Volkswagen Corp. Agrees To Pay $14.7 billion After False Computer Data Revealed; More Criminal And Civil Liability Pending

Daniel Carder (pictured) conducted a $50,000 study at West Virginia University that set off the scandal.

[From article]
Volkswagen has agreed to pay out $14.7 billion over its emissions-cheating diesel-powered cars in one of the largest consumer class-action settlements in US history.
The settlement filed in federal court calls for the German auto giant to pay each owner up to $10,000 in cash, and either buy back or fix the 'clean diesel' cars designed to trick air-quality tests.
The company has agreed to spend a maximum of $10.03billion compensating owners. Volkswagen will pay an environmental penalty of $2.7billion and spend another $2billion on promoting eco-friendly cars.
The payout will affect owners of 2009 to 2015 diesel models of Volkswagen Jettas, Passats, Golfs and Beetles. The TDI Audi A3 is also included.
The $2.0 billion will go towards 'creating infrastructure for and promoting public awareness of zero emission vehicles,' the court filing showed.
The huge settlement, which still needs to be approved by a federal judge in San Francisco, could affect some 480,000 owners of Volkswagens and Audis with 2.0-liter diesel engines.
Volkswagen agreed to buy back the emissions-cheating vehicles at their market prices before the scandal broke.
For qualifying Jetta Sedans, owners can receive $12,475, while some Audi models will fetch more than $44,000.
The owners also have the option of letting Volkswagen modify the cars to meet US pollution standards.
In either case, the owners would also get a cash settlement ranging from $5,100 to $10,000 depending on the vehicle.
While the deal only covers a small portion of the 11million cars around the world that have been fitted with the cheating software, law professor David Uhlmann told the NYTimes it was a 'remarkable deal' for VW owners in the US.
Daniel Carder conducted a $50,000 study at West Virginia University in 2012 to 2013 that produced early evidence that Volkswagen was cheating on US. vehicle emissions tests.
The study found one vehicle with 15 to 35 times the reported emissions levels, setting off a scandal that reverberated throughout the auto industry.
Volkswagen admitted in September that it had installed software in the vehicles that tricked US emissions tests into showing the cars met environmental standards.
The device switched off after testing, enabling the vehicles to spew up to 40 times the permitted amounts of nitrogen oxides.
At a press conference in December, company chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch said he would not name any individuals involved, but added: 'We are talking here not about a one-off mistake but a chain of errors.'
Volkswagen has set aside $17.9 billion to cover costs from the scandal including the legal risks.
Despite the settlement, however, Volkswagen faces more troubles in the United States.
The company faces fines from US regulators that may run to tens of billions of dollars while a criminal investigation over the scandal is also pending.
Volkswagen has yet to face similar charges over its 3.0 liter diesel cars with emissions-cheating devices, in addition to lawsuits and charges in other countries around the world.
Tuesday's settlement filed with Judge Charles Breyer would settle claims from the US government as well as a large number of plaintiffs including owners, lessees, and dealers.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3664121/VW-agrees-14-7-bn-payout-US-emissions-probe.html

Volkswagen agrees to $14.7 BILLION payout over emissions-cheating cars in the US in largest-ever settlement by an auto company
Company agreed to pay $10b to compensate owners, $2.7b in fines and $2b to promote zero-emission cars
VW agreed to either fix the cars installed with cheating software, or buy them back from owners at rates before the scandal
Qualifying owners can also receive cash compensation from $5.1k to $10k
Settlement still needs to be approved by a federal judge in San Francisco
Could affect 480k owners of Volkswagens, Audis with 2.0L diesel engines
VW faces a slew of other investigations, lawsuits both in US and worldwide
By AFP and JESSICA CHIA FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 08:47 EST, 28 June 2016 | UPDATED: 13:13 EST, 28 June 2016

Updated: Gentleman Immigrant From India, Shoots Wife In Minnesota, Drives To Los Angeles, Shoots Professor Dead Over Computer Code

Posted June 2, 2016 8:23 PM ET; Last updated June 4, 2016 4:53 PM ET


Mainak Sarkar, 38, who shot and killed UCLA professor William Klug, 39, on campus Wednesday, murdered Ashley Hasti (pictured together on his Facebook page) at her home in Minnesota before driving to find his former instructor. The pair got married in 2011. She is reported to be a medical student.


[Updated June 4, 2016 4:53 PM ET]
[From article]
UCLA shooting suspect Mainak Sarkar came to the United States on a foreign student visa in 2001 after graduating from a prestigious Indian technology university and was granted permanent legal status in the U.S. in 2014.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued the following statement to Breitbart News on Thursday afternoon regarding Sarkar’s legal status in the country:
Department of Homeland Security databases indicate that Mr. Sarkar was in the United States lawfully at the time of his death, having been granted lawful permanent residence in May 2014. According to DHS databases, Mr. Sarkar originally came to the U.S. in 2001 on a foreign student visa to pursue graduate studies. DHS’ electronic records show he obtained three student visas between 2001 and 2008 to engage in masters and doctoral programs in the U.S.
[. . .]
Sarkar graduated from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) in 2000 with a degree in aerospace engineering, according to the Los Angeles Times. The IIT has been criticized for diminishing quality in recent years. The Times reported, “The intense pressure for success has resulted in a growing mental health crisis at top Indian educational institutions, including IIT.” Reports indicate 57 aspiring IIT students have committed suicide in the last five years.

http://www.breitbart.com/california/2016/06/02/ucla-shooter-granted-u-s-permanent-legal-status-2014/

