One Crime Solved Per 1,000 London CCTV Cameras
Posted by kdawson on Monday August 24, @07:09PM from the ready-for-my-closeup-mister-demille dept.
SpuriousLogic writes
"Only one crime was solved for each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city's surveillance network has claimed. The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals. In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers. David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: 'It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent.' He added: 'CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness. It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security. The Metropolitan Police has been extraordinarily slow to act to deal with the ineffectiveness of CCTV.'"
(Related) I see they have incorporated one of my cliches...
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=3132
Personal spy gear: Is it ethical? Is it legal?
August 25, 2009 by Dissent Filed under Surveillance
… while it’s easy to find and buy surveillance devices, is it legal and/or ethical to use them? Is it okay if you use them to watch over strangers? Is it reasonable to use them to watch and hear family members and loved ones?
The answers can sometimes be murky.
“There are definitely legalities to consider,” said Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney for the San Francisco-based non-profit privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it.” [We can, therefore we must! Bob]
[...]
Behnam Dayanim, an attorney with Los Angeles-based Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP, said the legal lines on the use of such devices can be blurry.
“The acceptability or permissibility of these techniques depends on several factors, including where they were activated, who is undertaking the activity and what notice is provided to the subject of the activation,” Dayanim said. “There are different degrees of privacy interests. The greatest privacy interest is in your own home.”
Read more on Computerworld.
[From the article:
http://www.theprotectionpros.com/
http://www.spytek-detroit.com/
A sampling of security gear
There's an ocean of high-tech personal security devices out there. These are only a few:
Hidden cameras
SecureShot Bird Feeder DVR (Productive Electronics LLC, $699)
SecureShot Teddy Bear Camera (Productive Electronics LLC, $699)
GPS trackers
Trackstick Mini (Telespial Systems Inc., $289)
Zoombak Universal A-GPS Locator (Zoombak LLC, $100)
Audio recorders (with automatic voice activation)
Olympus VN-6200PC (Olympus America Inc., $60)
Sony Digital Voice Recorder ICD-SX700D (Sony Electronics Inc., $200)
What make you think you need cameras to monitor you citizens?
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1916302,00.html
Seoul: World's Most Wired Megacity Gets More So
By Stephen Kim and Bill Powell Monday, Aug. 24, 2009
In the sprawling, densely populated capital city of South Korea, Lee Hye-young and her husband Kim Soon-kyo are nothing if not typical citizens. Which is to say, even the most mundane, everyday aspects of their lives are carried out at technology's leading edge.
Consider their respective commutes to work early one recent morning. Lee clambers onto a city bus, headed to her office job in the southern part of the city. She pays using her radio-frequency-identification (RFID) card — it has a computer chip in it — part of a transit program conceived and implemented by the city government. The card is smart enough to calculate the distance she travels on any form of public transit, which determines the fare. She can then use the same card to pay for the taxi she hails to finish her journey to work. Sometimes her husband, the deputy marketing manager at a small chemical company, drives her to work. But not today. A few months ago, he applied online to join a program offered by the city that promises insurance discounts, reduced-cost parking and a tax break if he leaves his car home one business day a week. The city sent him an RFID tag, which he attaches to the windshield so the city can monitor compliance. It took him just minutes to fill out the application on his home computer, and now, he says, he saves the equivalent of $50 a month.
… Seoul has even greater e-ambitions. It has begun to implement a project called Ubiquitous Seoul [Where have I heard that word before? Bob] — or U-city — which will extend the city's technological reach.
(Related) How citizens monitor themselves...
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=3114
Social networks leak personal information
August 24, 2009 by Dissent Filed under Internet
Online social networking sites leak personal information, a new study has found, raising the possibility that users of such sites can be tracked everywhere they go online.
The study, “On the Leakage of Personally Identifiable Information Via Online Social Networks,” was co-authored by Balachander Krishnamurthy, a researcher at AT&T Labs and Craig E. Wills, a professor of computer science at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, and presented last week at the Second ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Online Social Networks in Barcelona, Spain.
Read more on InformationWeek
(Related) How to document your cheating...
