Tag: education

[ECP] Educational CyberPlayGround K12 Newsletters

Student Debt / Strike Debt

Student Debt
The Lost Purpose of School Reform Diane Ravitch
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/apr/02/lost-purpose-no-child-left-behind/
“NCLB decisively changed the purpose of the law. What had once been a means of sending additional resources to schools enrolling poor students was turned into a testing mandate. By law, all students, regardless of disability or language proficiency, must be “proficient” on state tests by 2014. Congress and the Bush administration believed that their mandate could produce universal success in school, akin to passing a law proclaiming that all crime should cease by a date certain. Note to Congress: if wishes (or congressional mandates) were horses, then beggars would ride.  Not surprisingly, it didn’t work.”
richard branson: “It is possible that school is not necessary. I left school at 15.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-04-09/richard-branson-entrepreneurs-and-real-world-education
State AGs Urge Federal Forgiveness Of Student Loans Tied To Dodgy For-Profit Chain
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/09/federal-student-loan-forgiveness_n_7037128.html
Apollo Affiliate to Invest $1 Billion in Online Student Lender
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-14/apollo-affiliate-to-invest-1-billion-in-online-student-lender
Debt Collectors Lose Lawsuits Against Education Department It beat its aggrieved debt collectors in court
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/14/education-department-debt-collectors-lawsuit_n_7067292.html
US ED fines Corinthian $30 million for misrepresentation of job placement rates — will halt fed $ at Calif. Heald campuses
Federal judge tosses debt collectors’ lawsuits against  fined Heald College
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/14/heald-college-fine-jobs_n_7067056.html
@StrikeDebt “@usedgov is saying 4profits can steal billions so long they get cut in on the action too”
@StrikeDebt “Wells Fargo made billions off of 4profit Corinthian with help from the @usedgov which get’s it’s cut on the backend .”

Espionage: FBI would rather prosecutors drop cases than disclose stingray details

Not only is the FBI actively attempting to stop the public from knowing about stingrays, it has also forced local law enforcement agencies to stay quiet even in court and during public hearings, too.

FBI would rather prosecutors drop cases than disclose stingray details
New documents released by NYCLU shed light on Erie County’s use of spying tool.
By Cyrus Farivar
Apr 7 2015
<http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/fbi-would-rather-prosecutors-drop-cases-than-disclose-stingray-details/>
Not only is the FBI actively attempting to stop the public from knowing about stingrays, it has also forced local law enforcement agencies to stay quiet even in court and during public hearings, too.
An FBI agreement, published for the first time in unredacted form on Tuesday, clearly demonstrates the full extent of the agency’s attempt to quash public disclosure of information about stingrays. The most egregious example of this is language showing that the FBI would rather have a criminal case be dropped to protect secrecy surrounding the stingray.
Relatively little is known about how, exactly, stingrays, known more generically as cell-site simulators, are used by law enforcement agencies nationwide, although new documents have recently been released showing how they have been purchased and used in some limited instances. Worse still, cops have lied to courts about their use. Not only can stingrays be used to determine location by spoofing a cell tower, they can also be used to intercept calls and text messages. Typically, police deploy them without first obtaining a search warrant.
Ars previously published a redacted version of this document in February 2015, which had been acquired by the Minneapolis Star Tribune in December 2014. The fact that these two near-identical documents exist from the same year (2012) provides even more evidence that this language is boilerplate and likely exists in other agreements with other law enforcement agencies nationwide.
The new document, which was released Tuesday by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) in response to its March 2015 victory in a lawsuitfiled against the Erie County Sheriff’s Office (ECSO) in Northwestern New York, includes this paragraph:
In order to ensure that such wireless collection equipment/technology continues to be available for use by the law enforcement community, the equipment/technology and any information related to its functions, operation and use shall be protected from potential compromise by precluding disclosure of this information to the public in any manner including but not limited to: press releases, in court documents, during judicial hearings, or during other public forums or proceedings.
In the version of the document previously obtained in Minnesota, the rest of the sentence after the phrase “limited to” was entirely redacted.
Mariko Hirose, a NYCLU staff attorney, told Ars that she has never seen an agreement like this before.
“This seems very broad in scope and undermines public safety and the workings of the criminal justice system,” she said.
Your tax dollars at work
The FBI letter also explicitly confirms a practice that some local prosecutors have engaged in previously, which is to drop criminal charges rather than disclose exactly how a stingray is being used. Last year, prosecutors in Baltimore did just that during a robbery trial—there, Baltimore Police Detective John L. Haley cited a non-disclosure agreement, and he declined to describe in detail how he obtained the location of the suspect.
The newly revealed sections state:
[snip]

Healthcare.gov HIPPA VIOLATIONS sharing personal data

Government health care website quietly sharing personal data
HealthCare.gov security — ‘a breach waiting to happen’
HIPPA VIOLATION: website sends your age, income level, pregnancy status etc. to advertising companies
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/healthcare.gov-sends-personal-data

Shocking security problems remain 1 yr later! Got it WINS! > over & patient privacy!
must be read to the very end proves that not only does the Obamacare website have major security issues, but that the incorruptible wonderful well-meaning folks in Washington who care so much about our health and running our lives knew this when the site was launched.Federal medical-privacy law frustrates ID theft victims
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/federal_medical-privacy_law_frustrates_id_theft_victims

a victim of an Obamacare breach and the little known fact that well over half of all identity thefts now arise from information on the Healthcare.gov site.    Once again, any individual in the health care industry that demonstrates the slightest carelessness with patient privacy will likely be bankrupted by HIPPA fines.