UCLA Shooter Entered U.S. on Foreign Student Visa In 2001
by MICHELLE MOONS2 

Jun 2016

* * *

[Posted June 2, 2016 8:23 PM ET]
[From article]
The UCLA gunman's wife was found dead in her Minnesota home hours after her husband fatally shot his former professor in Los Angeles and then killed himself.
Ashley Hasti, 31, died of a gunshot wound to the head, almost certainly at the hands of Mainak Sarkar, who listed her on his 'kill list'.
St Paul-based PhD graduate Sarkar had been planning to execute more victims after killing professor William Klug in the UCLA engineering building on Wednesday - but killed himself instead, the LAPD revealed on Thursday.
UCLA graduate Sarkar, 38, who was born in India before coming to the US to study, is suspected of shooting Hasti in her home near Minneapolis several days ago before driving to southern California.
She was discovered by officers at around 12.30am carrying out a welfare check on behalf of the LAPD. Multiple sources confirmed that she married Sarkar in 2011.
Police say they found a 'kill list' at Sarkar's home, also near Minneapolis, which included the names of his former PhD supervisor Klug and the female victim, alongside that of another UCLA professor who used to teach Sarkar.
Detectives say Sarkar likely intended to kill that professor as well, but may have been unable to find him because he was not on campus.
LAPD chief Charlie Beck said that Sarkar was involved in a long-running dispute with both professors because he believed they had stolen computer codes he wrote as part of his PhD before passing them on to another student.
However, Beck added that there is no evidence to suggest this was true, saying the slight was a figment of Sarkar's imagination. Beck refused to confirm Hasti's identity, and would also not discuss sarkar's motive for killing her or the nature of their relationship.
At the time of her death, Hasti was enrolled in the University of Minnesota Medical School, a university spokesman said. She first enrolled in the college in 2012. In 2008, she received a bachelor's degree in Asian languages and literature from the same institution.
Beck said that Sarkar had traveled to Los Angeles 'some time in the last couple of days', raising the prospect that Hasti's body had lain undiscovered for some time before officers found it.
Mark Bruley, a spokesman for the Brooklyn Park Police Department, confirmed that the shooting in Minnesota happened before the killing at UCLA, but said he could not reveal the time difference between the two.
Beck added that officers are checking on Sarkar's family members and loved ones out of 'an abundance of caution' to see if there are other victims, but said they are not expecting to find any more.
Sarkar was armed with two 9mm semi-automatic pistols when he arrived at UCLA, Beck added, saying at least one was purchased legally in Minnesota. He also had several fully loaded magazines and additional loose ammunition.
Beck said: 'This is a tragedy, but if there is a silver lining here, it's that Sarkar could have done a lot more damage with the ordinance that he brought.'
Beck also revealed that detectives were led to Sarkar's home by a note he left at the scene of the UCLA shooting asking whoever found his body to go and check on his cat.
Officers are also searching for a grey Nissan Sentra, with Minnesota licence plate 720 KTW, that Sarkar is believed to have used to drive from Minnesota to LA, saying there may be valuable evidence inside.
In a blog post uploaded on March 10 under Sarkar's name, he writes that Klug 'stole all my code and gave it another student', branding him a 'sick man'.
The post, which was uploaded to a blog called Long Dark Tunnel but has since been deleted, says: 'William Klug, UCLA professor is not the kind of person when you think of a professor. He is a very sick person. I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy.
'My name is Mainak Sarkar. I was this guy’s PhD student. We had personal differences. He cleverly stole all my code and gave it another student. He made me really sick.
'Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust. Stay away from this sick guy.'
Beck said that while Klug and his colleagues were aware of Sarkar's issues with the property rights, and thought of his behavior as odd, they did not view him as a threat.
A source told the LA Times that Sarkar's claims were 'psychotic', adding that his characterization of Klug as a thief is 'absolutely untrue'.
Klug was dedicated to helping Sarkar pass the course, the source added, saying he bent over backwards to help even though the quality of Sarkar's work was often below par.
A UCLA spokesman told Dailymail.com that Sarkar earned his PhD in the summer of 2013, the same year he submitted his dissertation thanking Klug for his help in putting it together.
His dissertation and thesis, which he compelted (sic) in 2013, was approved by Klug. Sarkar dedicated it to his late mother, Ira Sarkar.
The shooter's social media profiles show he obtained his undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, in Kharagpur, in 2000. The prestigious institution is known as the MIT of India, and alumni include current Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
He then worked for a time as a software developer in Bangalore before moving to America, where he worked as a research assistant at the University of Texas in Arlington.
In 2003 he went to Stanford to study for a Masters in aeronautics and astronautics, graduating two years later, and then going back to work as a software developer in Texas.
It was after that job that he began studying for his PhD in mechanical engineering at UCLA, working as a teaching assistant for a few years, and then taking a job at Endurica, a rubber testing company where he specialized in 'elastomer fatigue'.
However, an email from Endurica to the Dailymail.com revealed that Sarkar stopped working for that company back in 2014. It is not clear what, if any, employment he had in the last two years.
A UCLA spokesman said the institution is trying to establish whether Sarkar worked for them after he graduated, and whether he had any other connections to the college.
Klug, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA, was married with two young children and spent his spare time coaching his son's little-league baseball team, friends said.
[. . .]
Around 200 armed police, SWAT officers, FBI agents and firefighters were called to the campus to reports of at least three shots fired inside the Engineering IV building at around 10am on Wednesday, before finding the bodies of both men alongside a 9mm semi-automatic pistol.
[. . .]
Umar Rehman, 21, was in a math sciences classroom adjacent to the building where the shooting took place. The buildings are connected by walkway bridges near the center of the 419-acre campus.
'We kept our eye on the door. We knew that somebody eventually could come,' he said.
The door would not lock and those in the room devised a plan to hold it closed using a belt and crowbar, and demand ID from anyone who tried to get in.
Scott Waugh, an executive vice chancellor and provost, said the university would look into concerns about doors that would not lock.
[. . .]
Jason La, 33, a computer science graduate student, told the LA Times that he was sitting in Boelter Hall taking a test about 9:40 a.m. when an officer walked in and told the class to lock the door and barricade it.
About a minute later, they were told to leave. As students began to move out of the building, an officer yelled at people to get away from the building and people began to run away, La said.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3621726/The-PhD-student-shot-UCLA-professor-dead-Indian-rubber-engineer-killed-thesis-supervisor-wouldn-t-let-graduate-committed-suicide.html

Pictured: Medical student wife of UCLA gunman who he 'shot dead' in her Minnesota home before driving across the country to kill his former professor
Mainak Sarkar, 38, shot professor William Klug, 39, dead at UCLA Wednesday before turning the weapon on himself
Police said that Sarkar had a 'kill list' including the name of a woman who has been found dead in Minnesota
His wife, medical student Ashley Hasti, was found with a gunshot to the head at 12.30am during a welfare check
Another professor was also named on Sarkar's list, but was not on campus at the time of the shooting
Cops said Sarkar appeared to resent the two professors because of a dispute over codes he wrote for his PhD
Klug, a married father-of-two, worked as an associate professor and coached his son's little-league baseball team
By CHRIS PLEASANCE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and BEN ASHFORD IN ST PAUL FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 09:02 EST, 2 June 2016 | UPDATED: 18:29 EST, 2 June 2016



* * *


William Klug, 39, at a UCLA Bruins game, was a Mechanical Engineering professor. His areas of interest included computational structural and solid mechanics, computational biomechanics, and micro/nanomechanics of biological systems.

