A slight case of overkill?
N.Y.
protester’s tweets at heart of clash on privacy
February 26, 2012 by Dissent
The Associated Press filed this report
on a situation covered
previously on this
blog:
An Occupy Wall
Street protester and prosecutors are tussling over his tweets in a
clash that’s raising legal issues of privacy in an
online age. [Catchy phrase,,, Bob]
The contest has
sounded alarms among electronic-privacy advocates, who see ominous
overreaching in the Manhattan prosecutor’s efforts to subpoena
tweets sent by a demonstrator facing a disorderly conduct charge.
The protester’s lawyer is trying to block the subpoena, calling it
an infringement on constitutional rights and “an unwarranted
invasion of privacy.”
But the Manhattan
district attorney’s office says it’s fair game to
go after messages protester Malcolm Harris sent publicly [If they are
public, why the subpoena? Bob] for weeks before and
months after his arrest. The messages might contradict Harris’
defense that he thought protesters had police permission to march in
the street on the Brooklyn Bridge on Oct. 1, prosecutors said in a
Feb. 22 court filing.
Read more on First
Amendment Center.
Harris was not charged
with any crime. This is a ridiculous waste of taxpayers’
money and government overreach for a violation involving obstructing
traffic. And while the D.A.’s office wastes its resources on this
case, how many serious cases remain uninvestigated or uncharged?
[From the article:
The charge against Harris is a
violation, not a crime. Maintaining his innocence, he is heading
toward trial after turning down a deal to get the case dismissed by
staying out of trouble for six months.
… The subpoena also
directed Twitter not to tell anyone about the subpoena,
saying disclosure “would impede the investigation being conducted.”
But San Francisco-based Twitter Inc.
told prosecutors a few days later that its policy is to tell users
about information requests, unless a law or court order prevents
doing so. Prosecutors then said they weren’t
seeking to keep the subpoena confidential, according to
e-mails attached to the DA’s filing.
… Prosecutors say they need the
full 3½ months of tweets to capture any messages that might
“indicate that this was a planned act” or that made admissions
afterward.
(Related) This video shows how to
capture both sides of a Twitter conversation. Is NY unable to use
technology?
Tekzilla
Daily: View full Twitter conversations
(Related) ...in that an apparent
trivial event results in a rather harsh reaction. (Based on the
actions of an unrelated group)
"Four friends apprehended
exploring the disused
Aldwych station in London's Underground are faced with an
'anti-social
behaviour order' (ASBO) which would forbid
them from talking to each other for a full 10 years. The
so-called 'Aldwych four,' experienced urban explorers, were
discovered in the tunnels under the UK's capital city a few days
before last year's royal wedding and the greatly increased security
measures in place led to their being interviewed by
senior members of the British Transport Police. Nevertheless, once
their benign intentions had been established, they were let off with
a caution. However, following an accident caused
by another, unrelated group of urban explorers in the tunnels a few
months later, Transport for London applied to have ASBOs issued to
the Aldwych four. These would forbid them from any further
expeditions, from blogging or otherwise publicly discussing any
exploits, and even from talking with each other for the 10 year
duration of the order. One could argue about the ethics of urban
exploration, but this nevertheless seems like an astonishingly
heavy-handed over-reaction by TfL."
I only teach Statistics
and Math and Business, maybe that's why the stated reason for
throttling never made sense... (Except as a bad marketing idea)
Study
Shoots Holes In AT&T's Reasons for Throttling
AT&T has
justified its throttling rules for unlimited-plan customers by saying
it was only targeting its top
5 percent of bandwidth users.
… AT&T has said it would
throttle, or slow down the data traffic speed, for any unlimited plan
holder who uses
more than 2GB per month. That's supposed to
only affect the heaviest, top 5 percent of data users on unlimited
plans, not those with tiered plans, which are now the only kind
available to new customers.
The Validas
study reveals that the top 5 percent of
bandwidth users on AT&T's unlimited data plans use an average of
3.97GB per month--hardly the kind of numbers that would choke AT&T's
network. There is also little difference between 3.97GB and 3.19GB,
the average among AT&T's top 5 percent tiered-plan users.
… In a blog post, Validas concludes
that throttling isn't being put in place to curb greedy data hogs,
but rather to migrate users of traditional unlimited
plans to tiered plans.
Big Universities have
leverage with textbook publishers...
Cal
State Announces Deal on E-Textbooks
February 23, 2012 - 3:00am
Following a major
e-textbook pilot last year, the California State University
System announced
Wednesday that it has cut a deal with Cengage Learning that could
give students steep discounts on that publisher's e-textbooks.
“Beginning in the fall, students will have the choice to rent
digital versions of [Cengage] texts… at a cost savings of 60
percent or more compared with the cost of purchasing the same text as
a new printed version,” the Cal State system office said in a
release. Students who want to benefit from the discount but still
prefer to read ink on paper will be allowed to print out the pages,
according to the release.
From the addendum: 41% of students are
currently using social media for research or study
Welcome
to ebrary’s 2011 Global Student E-book Survey!
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