Joyce Varghese, Author at JusticeHub Innovation Lab

Safer Internet Day: sending an anti-bullying message

February 17, 2016 Joyce Varghese Leave a comment Social Media, Tech

February 9, 2016 was labelled “Safer Internet Day. The event took place at Universal Studios Hollywood in California after it being held in Europe for the past 13 years.

Online bullying is a relevant topic today as a number of teenagers have committed suicide after being bullied online. As far back as 2003, a 13-year-old boy hanged himself after being tormented by classmates on AOL Instant Messenger. Recently, a 14-year-old in Las Vegas hanged herself after people in school made a fake Facebook page impersonating and mocking her. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that in 2014, nearly 15% of teens were bullied on the Internet. The Internet has such a broad spectrum. On one hand, people can watch “It Gets Better” video and support blogs and on the other people see hate comments and cruel pictures about the victim.

That is why Safer Internet Day was held to bring awareness and actively work toward creating a safe environment in the cyber world. Nearly 300 students attended and more watched the Webcast of a Los Angeles event to hear about the problems caused online. Last Tuesday’s event featured a panel of teen activists called “Rejecting Hate, Building Resilience & Growing the Good Online”. The panelists included Helen Le, a junior at Loara High School in Orange County, California, who campaigns for positivity on social media with the hastag #iCANHELP, and Ruby Rawlinson, a senior at Redwood High School in Marin County, California, who pitched in on a campaign called “Be Kind Online”.

Later this month, the RSA Conference will be held in San Francisco. Shifting the focus to the parents, experts will give parents tips on protecting their children from online harassment and other dilemmas. Sandra Toms, RSA Conference vice president, said talking with kids and setting expectations is the most important thing a parent can do to prevent cyber bullying. Parents are encouraged to stay involved in their child’s life.

“The more open you are and available you are as a parent when they’re young, the better,” Toms said.

Photo: [365] 109 via Corie Howell [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]

Kids design prosthetics in “Superhero Cyborgs” workshop

February 9, 2016 Joyce Varghese Leave a comment Tech

Superhero Cyborgs is a workshop by a Bay area based organization called KIDmob. This workshop is place where kids with or without disabilities design devices that mirror the form of upper limb prosthetics. With wearable devices it’s universally known as a “one-size-fits-all” product. This workshops seek to disprove that.

From January 15-19 KIDmob and Autodesk teamed up for “Superhero Cyborgs 2.0” at Autodesk’s Pier 9 design space. With the help of professional designers and engineers, kids created their own “superpowers” through personalized wearable devices. In addition, they learned about 3D modeling and digital fabrication.

Some of the finished work included:

“Project Unicorn”, a 5-nozzle glitter shooter for 10-year-old Jordan Reeve’s arm.
“Sport Splint”, a purple splint with modular attachments for a Nerf gun device and a horse-riding attachment that allows 13-year-old David Botana to hold on to the reins.
12-year-old Sydney Howard created a dual-water-gun arm activated by elbow movement.
“Nubinator”, an e-NABLE hand that 13-year-old Kieran Blue Coffee tricked out with LED lights and an aluminum attachment that allows him to carry heavier loads.
10-year-old Riley Gonzalez augmented an e-NABLE prosthetic with a detachable bow and arrow.

Kate Ganim, KIDMob co-founder and co-director, told GOOD: “One of the main motivations for the work we do is exposing kids (and adults) to ‘21st-century skills’ in a meaningful way. Design is creative problem solving—it is bringing ideas to reality. Our workshops are very active, with lots of improv, hands-on making, discussion and sharing, and playful discovery.”

Autodesk, the other benefactor of this workshop, is a company that builds computer-aided drafting software. Sarah O’Rourke, Autodesk’s senior product marketing manager for consumer and 3D printing, says that the decision to get involved was a “no-brainer.” Autodesk provided monetary support to the families for travel and housing and made their Pier 9 space available for the workshop. O’Rouke hopes this workshop is just the start of a partnership with KIDMob and wants to incorporate this into the classroom through a project called Project Ignite, Autodesk’s open learning platform.

“If we can inspire any of the participants to start thinking like a designer and empower them to create their own devices, then that is successful,” says O’Rourke.

Article via GOOD, February 1, 2016

Photo: Neural interfaces for prosthetics via Sandla Labs [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]

Can ‘borrower defense’ help forgive student debt?

February 5, 2016 Joyce Varghese Leave a comment Education, In the Law

A once obscure federal law is being cited by more than 7,500 borrowers who applied to have their debt erased because many schools apparently used illegal recruiting tactics.

Wall Street Journal reported that if schools violate a state law regarding the recruiting process, federal law states that students may receive forgiveness of debt from the government’s Direct Loan program. One example of a violation would be if the school lied about how many of its graduates landed jobs.

Unfortunately, there are some downsides. The law does not specifically state what is needed to prove fraud. The U.S. Education Department is presently drafting rules to provide clarification.

Most of the 7,500 borrowers that are seeking loan forgiveness attended private universities and 3/4 of those colleges were owned by now-defunct Corinthian Colleges. But, Above the Law says some unemployed law grads are encouraged to apply for loan forgiveness through this program known as “borrower defense” or “defense to repayment.”

In spite of the negatives, Above the Law sees a positive beyond individual borrowers who might be able to benefit. In a blog, they state this: “If enough borrowers are granted relief under the borrower defense program, the Department of Education will eventually start investigating law schools that continue to admit under-qualified students who end up with no jobs and are unable to pass the bar exam.”