Police said Mainak Sarkar, 38, may have targeted Klug, a married father-of-two, in a dispute over a piece of code he wrote while he was a student.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3620401/UCLA-campus-lockdown-reports-shooting.html

Pictured: The disgruntled former PhD student who shot dead UCLA professor he 'accused of stealing his work' and then killed himself
Mainak Sarkar, 38, shot professor William Klug, 39, dead at UCLA yesterday before turning the weapon on himself
Police said today that Sarkar had a 'kill list' including the name of a woman who has been found dead in Minnesota
Bodies of both men were found with gunshot wounds inside a small office in an engineering building
The victim was identified as mechanical engineering professor William Klug, 39.
LAPD said Sarkar appeared to resent Klug, his old PhD supervisor, because of a dispute over intellectual property
Klug, a married father-of-two, worked as an associate professor and coached his son's little-league baseball team
Police say a piece of evidence, possibly a suicide note, has been recovered from the scene alongside a gun
Some furious students said they were asked to find computers in various locations to complete their exams
By CHRIS PLEASANCE and WILLS ROBINSON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 12:39 EST, 1 June 2016 | UPDATED: 14:12 EST, 2 June 2016



* * *

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-87420291/

Professor killed in UCLA murder-suicide was brilliant, kind and caring, colleagues say
SARAH PARVINI, Kate Mather and Hailey Branson-Potts
June 1, 2016, 9:07 p.m.

* * *

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-87431606/

UCLA gunman planned to kill two professors, but could only find one, police say
KATE MATHER,
Richard Winton
June 2, 2016, 3:26 p.m.

* * *

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_UCLA_SHOOTING_THE_LATEST?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Jun 1, 10:25 PM EDT
THE LATEST: OFFICIAL IDS UCLA
AP

* * *

http://nypost.com/2016/06/02/ucla-gunman-idd/

Man accused UCLA professor of stealing his work before fatal shooting
By David K. Li
New York Post
June 2, 2016 | 10:48am
* * *

http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/most-popular/~3/Lu5coFiW_aY/student-reportedly-upset-about-grades-kills-ucla-professor-himself.html

Student reportedly upset about grades kills UCLA professor, himself
Published June 02, 2016

FoxNews.com

New York City and Residents Show The Way Using Big Data to Improve Quality of Life

Big Data and sensor technology could help the city identify construction sites that violate noise regulations. 

MARY ALTAFFER/AP PHOTO

God bless the people who have the stamina to force government bureaucrat control freaks to provide access to data. Notice there is little mention of police and FBI, law enforcement in general providing information. No mention that for every report made by citizens another report is being collected on who did what, when. Big data has its downside as well. 

[From article]
New York City has been a Big Data pioneer for decades. In the early 1990s, the city launched the CompStat data-driven policing system, so that, in the words of former NYPD department chief Lou Anemone, officers could stop “just running around answering 911 calls” and start analyzing patterns to prevent crime. Thanks in part to CompStat, major crimes in the city have since fallen by 80 percent. During the Michael Bloomberg mayoral years, the city used data to pinpoint dangerous intersections and driving habits, cutting traffic deaths by nearly a third. Today, thanks to advances in data-storage capacity as well as the ubiquity of smartphones and broadband access, New York has an unprecedented number of facts to analyze and act upon, CompStat-style, across all areas of government—from building inspection to noise reduction. But [. . .] we still need old-fashioned political will.



Cities are in the middle of what Daniel Doctoroff, a Bloomberg-era deputy mayor, calls their fourth modern revolution. In the eighteenth century, cities got the first: the steam engine, which made possible the industrial age. In the nineteenth century, electricity gave cities the subways and elevators they needed to fit more people into small spaces. In the twentieth century, the automobile made it easier for residents and workers to leave dense urban areas. And now, in the twenty-first century, cities are getting the “networked revolution” of large-scale data collection, both human and automated, as well as continuous connectivity to transmit and store those data.
And with better transparency laws, much of this Big Data becomes open data: information that everyone can see and use. Consider how one area of data reporting and collection has exploded in just a decade: New Yorkers’ complaints, questions, and observations about their city. Last year, more than 30 million people called or went online to 311, the city’s information and complaint system. That’s nearly four times the city’s population, and four times the number of people who called in 2003,
[. . .]
One basic problem of even highly functional cities, Flowers notes, is “too big a body, too little blanket,” and the traditional answer to that problem, he says, is “let me hire more people.”
Instead, Flowers used data to help him perform a critical task: protecting New Yorkers from firetraps. “We were getting 20,000 complaints a year,” he says, many via 311, “about illegal [apartment] conversions”—that is, landlords or tenants subdividing their properties, creating dangerous conditions for poor tenants. But building inspectors, [. . .] regarded all buildings equally [. . .] Working with the fire department and buildings department to analyze historical information, Flowers’s team discovered which buildings were more likely to have critical violations resulting in destruction and death—and made it a priority to inspect those buildings. “What we basically did is reconstruct the inspection experience” to be risk-based, he says. Now, every building gets a risk grade, which inspectors use as guides. Fire deaths and injuries have never been so low.
Another success during the Bloomberg years: “end-to-end 911 analysis,” that is, integrating different city agencies’ systems to learn how long it takes for ambulances to respond to 911 calls and if response times could be improved. 

[. . .]
But, Flowers notes, he always kept in mind that his job was to use data to pursue “the mission of [a government] agency,” not to protect the bureaucracy.



