Perhaps they are just being more open than other governments?
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=21618
RIM Hits India’s Email Demands
March 13, 2011 by Dissent
Amol Sharma reports:
A top executive of BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion Ltd. said Indian security agencies are making “rather astonishing” demands for increased powers to monitor email and other data traffic, raising serious privacy issues that threaten to harm the country’s reputation with foreign investors.
Read more on MarketWatch.
[From the article:
Such a broad requirement raises the question of whether the government believes any communications are legally off-limits, he said, including email conversations of foreign ambassadors and financial records that get transmitted over secure telecommunications networks to Indian outsourcing companies.
Think of it as requiring a 'shrink wrap license' to visit someone in jail.
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=21587
D.C. rethinks its plans to fingerprint all jail visitors for outstanding warrants
March 12, 2011 by Dissent
Back in January, I posted a news item about how D.C. jails were going to start fingerprinting visitors to check for outstanding warrants on the visitors. Needless to say, I was not a proponent of the plan.
Now today, Associated Press reports that the Dept. of Corrections is re-evaluating its plan and has put it on hold because of a ”host of legal, financial and operational concerns that have been raised.”
The fingerprint proposal had raised concerns that it would be overly intrusive, though jail officials said they never planned to store the fingerprints and that it would be up to police to decide what to do if the prints turned up an outstanding warrant.
“Concerns?” “Overly intrusive?” Is this department-speak for “We may have a problem with the Fourth Amendment?” Or will some savvy lawyer tell me that once again, the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply?
Libel in 140 characters or less.
First Brit Prosecuted Over Twitter Libel
"A former town Mayor, Colin Elsbury, made legal history by being the first Brit to pay damages for libel on Twitter. His tweet on polling day said 'It's not in our nature to deride our opponents however Eddie Talbot had to be removed by the Police from a polling station' amounted to pure election slur. The Twitter libel was settled at Cardiff High Court with total bill hitting £53,000 (£3,000 compensation + £50,000 legal fees). The fine works out at more than £2,400 per word. After Courtney Love recent £260k settlement in a Twibel case, this case reaffirms that anything posted in the public domain is subject to libel laws."
I assume the prosecution would need to prove that the identification was correct?
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/03/13/1515234/Court-Rules-Its-Ok-To-Tag-Pics-On-Facebook-Without-Permission?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29
Court Rules It's Ok To Tag Pics On Facebook Without Permission
"A federal court has ruled that photos of a woman on Facebook showing her drinking were properly used as evidence in a child custody case. She had argued she was identified without permission. But the court rejected that argument. In reaching that decision, the court made the interesting observation that: '[t]here is nothing within the law that requires [one's] permission when someone takes a picture and posts it on a Facebook page. There is nothing that requires [one's] permission when she [is] "tagged" or identified as a person in those pictures.'"
Worth a read?
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=21608
Available Now: New Working Paper on the Right to Information and Privacy
March 13, 2011 by Dissent
A reader kindly forwarded me a copy of an announcement from the World Bank Institute concerning a working paper authored by David Banisar, Senior Legal Counsel for Article XIX (a group oriented to global free expression):
The relationship between privacy and Right to Information laws is currently the subject of considerable debate around the globe as countries are increasingly adopting these types of legislation. To date, more than 50 countries have adopted both laws.
On first inspection, it would appear that the right of access to information and the right to protection of personal privacy are irreconcilable. However the reality is more complex. For the most part, these two rights complement each other in holding governments accountable to individuals. But there is a potential conflict between these rights when there is a demand for access to personal information held by government bodies.
Targeted for practitioners working in governance and transparency issues and as part of its Governance Working Paper series, the World Bank Institute has recently published a sixth working paper on ATI addressing some of these issues.
“The Right to Information and Privacy: Balancing rights and managing conflicts” by David Banisar, Senior Legal Counsel for Article XIX. Available here: http://wbi.worldbank.org/wbi/news/2011/03/10/available-now-new-working-paper-right-information-and-privacy
Focusing on the cases of Ireland, Mexico, Slovenia and the UK, while also looking at other experiences, this paper examines legislative and structural means to better define and balance the rights to privacy and to information.
Links to other working papers can be found on WBI’s web site.
Note: David Banisar, the author of the working paper, was formerly with EPIC and Privacy International.
A statistical theory of management?
Tech Expertise Not Important In Google Managers
"For much of its 13-year history, Google has taken a pretty simple approach to management: Leave people alone but if employees become stuck, they should ask their bosses, whose deep technical expertise propelled them into management in the first place. Now the Economic Times reports that statisticians at Google looking for characteristics that define good managers have gathered more than 10,000 observations about managers — across more than 100 variables, from various performance reviews, feedback surveys and other reports and found that technical expertise ranks dead last among Google's eight most important characteristics of good managers. What Google employees value most are even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees' lives and careers."
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