan, ko se posameznik vključi v socialno omrežje, šteje kot en tovrstni prekršek, ne glede na to, kaj na facebooku objavlja.
Kazen za tovrstne prekrške, ki jih, mimogrede, določa uprava zapora sama, je osamitev obsojenca v samici.
Zadeva je tako absurdna, da so bili nekateri obsojenci zaradi večkratne uporabe facebooka obsojeni na več desetletij samice. Tako absurdna, da je samic v zaporu zmanjkalo.
Doba velikih podatkov? Doba velike neumnosti!

via Wikimedia Commons

Vint Cerf opozarja na težave, ki jih prinaša digitalizacija podatkov

Piles of digitised material – from blogs, tweets, pictures and videos, to official documents such as court rulings and emails – may be lost forever because the programs needed to view them will become defunct, Google’s vice-president has warned. ...

Cerf called for the development of “digital vellum” to preserve old software and hardware so that out-of-date files could be recovered no matter how old they are. ... “We are nonchalantly throwing all of our data into what could become an information black hole without realising it. We digitise things because we think we will preserve them, but what we don’t understand is that unless we take other steps, those digital versions may not be any better, and may even be worse, than the artefacts that we digitised,” Cerf told the Guardian. “If there are photos you really care about, print them out.”

Ancient civilisations suffered no such problems, because histories written in cuneiform on baked clay tablets, or rolled papyrus scrolls, needed only eyes to read them. To study today’s culture, future scholars would be faced with PDFs, Word documents, and hundreds of other file types that can only be interpreted with dedicated software and sometimes hardware too. ...

Inventing new technology is only half the battle, though. More difficult still could be navigating the legal permissions to copy and store software before it dies. When IT companies go out of business, or stop supporting their products, they may sell the rights on, making it a nightmarish task to get approval.

“To do this properly, the rights of preservation might need to be incorporated into our thinking about things like copyright and patents and licensing. We’re talking about preserving them for hundreds to thousands of years,” said Cerf. (Vir: Google boss warns of 'forgotten century' with email and photos at risk | Technology | The Guardian)

Zakaj ne bi kar takoj ukinili obvestil o piškotkih na spletni strani?

Ima to dodatno klikanje (domnevni "informed consent" za sprejem piškotka), ko prideš na novo spletno stran, dejansko kak smisel? Tudi najbolj zloben sledilni piškotek ni niti približno primerljiv s sistemi nadzora, ki jih je razkril Snowden? Zakaj potem še trpimo to dodatno klikanje? A je v planu, da se ta piškotna-neumnost ukine?

Doktorske štipendije, The Open University, VB

Na Open univerzi v Londonu ponujajo 6 štipendij doktorskim študentom na področju nadzorovanja, posebej učinkov velikega podatkovja na družbeno sortiranje.

Rok: 9. marec 2015.

For detailed information and how to apply for the studentships go to www3.open.ac.uk/employment, call Anne Foward, Student Coordinator, on 01908 655364 or e-mail CREET-student-enquiries@open.ac.uk.

O varnosti podatkov, shranjenih v avtomobilih

V prvi letošnji številki Motorevije (januar – februar 2015) je objavljen članek o težavah, ki jih lahko povzroči pomanjkljiva varnostna shema pri uporabi sodobne tehnologije (temelječe tudi na velikem podatkovju) v avtomobilih.

Nemški proizvajalec vozil BMW je moral zakrpati varnostno luknjo v več kot 2,2 milijona svojih avtomobilov (tudi v Sloveniji).  Avtomobili te znamke, ki so opremljeni s sistemom Connected Drive, ob pomoči v avto vgrajene SIM kartice omogočajo prenos oziroma izmenjavo podatkov z izdelovalcem avtomobila, Connected Drive pa na podlagi ustrezne aplikacije za mobilni telefon omogoča tudi nekatere ukaze, kot na primer odprtje vrat ali aktiviranje hupe. Izmenjava podatkov in izvajanje ukazov bi moralo biti seveda omogočeno le lastniku oz. uporabniku avtomobila, vendar se je izkazalo, da ni bilo čisto tako. Strokovnjaki nemškega avtomobilskega kluba ADAC so namreč konec lanskega leta pri preverjanju funkcije za klic na pomoč ugotovili, da imajo BMW-jevi avtomobili varnostno luknjo, zaradi katere je bilo mogoče prek signala mobilne telefonije v nekaj minutah od zunaj odpreti avto, ne da bi to pustilo kakršnekoli sledi. Zaradi varnostne luknje so bili na voljo tudi podatki o lokaciji avtomobila, hitrosti vožnje, omogočeno je bilo prebiranje zasebnih e-mail sporočil, sledenje avtomobila na daljavo ipd..

BMW se je lotil odpravljanja težave takoj, ko je bil na to opozorjen (podatki o tem so bili javno objavljeni šele, ko je bila težava odpravljena). Krpanje varnostne luknje so izvedli preko signala mobilne telefonije in na daljavo ustrezno nadgradili varnostno zaščito v avtomobilih.

Celoten članek je dostopen na spletni strani Motorevije (link).

In kot se za »krasni novi svet Velikega podatkovja« spodobi J, lastnik avtomobila sam ne more ugotoviti, ali je bila varnostna zaščita v njegovem avtomobilu nadgrajena, ampak lahko to preveri le pri proizvajalcu oz. na servisu …