New York’s worst natural disaster in recent memory—Superstorm Sandy— [. . .] created an environment where the city recognized the value of data sharing,” says Hidalgo. The Bloomberg administration then made sure that every location in the city has a single, consistent address, now available to the public. “Interagency cooperation on address location” is “fundamental to a city as dense as New York,” Hidalgo says. As data quality and sharing improve, firefighters responding at a particular address could someday receive a warning that police have gone to the home multiple times for domestic-violence incidents, or see that the building’s landlord had violations at other buildings for dividing them into illegal and unsafe apartments—and that the landlord might have been doing the same thing with the burning building.
Half a decade ago, the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority started making data feeds available for the public’s use. [. . .] The MTA is exploring other applications; it held a “hackathon” in early March so that volunteers vying for $2,000 in prizes could crunch data to help the authority speed up Staten Island bus times. 

[. . .]
Open data can be deployed not only to improve government but also to help business owners cope with the government agencies that regulate them. Aileen Gemma Smith, a local entrepreneur, saw that after Sandy, small-business owners wanted to know such things as when a certain street would reopen. She noted that this lack of information, though more acute after a disaster, was chronic even in normal times. Business owners showing up for work would be surprised that the city had closed their street for repairs—meaning lost customers and thus lost revenue. “I went to shopkeepers and said, ‘I’m building this for you, talk to me about what’s important,’ ” she says. The app she launched, called Mind My Business, crawls through hundreds of the city’s data sets to give subscribers practical information: “the MTA is closing the subway stop near your store this weekend,” or “the city is repairing the sidewalk that goes by your shop this week,” or “the previous owner of the restaurant space you own got fined four times for the following violations.” “Data aren’t just for privileged folks doing research,” Smith says. “Open data is how I help the local bodega guy, how I help the diner that’s been there for 25 years.” Mind My Business has 2,000 local subscribers.
Amateurs can mine Big Data to improve the quality of life in the city, too, even if they know nothing about software coding. Paul Vogel, a Prospect Heights resident, got a camera for his bike a few years back because he “had a couple of bad run-ins” with reckless car and truck drivers, “and I’m really bad at remembering license plates.” When he gets home after a ride, he sends pictures of taxis and other for-hire cars whose drivers have violated various laws to 311. “I was surprised that the 311 system for [taxi complaints] is so efficient . . . that I could get someone fined,” he says. Over a year or so, his self-described “hobby” has earned the city about $30,000 in revenue. More important, he may have saved some lives, by deterring drivers he got fined from parking in bike lanes or running red lights again. Vogel tweets his successes. “Putting it out on social media has raised awareness a little bit,” he says. Several other people have contacted him to let him know that they’ve done the same thing.
Wanted: Information
In 1974, the New York Public Interest Research Group, or NYPIRG, a good-government organization, helped prevail upon the state legislature and Governor Malcolm Wilson to pass the nation’s third freedom-of-information law. The FOIL law, as reporters know it, gave the press and public the right to obtain any government documents unless, among other restrictions, they violated private citizens’ confidentiality. A decade later, good-government groups persuaded the city council to establish the commission on public information and communications, which, in turn, published the city’s first public-data directory in 1993. New Yorkers could now access a list showing every publicly available data set that the city maintained, even if they couldn’t actually see the data without special software and expertise.
Public-information laws have never been perfect. Government agencies sometimes charge onerous fees for documents, and they often interpret their mandate to protect privacy too broadly, forcing petitioners to spend money and time suing for what they should get for free. But the laws gave a generation of civic researchers a valuable new tool. Steven Romalewski, director of CUNY’s mapping service and a long-time veteran of data collection who worked for NYPIRG for 22 years, says that he spent much of his time there “accessing data and putting it to use.”
In the 1990s, Romalewski used information he gleaned via the law to map toxic-waste sites on Long Island, showing the public: “Here’s how close they are to parks, here’s how close they are to schools.” [. . .] “Information transmission has dramatically changed” in recent years, though, says Romalewski, so that it’s become “almost trivial” to download a data set that once could have taken months to obtain.



During the Bloomberg years, civic-minded citizens got a legal update for the connectivity age: the 2012 open-data law, which requires the city to make certain data sets available on a free online portal. Today, city agencies offer 1,400 data sets to download and examine, with no tools needed besides spreadsheet software—now free, thanks to Google—and some patience. If you’re up late, upset about a barking dog, you can find out within an hour or so how many other people have had the same complaint over the last six years, and where they live—DIY data collection and analysis that were unfathomable even 15 years ago.
Those responsible for providing the data, however, often resist its dissemination. “The open-data law was pushed by the [city] council, not the mayor,” says John Kaehny, of the New York City Transparency Working Group. Though Bloomberg supported more open data, the problem persists in government. The issue isn’t cost—the city was already collecting all the data it now releases automatically to the public through its open-data portal—but accountability. “Data can equal embarrassment,” says Kaehny. More data can make more people aware that the city has a problem—whether with slow ambulance-response times or a rising street population.
Another drawback, from government’s perspective, is loss of control. Kaehny notes that city agencies have historically preferred to release their data selectively to “trusted users.” Open-data policies make such data “feeding” harder. If information is power, those who once enjoyed exclusive access but no longer do become less powerful.
The biggest danger in the Big Data and open-data worlds may be complacency. Just because the city releases 1,400 data sets doesn’t mean that we know everything that we need to know. We still need FOIL, as well as journalists and civic activists, to ask for data that the city hasn’t already collected or won’t give out because no journalist or researcher has asked for them. One thing hasn’t changed: information that is free and easy to get is often the only information that the government wants you to see.
At some point, though, Big Data and open data run into an old-fashioned problem: the city knows what the information suggests that it should do—but it won’t do it. For years now, residents of Battery Park City and the rest of the lower Hudson waterfront have suffered from incessant noise from tourist helicopters, says John Dellapontas of Stop the Chop, a residents’ advocacy group. “We have flight data that we got from FOIL,” he notes—referring to the freedom-of-information law (see box) by which his group has petitioned the city and state to reveal how many helicopter flights take off from a city-owned helipad. He could show “round trips, one every minute,” flying by residents’ apartment windows. Yet the company that runs helicopter tours used the lack of 311 data to say that residents didn’t mind the flights. “That is true, but meaningless,” Dellapontas says. “We started doing 311, [but] we’d get a form response saying that it’s perfectly legal, which it is.” Instead, Stop the Chop “circumvented the 311 system and had 5,000 members e-mail blast” local politicians. “We basically created a more effective 311 system.” Stop the Chop won the data battle but lost the war. The compromise that the mayor came up with reduced flights to every two minutes, from every one minute—and extended the tour-helicopter company’s lease.
Midtown residents have had similar difficulty in getting the city to rezone land so that developers can’t build 1,000-foot-plus condominium towers that cast large shadows across public spaces. The “sunshine task force” of Manhattan’s Community Board 5, the arm of local government that is supposed to be closest to citizens’ needs, has spent more than two years amassing and analyzing property-records data, zoning rules, and building permits, and working with other nonprofits to show the consequences of poorly conceived construction. The first problem that local residents have run into is that data released by the city are often difficult to understand and analyze. When sharing information on, say, the property-rights transfers necessary to build super-tall towers, the city doesn’t put out a simple weekly list of all such transfers. Residents looking to learn about such activity in their neighborhoods must crawl online through hundreds of individual property records to see what activity occurred at those properties. “The way the information is buried, it becomes unusable,” says Layla Law-Gisiko, chairperson of the task force.



