Category «Information Management»

Will Amazon’s new ePub capability help the anti-DRM movement?

David H. Rothman has been writing about the issues inherent in publisher control of e-books and e-readers and the impact of digital rights management for many years. Whether you use personal devices or institutional devices, the issues Rothman raises here will impact you.

Subjects: Copyright, E-Books, Information Management, KM, Law Library Management, Legal Research, Libraries & Librarians, Library Software & Technology, Licensing, Software

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, July 30, 2022

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Cyber insurance price hike hits local governments hard; New York Counties to Get Free Services to Better Defend Against Cyberattacks; Why emergency calls sometimes can’t get through; and A Rogues’ Gallery of Robocallers.

Subjects: Congress, Criminal Law, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Education, Information Management, Legal Research

Propaganda, Mis- and Disinformation, and Censorship: The War for Hearts and Minds

Author and blogger Dave Pollard addresses the incendiary global war of lies vs. truth, reminiscent of the MAD Magazine cartoon Spy Vs. Spy for those who of us who can recall the scenarios they played which remain eerily prescient. Pollard posits the most effective way to win and retain political power is by seizing the hearts and minds of citizens through a mix of propaganda, mis- and disinformation, and censorship. He continues, this is especially true now, living with a ubiquitous and unceasing firehose of often-conflicting information, and exploitative for-profit “social” media controlled by a handful of dimwitted and unstable western oligarchs.

Subjects: Communications, Competitive Intelligence, Ethics, Free Speech, Information Management, KM, News Resources, Social Media

Offense v. Defense

The goal of this paper by Andrew Pittman, MSU Law-3L, is a call for a new strategy on cybersecurity. Pittman’s paper begins with real life incidents of cybercrime attacks on critical infrastructures abroad and in the U.S. Second, it defines what is offensive cybersecurity vs defensive cybersecurity and the U.S. strategies. Third, it explores the potential reasoning behind the discrepancy and some lasting effects. Finally, it explores the pre-mentioned combination of solutions to implement a more defensive approach on cybersecurity.

Subjects: Computer Security, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Email Security, Encryption, Financial System, Firewalls, Information Management, KM, Legal Research, Privacy, Spyware

A bit about PURLs

Ed Summers, librarian, metadata expert, teacher, and computational expert, delivers an insighful lesson on the Persistent Uniform Resource Locator. PURLs were developed to make URLs more resilient and persistent over time. You could put a PURL into a catalog record and if the URL it pointed to needed to change you changed the redirect on the PURL server, and all the places that pointed to the PURL didn’t need to change. It was a beautifully simple idea, and has influenced other approaches like DOI and Handle. But this simplicity depends on a commitment to keeping the PURL up to date.

Subjects: Archives, Cataloging, Digital Archives, Information Architecture, Information Management, Information Mapping, Internet Resources - Web Links, KM, Reference Resources, Search Strategies

Information Quality Resources 2022

Librarians, researchers, journalists, teachers and students are continually confronted with what can be described as a kind of information miasma when using online sites, databases, resources, images and social media. No sector or discipline is immune to misinformation, disinformation, hoaxes, lack of data quality, and biased research. This guide by Marcus Zillman highlights actionable resources to evaluate and identify online malfeasance, as well as sources to verify information and data quality that is critical to our professions. These two efforts often intersect, and require vigilance and continuing education respective to effectively confronting the challenges they present.

Subjects: Big Data, Competitive Intelligence, Education, Information Management, Internet Resources - Web Links, KM, Libraries & Librarians, Reference Resources, Search Strategies, Social Media, Technology Trends, Viruses & Hoaxes

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, November 28, 2021

Privacy and security issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: An introduction to U.S. data compliance laws; Companies ditching VPNs for zero trust architectures to secure hybrid workplaces; Research finds US adults have context-specific views on biometric technology use; Apple iOS privacy settings to change now; and Mozilla has released a new platform for privacy-focused email communications.

Subjects: Criminal Law, Cybercrime, Cyberlaw, Cybersecurity, E-Commerce, Economy, Email Security, Healthcare, Information Architecture, Information Management, Privacy, Securities Law, Shopping, Social Media, Technology Trends

Trump wants the National Archives to keep his papers away from investigators – post-Watergate laws and executive orders may not let him

Professor Shannon Bow O’Brien is a presidency scholar who focuses upon rhetoric. She discusses how the National Archives usually goes on with its work with little attention, but that is now at the center of a political fight about the public’s access to the papers of former President Donald Trump.

Subjects: Archives, Criminal Law, Freedom of Information, Government Resources, Information Management, KM, Legal Research

Data privacy laws in the US protect profit but prevent sharing data for public good – people want the opposite

Cason Schmit, Brian N. Larson and Hye-Chung Kum are faculty at the school of public health and the law school at Texas A&M University with expertise in health information regulation, data science and online contracts. U.S. data protection laws often widely permit using data for profit but are more restrictive of socially beneficial uses. They wanted to ask a simple question: Do U.S. privacy laws actually protect data in the ways that Americans want? Using a national survey, we found that the public’s preferences are inconsistent with the restrictions imposed by U.S. privacy laws.

Subjects: AI, Big Data, Digital Archives, Health, Healthcare, Information Management, KM, Privacy