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/25/facebook-conversations-used-as-evidence-in-exam-cheating-case/
Facebook Conversations Used As Evidence In Exam Cheating Case
by Robin Wauters on August 25, 2009
… But then a couple of threads on Facebook held prior to and after the exams surfaced, proving that the cheating had been going on for quite a while and showing that the students were pretty proud of the fact they hadn’t been caught to date.
Be sure to mention this to your politician of choice – it could cause apoplexy! (De-porkification?)
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10316621-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Open source, not $19 billion, may be best health care stimulus
by Matt Asay August 24, 2009 3:52 PM PDT
The federal economic stimulus package provides $19 billion to upgrade the U.S. health care system to digital records. It's a nice gesture, but the U.S. federal government has already developed a robust medical ERP system that could significantly improve U.S. health care. It's called VistA. It's open source.
For my hacker students...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10316812-245.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Cracking GSM phone crypto via distributed computing
by Elinor Mills
If you are using a GSM phone (AT&T or T-Mobile in the U.S.), you likely have a few more months before it will be easy for practically anyone to spy on your communications.
Security researcher Karsten Nohl is launching an open-source, distributed computing project designed to crack the encryption used on GSM phones and compile it into a code book that can be used to decode conversations and any data that gets sent to and from the phone.
… This weakness in the encryption used on the phones, A5/1, has been known about for years. There are at least four commercial tools that allow for decrypting GSM communications that range in price from $100,000 to $250,000 depending on how fast you want the software to work, said Nohl, who previously has publicized weaknesses with wireless smart card chips used in transit systems.
No, no, no, no... Please do not resuscitate!
Appeals Court Overturns 2007 Unix Copyright Decision
Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 25, @08:09AM from the long-dark-teatime dept.
snydeq writes
"A federal appeals court has overturned a 2007 decision that Novell owns the Unix code, clearing the way for SCO to pursue a $1 billion copyright infringement case against IBM. In a 54-page decision (PDF), the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals said it was reversing the 2007 summary judgment decision by Judge Dale Kimball of the US District Court for the District of Utah, which found that Novell was the owner of Unix and UnixWare copyrights. SCO CEO Darl McBride called the decision a 'huge validation for SCO.'"
The case over who owns Unix will now go to trial in Utah.
Strange choices some of them...
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1918031,00.html
50 Best Websites 2009
[A couple of sites to visit:
http://www.californiacoastline.org/ Pictures of Barbara Streisand's house gave us the term “Streisand Effect”
http://www.academicearth.org/ Full video courses from leading universities.
I'll suggest this to my students who will make a careful and detailed note and then never see it again...
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/notely-helps-students-get-organized-online/
Notely Helps Students Get Organized Online
Aug. 24th, 2009 By Stefan Neagu
… Since the statistics say that more than 90% of college students own a computer with an Internet connection, why not take a look at a web application that helps students easily achieve GTD nirvana: Notely.
… This is what Notely does; It takes all the tools that a student needs to be organized and get stuff done and brings it together in a shrink wrapped package for anyone to use.
Signing up for an account is completely free and takes just seconds – it will even work with an existing OpenID login. After that, you can start adding courses, to do’s, notes – all on a single website. While manually inputting 20 classes doesn’t look that enticing, it’s a one-time only thing and you’re not going to regret it.
… It’s also got a Tools section, which contains a scientific calculator, a comprehensive unit converter and a dictionary that makes use of the Google Translate API.
… You can sign up for Notely here, or view a live demo.
Personal forensics...
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/use-licensecrawler-to-recover-your-lost-software-serial-numbers/
Use LicenseCrawler To Recover Your Lost Software Serial Numbers
Aug. 25th, 2009 By Karl L. Gechlik
Have you ever had a installation of something that you wanted to reinstall but you couldn’t? Have you ever lost a software serial number or key code? How about something that was pre-installed on your system – how do you reinstall that?
… It is a neat little piece of freeware called LicenseCrawler.
… After downloading the application you simply run it and it will return all the keys from your computer.
I suspect this will be useful. There are tons of webinars...
http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/webinarhero-com-finding-webinars-easily
WebinarHero.com - Finding Webinars Easily
As you can figure out by looking at its name, this site is about webinars. What it does is to gather together information as regards such events, and present it to the user so that anybody can learn about any upcoming webinar that could appeal to him or her immediately.
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