Second, even when residents are able to do the difficult work of presenting incontrovertible, easy-to-understand data, it’s still easy for the city council and the mayor to ignore those data. [. . .] “It really makes no sense,” says Law-Gisiko. “It’s really putting our democratic system in jeopardy.”
On the plus side, data’s role in public decision making has become increasingly hard to ignore. Even in New York’s city council, which often makes headlines for greenlighting poorly considered ideas, at least some proposals go down to defeat when they’re not backed by sufficient information. 

[. . .]
In some cases, however, government finds itself outgunned by private-sector firms that manipulate data to circumvent laws meant to protect New Yorkers’ quality of life. Take the example of Airbnb, which allows New Yorkers to turn their apartments into hotel rooms for paying guests. Airbnb’s most lucrative service allows New Yorkers to rent out entire empty apartments to strangers. This business is illegal under state and city law: New Yorkers do not want their apartment buildings to become hotels or youth hostels. Enforcing the law, though, is difficult. The city must rely on 311 callers to report illegal apartment rentals; then it must dispatch enforcers who wait, sometimes for hours, to spot illegal activity. The city expends taxpayer resources to find out something that Airbnb already knows, from its internal databases: which rentals are illegal and which are not. Before releasing select data to reporters in December 2015, Airbnb scrubbed its listing of at least 1,000 illegal rentals, in order to make the data look better to journalists. Airbnb knows where and when its “hosts” are breaking the law; the city does not.
[. . .]

The city should also allow people to continue a 311 complaint when they think that the city hasn’t resolved it successfully, rather than force them to open new complaints. Doing this involves overcoming two political hurdles. The police department responds to many complaints, but police unions don’t want GPS data tracking cruisers’ movements, and providing such specific data might prove what complainants suspect: that officers and inspectors are often too overwhelmed to respond.
[. . .]

The city could also learn when a garbage can is full and needs emptying, or count how many people walk through a particular intersection at particular times, or count how many people, precisely, get into a subway car—and use that information to provide better services. Sensors could count how many cars and trucks are in Manhattan—and prohibit other vehicles from coming in until some leave.
And New Yorkers, of course, have urban problems that data won’t solve. On many subway lines now, riders can look at “countdown clocks” to see when the next train will arrive—but knowing that the Lexington Avenue line train is coming in two minutes doesn’t change the fact that not everyone waiting on the platform will fit onto that train. New Yorkers don’t need Big Data to tell them that the subways are too crowded. Without better, smarter investment in the assets that our second modern urban revolution—electricity—gave us, we can’t fully capitalize on Big Data’s potential.

http://city-journal.org/html/fourth-urban-revolution-14334.html

The Fourth Urban Revolution
How Big Data is changing life in cities, for governments and citizens alike
Nicole Gelinas
Spring 2016

University of Michigan and Microsoft Recognize Study Showing Flawed Security For Smart Homes

But new findings suggest these systems could hold hidden opportunities for hackers to break inside without being noticed. The University of Michigan used malicious apps to hack Samsung's SmartThings in four successful attacks that opened electric doors, changed devices to vacation mode and set off fire alarms.

[From article]
Transforming a home into an 'intelligent agent' allows users to monitor, control and secure it via apps and a smartphone.
But new findings suggest these systems also give hackers the tools needed to operate smart locks, change access codes and set off Wi-Fi enabled smoke detectors.
The University of Michigan hacked Samsung's SmartThings in four successful attacks and used the systems own SmartApps to carry each one out.
'It’s important to note that all the vulnerabilities are hypothetical and haven’t affected SmartThings customers’ because of the approval and review processes they have in place, but they have still worked with the researchers to further secure the platform based on their findings,' a SmartThings spokesperson told DailyMail.com in an email.
The University of Michigan, in collaboration with Microsoft, says this study is 'the first in-depth empirical security analysis of a popular emerging smart home programming platform'.
By evaluating the platform's security design and investigating the 499 SmartThings third-party apps (SmartApps), researchers found the biggest problem is that 40 percent of the apps are 'over-privileged'.
The idea that an app is over-privileged means it can gain access to more operations on the device than it needs to perform its function.
'The access SmartThings grants by default is at a full device level, rather than any narrower,' Atul Prakash said, computer science professor at the University of Michigan.
During the first attack, researcher were able to unlock electric doors by simply sending users a malicious link in a third-party app.
If users clicked on the URL, they were brought to the SmartThings website to login their credentials.
A hacker can then redirect a bug to the app and capture the login data to 'inject' a new code into the electric door lock.
The researchers also found that it is possible for developers to create an authentication method called OAuth incorrectly.
This flaw, in combination with the over-privileged SmartApps, allowed hackers to create their own PIN code into the door lock – without the homeowners knowing.
The team showed that an existing SmartApp could be remotely used to make a spare door key virtually by programming an additional PIN into the electronic lock.
Or another can 'eavesdrop' on someone setting up their PIN code for the lock, which will then text it to the hacker.

