NY Librarians : Security

Showing posts with label Security. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

The Secret Life of a Public Library Security Guard By Dana Bialek

Making the rounds at the Portland Public Library means sporadically checking inside the bathroom. It’s not uncommon for security guard Marko Petrovich to uncover suspicious materials, like hypodermic needles and beer cans. Then the gumshoe work begins: Whodunnit? And sometimes whoever done it is still doing it. Long occupancy is call for suspicion. Spend too much time in the john and Petrovich will wind up in there with you, asserting in broken and unabashed English that “you not take shit forty-five minutes.”'

It’s in the bowels of the library where people really sneak around, though. The biography section is tucked deep in the basement, a thicket of high shelves and narrow aisles — a natural hotspot for dubious behavior. There might be drugs slipped between the life stories of Fredrick Douglass and Stephen A. Douglas, and the orange carpeting seems to call to people looking for a nap or even sex, Petrovich says, lowering his voice to a whisper. Troll around with him long enough and you’ll discover that folks do all kinds of things in the library. In a city of more than 66,000, there might be as many as 2,000 visitors every day. Indoor spaces that are actually open to the public are a rare find, and in a city like Portland, Maine — with months upon months of winter and an immense homeless population — the library becomes a living room of sorts. Keeping good guard of the library is delicate work. One must disrupt as few people as possible. Keeping the building safe and comfortable while at the same time truly public can be a precarious balance.

Monday, November 30, 2015

The next war will be an information war, and we’re not ready for it written by David Stupples

In the 21st century the familiar form of warfare in which physical damage is meted out against the opponent’s military forces and infrastructure has become only one form of attack. Instead, states are increasingly launching non-lethal attacks against an enemy’s information systems – this is the rise of information warfare.

Dan Kuehl of the National Defence University defined information warfare as the “conflict or struggle between two or more groups in the information environment”. You might say that just sounds like a fancier way of describing hacking. In fact it’s a lot more sinister and a lot more dangerous than its somewhat tame name implies.

Western leaders are investing billions to develop capabilities matching those of China and Russia, establishing military commands for attacking, defending and exploiting the vulnerabilities of electronic communications networks. Information warfare combines electronic warfare, cyberwarfare and psy-ops (psychological operations) into a single fighting organisation, and this will be central to all warfare in the future.

The anatomy of information warfare

The free flow of information within and between nation states is essential to business, international relations and social cohesion, as much as information is essential to a military force’s ability to fight. Communications today lean heavily on the internet, or via communications using various parts of the electromagnetic spectrum (such as radio or microwaves) through terrestrial communications networks or satellite networks in space. We live in a highly connected world, but it doesn’t take much to tip over into instability or even chaos. Read more...

Friday, March 8, 2013

What Does the Consumer Data Industry Know About You? - Rebecca J. Rosen - The Atlantic

Enjoy a bodice-ripping page-turner from time to time? You're on a purchasable list. (Reuters)

ProPublica's Lois Beckett has done yeowoman's work and just published an informative report on the huge variety of personal information the consumer data industry now tracks.
Here is a breakdown of her findings:

1. The Basics

Demographic data such as name, address, age, race, occupation, education
"Life-event triggers." Are you getting married? Soon to have a baby? Beckett reports that one company, Experian, updates its list of expectant and new parents "weekly."
Salary and wages: "A subsidiary of credit reporting company Equifax even collects detailed salary and paystub information for roughly 38 percent of employed Americans, as NBC news reported," Beckett writes. But, she adds, "that if a mortgage company or other lender wants to access information about your salary, they must obtain your permission to do so." Read more...

Thursday, February 7, 2013

The Daily Grovo Presents - Facebook Graph Search Training

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide' - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide' - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

By Daniel J. Solove originally published May 15, 2011

Daniel J. Solove is a professor of law at George Washington University. This essay is an excerpt from his new book, Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security, published this month by Yale University Press.

When the government gathers or analyzes personal information, many people say they're not worried. "I've got nothing to hide," they declare. "Only if you're doing something wrong should you worry, and then you don't deserve to keep it private."

The nothing-to-hide argument pervades discussions about privacy. The data-security expert Bruce Schneier calls it the "most common retort against privacy advocates." The legal scholar Geoffrey Stone refers to it as an "all-too-common refrain." In its most compelling form, it is an argument that the privacy interest is generally minimal, thus making the contest with security concerns a foreordained victory for security. Read more...

Friday, October 26, 2012

Should you friend your boss on Facebook? - The Washington Post


O/REUTERS - Michael Scott and the women of "The Office."

Yet as more people come of age on Facebook, the line separating personal and professional relationships is becoming more ambiguous.

In the Russell Herder survey, more than 20 percent of about 1,000 online respondents said they are Facebook friends with their work supervisors, and nearly half of those employees were the ones to initiate the friend request. Read more....

Lillian Cunningham is the editor of the Washington Post’s On Leadership section. Gregory Thomas contributed to this report.