http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20090525051036966
Ca: Breach led to demise of passport web service
Monday, May 25 2009 @ 05:10 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews
Passport Canada's online application service was shut down last month because of security concerns, says an internal document.
That rationale for killing Passport On-Line on April 30 is at odds with the public explanation that service was simply not "convenient."
Instead, a report into a 2007 website security breach shows that Passport Canada's "action plan" to correct the problem included an end to the online service. The agency now offers a downloadable form applicants can fill out, print and bring to a Passport Canada office.
Source - Toronto Star
How to avoid jury duty in Canada. ...and now every DA in the US will want to do this...
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20090525071527893
Ca: Police Vetted Jury Pool For Crown
Monday, May 25 2009 @ 07:15 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews
Police forces in Barrie, Ont., and the surrounding region have been conducting background checks of potential jurors without their knowledge for several years at the request of the Ministry of the Attorney-General, according to documents obtained by the National Post.
Confidential police databases were searched to see if people had a criminal record, were ever charged with an offence or had dealings with the mental health system. [or voted the wrong way, or had the wrong religion, or were the wrong color... Bob] The searches were part of a Crown practice to weed out what they considered "disreputable persons" for the jury pool.
Source - National Post
[From the article:
There is no provision, however, in the provincial Juries Act that permits the Crown to use police databases to conduct background checks on potential jurors. There are instead strict rules that restrict the Crown and defence to knowing only the name, address and occupation of a potential juror from court records.
Can't wait for electronic health records, so they can “spill” some of that data onto the Internet.
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20090525050312976
UK: NHS ‘loses’ thousands of files
Monday, May 25 2009 @ 05:03 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews
The personal medical records of tens of thousands of people have been lost by the NHS in a series of grave data security leaks.
Between January and April this year 140 security breaches were reported within the NHS – more than the total number from inside central Government and all local authorities combined.
Source - Belfast Telegraph
The future of surveillance?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/24/208221&from=rss
In Istanbul, Cameras To Recognize 15,000 Faces/sec.
Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 24, @08:31PM from the for-your-own-good dept. Privacy Government
An anonymous reader writes
"Istanbul's popular (and crowded) Istiklal shopping, cafe, and restaurant street is being outfitted with 64 wirelessly controlled, tamper-proof [want to bet? Bob] face-recognition cameras attached to a computer system capable of scanning 15,000 faces per second in a moving crowd for a positive match. The link from Samanyolu, badly translated by Google, states that 3 cameras are in place so far and that if trials are successful, this will mark the first time such a system, previously used by Scotland Yard and normally reserved for indoor security use, will be put to use in a public outdoor setting. It also notes that each camera controlled by the system is capable of 'locking onto' the faces of known criminals and pickpockets detected in the crowd and 'tracking' their movements for up to 300 meters before the next, closer placed camera takes over."
Hit the link for more of this reader's background on the growing electronic encroachment on privacy in this city, which will be the European Capital of Culture in 2010, causing him to ask, "Is the historic city of Istanbul turning into the new London?"
[More Bob]
Looking for a hobby? Reminds me of a guy I knew in the Army who was the world's leading (only) authority on (what was then) Fernando Poo. I bet there are people looking hard at Cuba – for investing when Fidel finally dies and restrictions are removed.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/24/1229228&from=rss
Internet Giving Rise To "Citizen Spies"
Posted by Soulskill on Sunday May 24, @10:22AM from the bond-dot-jamesbond-dot-com dept. The Internet News Politics
reporter writes
"According to a startling report by the Wall Street Journal, the Internet has empowered ordinary people to be part-time intelligence officers, uncovering secrets like military facilities and prison camps across the landscape of North Korea. The report states, '[Curtis] Melvin is at the center of a dozen or so citizen snoops who have spent the past two years filling in the blanks on the map of one of the world's most secretive countries. Seeking clues in photos, news reports and eyewitness accounts, they affix labels to North Korean structures and landscapes captured by Google Earth, an online service that stitches satellite pictures into a virtual globe. The result is an annotated North Korea of rocket-launch sites, prison camps and elite palaces on white-sand beaches. "It's democratized intelligence," says Mr. Melvin. More than 35,000 people have downloaded Mr. Melvin's file, North Korea Uncovered. It has grown to include thousands of tags in categories such as "nuclear issues" (alleged reactors, missile storage), dams (more than 1,200 countrywide) and restaurants (47). Its Wikipedia approach to spying shows how Soviet-style secrecy is facing a new challenge from the Internet's power to unite a disparate community of busybodies.'"
Related – but I bet it doesn't make the evening news.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/25/1233234&from=rss
North Korea Conducts Nuclear Test
Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday May 25, @08:52AM from the happy-holidays dept. The Military
viyh writes
"North Korea conducted a nuclear test on Monday, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted a ruling party official as saying. A magnitude 4.7 earthquake was recorded by the USGS in North Korea. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has called an emergency meeting of cabinet ministers over the test, Yonhap said."
Sound too good to be true? I suspect other sophisticated financial toys will be “simplified/dumbed down?” for the individual consumer. (Anyone want $2 worth of IBM stock?)
http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/petrofix-control-gas-price-increases/
PetroFix: Control Gas Price Increases
For people who drive their cars regularly, change in the price of gas can be very costly for their budget. Considering the volatility of gas prices, imagine if you could hedge against future gas price increases. Petrofix lets you do just that. It lets you lock in a fixed price for a gas, so when the price goes up in the future, you won’t incur any additional costs.
There goes the bandwidth... I didn't understand the need to tweet, now everyone under 18 needs to show me their cat/skateboard/purple hair?
http://venturebeat.com/2009/05/23/twitvidio-strikes-back-lets-you-tweet-from-directly-from-webcam/
TwitVid.io strikes back — lets you tweet directly from webcam
Matt Marshall | May 23rd, 2009
The combination of Twitter and real-time video is nirvana for the socialite.
What more would you want than to be able to sit there and tweet videos of yourself in rapid fire, all day long?
Now TwitVid.io is letting you do just that: tweet videos directly from your webcam on your computer. It will be ready by the end of the weekend, says TwitVid.io co-founder Chrys Bader. You’ll just hit a button directly on the site that says “Direct from webcam,” and it’ll take your video and upload it to your tweet as soon as you hit stop.
It’s the latest counterpunch in a fast-moving race between TwitVid.io and its San Francisco cross-town rival Twitvid.com to out-(t)wit each other.
TwitVid.io struck first on Monday, offering an easy way to upload video into a link that you can then tweet. On Friday, TwitVid.com launched almost identical functionality, but with the added features such as real-time streaming and an API that lets other sites integrate it into their own offerings, thus helping TwitVid.com with distribution.
Don't try this at home! What is Apple planning?
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/05/23/apple_said_building_1_billion_server_farm.html
Apple said building $1 billion server farm
By Aidan Malley Published: 07:45 PM EST
North Carolina's government is reportedly promising tax breaks to Apple in return for building a large server farm, eventually worth $1 billion, within the East coast state.
For the Hacker folder
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/hide-your-country-of-origin-for-any-application/
Hide Your Country Of Origin For Any Application
May. 24th, 2009 By Simon Slangen
Tor has been discussed on MakeUseOf before. It’s a multi-platform application that allows you to completely hide (or manipulate) the alleged origin of your network activities. It can be used to surf anonymously and also to access country-restricted services like Hulu, Spotify, and many others.
Related. If you are grabbing illegal/immoral/fattening files, you probably don't want to keep them on your computer.
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