The SmartApp, which they called a 'lock-pick malware app' was camouflaged as a battery level monitor and only showed the need for that capability in its code.
Earlence Fernandes, a doctoral student in computer science and engineering who led the study, said that 'letting it control your window shades is probably fine.'
'One way to think about it is if you'd hand over control of the connected devices in your home to someone you don't trust and then imagine the worst they could do with that and consider whether you're okay with someone having that level of control,' he said.
The final attacks were carried out by tricking tricking devices inside the home.

The team was able to inject erroneous events in fire alarms or lights that turned them on or switched them to vacation mode.
These results have implications for all smart home systems, and even the broader Internet of Things, researchers said.

'The bottom line is that it's not easy to secure these systems' Prakash said.
'There are multiple layers in the software stack and we found vulnerabilities across them, making fixes difficult.'
The researchers told SmartThings about these issues in December 2015 and the company is working on fixes.
The researchers rechecked a few weeks ago if a lock's PIN code could still be snooped and reprogrammed by a potential hacker, and it still could.
'Protecting our customers' privacy and data security is fundamental to everything we do at SmartThings,' CEO at SmartThings Alex Hawkinson shared in a recent blog post.
'We are fully aware of the University of Michigan/Microsoft Research report and have been working with the authors of the report for the past several weeks on ways that we can continue to make the smart home more secure as the industry grows.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3569789/So-smart-home-Researchers-reveal-major-security-flaws-Samsung-s-SmartThings-let-hackers-unlock-doors-set-alarms.html

So much for the smart home: Researchers reveal major security flaws in Samsung's SmartThings system that let hackers unlock your doors and set off alarms
Researchers found 40% of 499 SmartApps are over-privileged
Hackers can create new PIN code by sending users malicious link in app
Injected erroneous events used to trick devices to turn on or shut down
By STACY LIBERATORE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 14:06 EST, 2 May 2016 | UPDATED: 14:57 EST, 2 May 2016

Politicians Spend Money To Avoid Solving Problem, "Don't Kill The Job"

What an exciting idea. Too much money spent on "consultants" and "studies" on how to end homelessness. Now computer programmers will design a software system to coordinate information on resources that are available now. How many other boondoggles will be found to spend taxpayer money on not ending homelessness? Great idea Mayor Walsh. It's like "Don't kill the job." all over again. Last thing taxpayers want is to put people without homes into homes. That would end homelessness, and grants to study how to end it. How many people could be housed with the money wasted on a web based computer system? Typical waste of taxpayer money with no effect on the alleged problem.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/3/4/mayor-addresses-homelessness/

Boston Mayor Selects Company to Fight Homelessness
By KIER W ZIMMERMAN

Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
March 4, 2016

Software Fights Modern Slave Labor

[From article]
Today, the tools to combat slavery have become decidedly more high-tech (and nonviolent). Made in a Free World in San Francisco, for example, has developed software that helps companies determine whether products they sell or make depend on global slave labor.
But even the most advanced algorithms can’t replace the one thing the United States needed more than guns and cannons to win the conflict 150 years ago: the will to eliminate it.
According to the International Labor Organization, at least 20 million people across the world are being forced to work for no pay. These workers are either directly or indirectly producing the goods sold by major corporations and small businesses alike, including those in the United States.
[. . .]



In a global economy, tracing who does what (and with what, and where) poses a complex challenge, since supply chains are long and convoluted, with companies relying on layers of suppliers who contract work out to smaller suppliers and so on.
“At the level of global brands, forced labor and human trafficking can often be hidden from view, the result of complex and frequently outsourced recruitment and hiring practices,” according to a United Nations report.
[. . .]



Last year, the Associated Press reported on an island off the coast of Indonesia where thousands of enslaved fishermen caught seafood sold by U.S. supermarkets like Walmart and Kroger.
[. . .]
Justin Dillon helped create an algorithm that allows consumers to determine the probability that companies were using slave labor, especially in raw material production, to make 400 popular products like beds, cars and cell phones.
[. . .]
But Dillon realized that consumers were just one half the equation. To create real change, Made in a Free World needed to help companies — not just shame them — to rid slave labor from supply chains.
[. . .]



Companies can enter data into the system and the software — which costs $250 a year for small companies, $25,000 for larger firms — which then spits out probabilities and risks for slave labor, based on information like a country’s government, human rights record, labor issues, and trade and migration flows.
[. . .]
Over the past five years, the movement to clean up corporate supply chains has gained much momentum. In 2010, California passed a law requiring large manufacturers and retailers doing business in the state to disclose their efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from supply chains. The federal Dodd-Frank Act requires companies to state whether they use conflict minerals

[. . .] from the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa.
[. . .]
Many companies would simply rather not know whether they use slave labor, he said.
“Every Western executive would agree with that ... until you ask them what they would be willing to pay to find out whether they're already supporting it. What are they supposed to do with the information once they find out? Action costs even more money. And are their competitors going to be compelled to take similar costly action?”
[. . .]



Large companies mostly react to problems instead of getting ahead of them. And companies generally are not willing to spend money on issues unless absolutely necessary and competitors do the same.
[. . .]
And yet, ethical consumers and companies will want to start somewhere. Made in a Free World’s true value, at least for now, is to provide a means to a worthwhile end. The technology is there — all we need is the will to use it.

http://www.govtech.com/public-safety/Tech-Helps-to-Spot-Modern-Day-Slave-Labor.html

Tech Helps to Spot Modern-Day Slave Labor
'Made in a Free World' has developed software that helps companies determine whether products they sell or make depend on global slave labor.
BY THOMAS LEE

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

FEBRUARY 2, 2016

Lottery Employee Convicted of Fixing Computer To Make Himself A Winner

Pssst. Wanna win the lottery?

The flaw in his plan was to buy the ticket himself and to make himself the winner. How many lotteries were fixed to allow others to win, whether they shared the money with the fixer(s) or not? 