Article via ABA Journal, February 4, 2016

Photo: 2011 10 06 – 1237 – Washington DC – Occupy DC via thisisbossi [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]

Family reunited in India with the help of Twitter

February 3, 2016 Joyce Varghese Leave a comment Social Media

The power of social media is evident in India. On Sunday, January 31, Delhi police organized a unique rescue reuniting a lost Alzheimer’s patient with her family in just 2 hours with the help of Twitter.

A police van discovered 80-year-old Kamla Gupta in north Delhi. The city’s Deputy Commissioner of Police Madhur Verma tweeted her details. Gupta, an Alzheimer’s patient, had lost her way after visiting a temple that morning. She could not remember her home address even after being taken to the police station.

The tweet included a photo of her and a text saying “Smt Kamla Gupta, 80..found in Ashok Vihar..unable to recall her address. If u identify pls contact PS Ashok Vihar.”

Soon after the tweet, a businessman named Vishal Kumar shared the information on a Facebook group. After the family reached out to him, Kumar then connected the family to Deputy Verma. Kamla Gupta was reunited with her family in a few hours.

Madhur Verma tweeted a picture of the family together saying, “That’s the power of social media. Thanks @TwitterIndia. Family members of Mrs Kamla Gupta traced in less then 2 hrs!”

Police forces in several Indian cities are increasingly using social media as a means to communicate with their citizens. Their pages offer updates on crime and troubleshoot problems and solutions. The Delhi police created its own Twitter in December 2015. Deputy Verma however has been using Twitter since 2014. In March 2015, he received accolades on his role in rescuing 3 lost children stranded at a railway station in Delhi. A journalist tweeted photographs of the kids and Verma launched a search mission to help reunite them with their parents.

“Twitter is a great platform for reaching out to citizens, and presenting our side of the story. If you are available online and on social media, you can catch the pulse of the society and even challenge unfounded rumors,” Verma says.

Article via Mashable, February 1, 2016

Photo: Twitter Superman via Irish Typepad [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]

Oracle pulls plug on Java browser plug-in

February 1, 2016 Joyce Varghese Leave a comment Tech

Oracle announced earlier last week its decision to cut the Java browser plug-in. It will not be included in the next version of the kit for Java developers. This plug-in had been a frequent target of hackers and decision to remove was fueled by the browser maker’s withdrawal of support for the plug-in.

Oracle did realize that plug-ins have become unwanted in a tech world that has become increasingly mobile. In a release they stated “the rise of web usage on mobile device browsers, typically without support for plugins, increasingly led browser makers to want to restrict and remove standards based plugin support from their products, as they tried to unify the set of features available across desktop and mobile versions.”

Jim McGregor, lead analyst at Tirias Research, said that Google and Microsoft have already left out the Java plug-in. “It’s an evolution of the software environment,” he told TechNewsWorld. “Plug-ins were great when we were first trying to enable multimedia features at websites, but the way that things are programmed now, they’re more a security hazard than a benefit.”

Plug-ins are closely related to browser extensions. They were initially created to allow non-HTML content to be viewed from within the browser. Something like a PDF could be viewed right from the browser instead of a different program opening up. This won’t affect many consumers but businesses could be impacted.

Overall, the purpose of this is to improve security. Simon Crosby, CTO at Bromium said this is “a good-step forward.” Craig Williams, senior technical leader at Cisco’s Talos Security Intelligence and Research Group told TechNewsWorld “by removing plug-ins from the browser, we remove this attack surface, making all users more safe from both known and unknown zero-day vulnerabilities.” Pulling the plug means developers will have to move any apps that use it to another technology.

Article via TechNewsWorld, January 30, 2016

Photo: oracle via Dave [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]

A useful tool to access police misconduct cases for defense lawyers

January 27, 2016 Joyce Varghese Leave a comment Lawyer Tools, Tech for Lawyers

Vidya Pappachan, an attorney for the Legal Aid Society in New York City did not have enough time to prepare for her client’s case on a drug felony charge. However, she had a tool that helped her look up information about the officers that arrested her client.

The database is called the Cop Accountability Project. Through this, she learned that the officers were involved in misconduct cases that involved false arrests and cost NYC more than half a million dollars in settlement payouts. Even more, this was much similar to the situation in which her client was arrested. There was no drug stash found and no other evidence besides the arresting officers’ account of the incident. Since Pappachan proved the three officers were involved in prior misconduct cases, she challenged the weight of the evidence against her client. The judge agreed with her proposition and the client was released without bail.

Beyond New York, similar projects are popping up. The Indianapolis Police department created a portal that tracks officer complaints, use of force, and shooting incidents. In Chicago, there are two separate but complementary tools that track police misconduct cases. Michelle Bonner, former chief counsel to the Legal Aid Society called the New York project “a great advance in the evolution for defender databases.”

The project stemmed from the grassroots of newspaper clippings and paper documents. After 1998, it evolved into a database in the form of a digital library catalog program called Inmagic and later into an Excel spreadsheet where documents were scanned or uploaded to a shared file.

This tool has brought mixed reaction from judges. Some are very open to hearing this information and some say it’s not relevant at this stage of the case. The New York City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association has a unanimous opinion. Patrick Lynch, the president of the city’s largest police union, said : “Compiling a list of police officers who are alleged to be ‘bad’ based upon newspaper stories, quick-buck lawsuits and baseless complaints … does nothing more than soil the reputation of the men and women who do the difficult and dangerous job of keeping this city and its citizens safe.”

This project will continue to morph as the Legal Aid Society trains its lawyers to better integrate this database into their practice.

Article via ABA Journal, February 2016 issue

Photo: Paris – Police via clement127 [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]