Hacker accesses 70,000 Healthcare.gov records, says website is 100% insecure
http://www.slashgear.com/hacker-accesses-70000-healthcare-gov-records-says-website-is-100-insecure-21313926/
In the source code of http://healthcare.gov  is “no right to privacy” tt overrides HIPPA. But it’s hidden!
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/no-privacy-for-obamacare-patients/
And watch how they lie about it: OCare Website Hidden Source Code Says Users “Have No Reasonable Expectation of Privacy”

The CEO isn’t the only hacker to publicly confirm the security issues, however, with Kevin Mitnick, Ed Skoudis, and more having issued warnings of an impending security breach if the problems are not corrected. Said Mitnick in a signed statement alongside fellow hackers: “It’s shameful the team that built the Healthcare.gov site implemented minimal, if any, security best practices to mitigate the significant risk of a system compromise or access to consumer proprietary information.” Despite these warnings, the government has maintained Healthcare.gov is secure and undergoes regular security testing. Whether this latest breach performed by Kennedy will spur a proper review and corrections of the issue at hand is yet to be seen (and a cynic might express ample doubt at this point), but all signs point towards a ticking clock counting down to a major — malicious — data breach.
HealthCare.gov is shuttling personal data to third parties
http://www.slashgear.com/healthcare-gov-is-shuttling-personal-data-to-third-parties-21365499/
Judicial Watch, a politically conservative government watchdog group, has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services seeking the release of all records – including studies, memos, e-mails, and slide presentations – related to the security of the HealthCare.gov Web portal dating back to Jan. 1, 2012.
http://www.healthcareinfosecurity.com/healthcaregov-security-answers-sought-a-6700
Doesn’t that violate HIPPA? Among other privacy laws? -> website quietly sharing personal data 
WASHINGTON (AP) — The government’s health insurance website is quietly sending consumers’ personal data to private companies that specialize in advertising and analyzing Internet data for performance and marketing, The Associated Press has learned.
The scope of what is disclosed or how it might be used was not immediately clear, but it can include age, income, ZIP code, whether a person smokes, and if a person is pregnant. It can include a computer’s Internet address, which can identify a person’s name or address when combined with other information collected by sophisticated online marketing or advertising firms.
The Obama administration says HealthCare.gov’s connections to data firms were intended to help improve the consumer experience. Officials said outside firms are barred from using the data to further their own business interests.
There is no evidence that personal information has been misused. But connections to dozens of third-party tech firms were documented by technology experts who analyzed HealthCare.gov and then confirmed by AP. A handful of the companies were also collecting highly specific information. That combination is raising concerns.
Leading lawmakers on Tuesday asked the administration to explain how it oversees the data firms to make sure no personally identifiable information is improperly used or shared.
The administration did not explain how it ensures that companies were following the government’s privacy and security policies.
Albright said HealthCare.gov comports with standards set by the federal National Institute for Standards and Technology. But recent NIST guidance cautions that collecting bits of seemingly random data can be used to piece together someone’s identity.
In a recent visit to the site, AP found that certain personal details — including age, income and smoking habits — were being passed along, likely without consumers’ knowledge, to advertising and Web analytics sites.
Third-party outfits that track website performance are a standard part of e-commerce. HealthCare.gov’s privacy policy says in boldface that “no personally identifiable information is collected” by these Web measurement tools.
“Personally, I look at this … and I don’t know what is going on between the government and Facebook, and Google, and Twitter,” said Mehdi Daoudi, CEO of Catchpoint Systems. “Why is that there?”
Third-party sites embedded on HealthCare.gov can’t see your name, birth date or Social Security number. But they may be able to correlate the fact that your computer accessed the government website with your other Internet activities.
Daoudi’s company, Catchpoint Systems, came across some 50 third-party connections embedded on HealthCare.gov. They work in the background, unseen to most consumers.
The AP replicated the results. In one 10-minute visit to HealthCare.gov recently, dozens of websites were accessed behind the scenes. They included Google’s data-analytics service, Twitter, Facebook and a host of online advertising providers.
“I think that this could erode … confidentiality when dealing with medical data and medical information,” said Cooper Quintin, a staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/31490a20926d4ed3b98ff2d0ed8fc81d/new-privacy-concerns-over-governments-health-care-website