[From article]

Jurors found him guilty Monday after just five hours of deliberation. Tipton declined to comment after the verdict.
Tipton, of Norwalk, had been working for the Des Moines-based Multi-State Lottery Association since 2003 and was promoted to information security director in 2013. The nonprofit association is operated by 37 mostly state-run lotteries to oversee picking numbers for various games and other lottery game administrative functions.
As an employee, Tipton was prohibited from playing the lottery in Iowa. He was fired after his January arrest.
Surveillance video from a Des Moines convenience store shows a hooded man buying the winning Hot Lotto ticket in December 2010. The video is fuzzy and the face of the man isn’t clear. Several of Tipton’s former coworkers and friends testified at trial that the man in the video is Tipton. His sister and two brothers testified it isn’t him.
Iowa prosecutors allege Tipton bought the same numbers that he had programmed into the lottery computer a month earlier. He then gave the ticket to a friend in Texas who prosecutors say reached out to attorneys in Canada and Texas to try and cash it in without divulging the name of the original ticket buyer. Since Iowa law requires jackpot winners to be identified, the jackpot was never paid.
“I think this ought to be a wakeup call to other states in terms of maybe they should emulate the Iowa lottery’s requirements,” said Iowa Assistant Attorney General Rob Sand.

http://nypost.com/2015/07/20/lottery-worker-rigged-system-to-win-14-million-jackpot/

Lottery worker rigged system to win $14 million jackpot
By Associated Press
July 20, 2015 | 4:05pm
New York Post

New Computer App For Sex Consent By Video

These consent videos are saved to a cloud file. If hackers are getting into US government data bases how long before they get into these video files and use them for ridicule, divorce cases, and more. This is more idiotic business ideas which exploits human  weaknesses. One more reaction to the extreme, misguided attempts to end sex offenses. 

[From article]
A breathy female British voice asks participants to state their name and to agree to sex. Once the video has been completed the voice says: ‘Consent confirmed. Have fun.’ The video is then saved in a ‘cloud’ or server.
Mr Lissick, 57, said: ‘The videos are twice encrypted and can only be accessed by law enforcement, by a written judge’s order or as part on an ongoing sexual investigation by a college.’
More than 100 people in the UK have already downloaded it.

[. . .]
Sex contracts are being encouraged widely in American colleges. University of Massachusetts student Noah Convicer, 21, has used the WeConsent app several times and said: ‘It’s a great idea. I don’t feel embarrassed asking a girl to consent to sex on video. It protects both of us and it is a mature and responsible thing to do. I use apps for everything else, so why not this?’
Sally Bratton, who sits on the board of the Health Services Association for Californian Community Colleges, which represents two million students on 112 campuses, said: ‘These contracts are a very good idea. They take away any doubt or misunderstanding, which is one of the leading causes of accusations of sexual assault. When you have apps like Tinder making sex purely recreational, why not have an app or contract to protect yourself?’ But Jasmin Enriquez, 23, who was date-raped as a student at Pennsylvania State University, branded sex contracts ‘pure evil’, saying: ‘They are nothing more than stunts and money-generating schemes which distract from the real issue which is education. We need to educate students of both sexes. Informed consent is an ongoing, shifting process which cannot be encapsulated in a contract. A contract fails to safeguard a woman who might change her mind after signing it.’
And Susuana Amoah, women’s officer at the UK’s National Union of Students, said: ‘The idea that consent could be given through an app is a really dangerous notion – this type of technology isn’t the answer to developing better sexual consent behaviour. We shouldn’t be encouraging students to equate consent with “there’s an app for that” – we should be encouraging them to engage in on-going discussions about consent and boundaries.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3166650/The-Yes-sex-app-New-mobile-phone-device-films-people-giving-consent-protect-users-assault-claims-health-workers-condemn-contracts-evil.html

The 'Yes' to sex app: New mobile phone device films people giving consent to protect users from assault claims - but health workers condemn 'contracts' as 'evil'
The WeConsent app was created by a former Wall Street banker
Uses Apple iPhone's video camera to make 20-second recording
Asks both partners to state their names and that they agree to sex
Critics have branded sex contracts 'pure evil' and a 'dangerous notion'
By CAROLINE GRAHAM and HANNAH FLINT FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
PUBLISHED: 16:03 EST, 18 July 2015 | UPDATED: 01:07 EST, 19 July 2015

FBI Reveals, Duh! Domestic Institutions Vulnerable to Cyber Attacks

Here's an idea. There are hundreds of programmers creating apps for city governments across the nation. Do you think any of them may be anarchists, or criminals? Duh! Here's another. For the past eight years Harvard University IT employees, and criminals employed by local police tampered with my home computer. Do you think that police and academic hackers can thwart attacks from other nations? Just asking. With no plan, clueless officials fund creation of more and more digital systems that remain vulnerable. More evidence that leadership positions in government, corporations and universities are being filled by weak persons with relaxed rectitude. See, Roger Morris's book, Partners in Power, about the Clintons. 

[From article]
“If you have a device connected to the Internet, you can’t ever have high confidence that you’re safe,” he said.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/9/fbi-director-us-vulnerable-major-cyberattack/

FBI director: U.S. vulnerable to major cyberattack
By Phillip Swarts
The Washington Times
Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Computers Are Dumbing Down Professionals, Restraint Needed In Programming

Computers are taking over the kinds of knowledge work long considered the preserve of well-educated, well-trained professionals. Luci Gutiérrez 

[From article]
Worrisome evidence suggests that our own intelligence is withering as we become more dependent on the artificial variety. Rather than lifting us up, smart software seems to be dumbing us down.
It has been a slow process. The first wave of automation rolled through U.S. industry after World War II, when manufacturers began installing electronically controlled equipment in their plants. [. . .] The new technology would be ennobling.
[. . .]
More often than not, the new machines were leaving workers with drabber, less demanding jobs. An automated milling machine, for example, didn’t transform the metalworker into a more creative artisan; it turned him into a pusher of buttons.
[. . .]
Computers are taking over the kinds of knowledge work long considered the preserve of well-educated, well-trained professionals: Pilots rely on computers to fly planes; doctors consult them in diagnosing ailments; architects use them to design buildings.
[. . .]
“Flying skills decay quite rapidly towards the fringes of ‘tolerable’ performance without relatively frequent practice,” Mr. Ebbatson concluded. But computers now handle most flight operations between takeoff and touchdown—so “frequent practice” is exactly what pilots are not getting.
[. . .]
In other words, our skills get sharper only through practice, when we use them regularly to overcome different sorts of difficult challenges.
The goal of modern software, by contrast, is to ease our way through such challenges. Arduous, painstaking work is exactly what programmers are most eager to automate—after all, that is where the immediate efficiency gains tend to lie. In other words, a fundamental tension ripples between the interests of the people doing the automation and the interests of the people doing the work.
[. . .]
The programs incorporate valuable checklists and alerts, but they also make medicine more routinized and formulaic—and distance doctors from their patients.
[. . .]


A professor from Harvard Medical School wrote in a journal article that when doctors become ‘screen-driven,’ following a computer’s prompts rather than ‘the patient’s narrative thread,’ their thinking can become constricted. In the worst cases, they may miss important diagnostic signals. Getty Images 

Medical software, they write, is no “replacement for basic history-taking, examination skills, and critical thinking.”
[. . .]
When software takes over, manual skills wane.
[. . .]
When system designers begin a project, they first consider the capabilities of computers, with an eye toward delegating as much of the work as possible to the software. The human operator is assigned whatever is left over, which usually consists of relatively passive chores such as entering data, following templates and monitoring displays.
This philosophy traps people in a vicious cycle of de-skilling. By isolating them from hard work, it dulls their skills and increases the odds that they will make mistakes. When those mistakes happen, designers respond by seeking to further restrict people’s responsibilities—spurring a new round of de-skilling.
[. . .]
Even the smartest software lacks the common sense, ingenuity and verve of the skilled professional. In cockpits, offices or examination rooms, human experts remain indispensable. Their insight, ingenuity and intuition, honed through hard work and seasoned real-world judgment, can’t be replicated by algorithms or robots.
If we let our own skills fade by relying too much on automation, we are going to render ourselves less capable, less resilient and more subservient to our machines. We will create a world more fit for robots than for us.



http://online.wsj.com/articles/automation-makes-us-dumb-1416589342

Automation Makes Us Dumb
Human intelligence is withering as computers do more, but there’s a solution.
By NICHOLAS CARR
Nov. 21, 2014 12:02 p.m. ET

U.S. Government Agencies Place Surveillance Software on Journalists' Computers

It is surveillance technology used by police agencies and criminals. On one computer I found 14 trojan horses. When I took my current computer to an authorized technician instead of examining what was causing my problems he simply erased the hard drive. But it did not take long before local police replaced the key stroke and other surveillance software on my home computer. At least Attkisson was able to get evidence of what they did to her.  

[From article]
In her new memoir, Sharyl Attkisson says a source who arranged to have her laptop checked for spyware in 2013 was “shocked” and “flabbergasted” at what the analysis revealed.
“This is outrageous. Worse than anything Nixon ever did. I wouldn’t have believed something like this could happen in the United States of America,” Attkisson quotes the source saying.
[. . .]
The spyware included programs that Attkisson says monitored her every keystroke and gave the snoops access to all her e-mails and the passwords to her financial accounts.
[. . .]
Attkisson says her source — identified only as “Number One” — told her the spying was most likely not court-authorized because it went on far longer than most legal taps.
But the most shocking finding, she says, was the discovery of three classified documents that Number One told her were “buried deep in your operating system. In a place that, unless you’re a some kind of computer whiz specialist, you wouldn’t even know exists.”
“They probably planted them to be able to accuse you of having classified documents if they ever needed to do that at some point,” Number One added.

http://nypost.com/2014/10/27/ex-cbs-reporter-government-related-entity-bugged-my-computer/

Ex-CBS reporter: Government agency bugged my computer
By Kyle Smith and Bruce Golding
New York Post
October 27, 2014 | 7:36am

Boston Mayor Opposes Parking App

The concept of using public property for profit is not a foreign idea to the Boston area. In Cambridge Harvard University conducts major fund raisers every year on city land. Food trucks sell their fare on the same land on the Broadway and Cambridge Street overpass near the Cambridge Fire Department headquarters. Local restaurants serve their customers on city sidewalks without any increased license fees. How is the computer app any different? Is the doctrine of ignoring inconvenient laws not applicable to Boston as it is in Cambridge and Washington DC? 

[From article]
 Daniel Koh, the mayor’s chief of staff, responded by saying the city was concerned about a private company, as well as drivers, profiting from public property.
[. . .]
When the first car leaves and the second takes its place, the driver of the newly parked vehicle is billed $3 electronically. The original occupant gets to keep $2.25, and Haystack takes a commission of 75 cents for facilitating the exchange.
Meyer contends his business does not broker the sale of public property but merely provides a cash incentive for drivers to swap useful information.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/07/15/haystack/ceD8Rcmz2PRd39Gp58gwhO/story.html

Boston mayor sharply rebukes Haystack parking app
By Callum Borchers

Boston GLOBE STAFF

JULY 15, 2014

Secret Service Seeks Software To Detect Sarcasm

[From article]

The Secret Service is also seeking software that can complete very succinct tasks within massive sets of continuously flowing social media data, such as locating users and detecting sarcasm.
“Ability to detect sarcasm and false positives,” reads the request.

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/06/04/secret-service-requests-software-to-track-social-media-trends-detect-sarcasm/

Secret Service Requests Software To Track Social Media Trends, Detect Sarcasm
June 4, 2014 10:45 AM

CBS News Washington DC

Woman Admiral Invented COBOL Language, Term "Debugging"

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Hopper%2c+Grace+Murray

Grace Hopper
Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy Rear Admiral.

Romney's Computer System Failed on Election Day

http://blogs.computerworld.com/governmentindustries/21310/inside-look-behind-romneys-loss-epic-failure-its-orca-big-data-app

An inside look behind Romney's loss: An epic failure of its Orca big-data app
By Preston Gralla
November 09, 2012 10:40 AM EST

Software Allows Verifying Petition Signatures

[From article]
"Internet software that ensured precision and allowed him to avoid the chance of signatures being rejected on legal technicalities."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/petition-drives-in-maryland-go-high-tech/2011/07/08/gIQAdRQDDI_story.html

Web software helped keep immigrant-tuition foes’ petitions valid
By Michael Laris,
Published: July 13 2011
Washington Post

Harvard Dean Approved Contract, Focus of Trial

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1340644

Ex-official caved to obsession of House ‘big guy’

By Peter Gelzinis
Boston Herald
Thursday, May 26, 2011