http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=6775
Facebook blocks social network profile removal service
January 5, 2010 by Dissent Filed under Internet
Last week, this site reported that Seppuko.com had received a cease and desist letter from Facebook over its service that enabled people to commit “virtual suicide” on Facebook. Now BBC reports that another web site, Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, has been blocked by Facebook.
Social network giant Facebook has blocked a website from accessing people’s profiles in order to delete their online presence.
The site, Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, offers to remove users from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Myspace.
It does not delete their accounts but changes the passwords and removes “friend” connections.
Seppukoo.com, which offers a similar service, was issued with a “cease and desist” letter by Facebook in 2009.
Netherlands-based moddr, behind Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, says it believes that “everyone should have the right to disconnect”.
However Facebook says that by collecting login credentials, the site violates its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR).
Read more on BBC.
If Facebook really respects user privacy and user control, shouldn’t a user have the right to give their login credentials to whomever they want?
Perhaps we should ask anyone who wants to fly for “naked pictures” to compare to the images the machine returns? Or we could have “his” and “hers” lines at the airport? (or is that sexist?)
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=6777
UK, Germany raise concerns about airport scanners
January 5, 2010 by Dissent Filed under Non-U.S., Surveillance, Youth
Alan Travis reports:
The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.
Privacy campaigners claim the images created by the machines are so graphic they amount to “virtual strip-searching” and have called for safeguards to protect the privacy of passengers involved.
Ministers now face having to exempt under 18s from the scans or face the delays of introducing new legislation to ensure airport security staff do not commit offences under child pornography laws.
Read more in The Guardian.
Meanwhile, over in Germany:
Germany’s data protection commissioner, Peter Schaar, has warned officials not to rush the implementation of controversial full-body scanners at airport security stations following a failed terrorist attack last month, daily Frankfurter Rundschau reported on Tuesday.
“So far I have not seen a machine that protects personal rights,” Schaar told the paper, adding that the machines must be able to tell the difference between foreign objects and medical prosthetics or implants.
“The improvement that the naked images are no longer visible on the monitors is not enough on its own,” he said.
Read more in The Local (De).
(Related) No doubt this was prompted by TSAs plan to use those full body imagers on everyone (for political correctness) including those they clearly do not suspect of planning terrorism.
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=6771
Can the Police Now Use Thermal Imaging Devices Without a Warrant?
January 4, 2010 by Dissent Filed under Court, Featured Headlines, Surveillance
Orin Kerr writes:
In Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), the Supreme Court held that it violated the Fourth Amendment to direct an infrared thermal imaging device at a home without a warrant to determine the home’s temperature. This post asks whether that result is still good law. I realize that probably sounds a bit nutty at first, as Kyllo is only a few years old. But Kyllo deliberately adopted a test designed to let the result change with social practice. This post asks whether changing social practices already allow the police to use thermal imaging devices without a warrant.
I’ll look at the problem in three steps. First, I’ll explain the relevant Fourth Amendment test from Kyllo. Second, I’ll explain how technology and social practice have changed in the eight-and-a-half years since the Kyllo decision. And third, I’ll put the pieces together and ask whether Kyllo’s result remains good law. My bottom line: I’m not really sure, but there is a decent case to be made that the police can now use thermal imaging devices without a warrant consistently with Kyllo.
Read more on The Volokh Conspiracy.
Some years ago, a study reported that since rubber bullets were “non-lethal” they were used much more frequently in Northern Ireland than any other devices or methods prior to their introduction. (If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.)
Court to Cops: Stop Tasing People into Compliance
By David Hambling January 4, 2010 9:33 am
Winning the hearts and minds of consumers everywhere...
Best Buy $39.95 "Optimization" At Best a Waste of Money
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday January 04, @04:30PM from the hooray-for-corporate-scams dept.
DCFC writes
"The Consumerist deconstructs the appalling 'optimization service' that Best Buy has been pushing on consumers in recent weeks. The retailer charges 40 bucks to give you a slower PC, and make bizarre claims that it makes it go 200% faster. 'We ran the 3DMark 2003 graphics benchmark on each laptop, comparing optimized and non-optimized settings. For two of our samples, the Gateway and Toshiba, performance changes were negligible. On the Asus laptop, however, optimized tests actually scored about 32% worse than the non-optimized setup. We have been unable to isolate the source of this performance change. On none of the three tested laptops did the optimized settings give a performance boost in our test.'"
A modest proposal: Let's call these massive, record cold waves “Al Gore Heat Waves” after the man who invented them.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/023172.html
January 04, 2010
Blanket of Cold Weather One of Nation's Most Widespread Since January 1985
WSJ.com: "An Arctic blast swept across a large swath of the U.S. on Monday, sending temperatures plunging from Minnesota to Florida and bringing a bone-chilling start to the first workweek of the year... Temperatures fell below zero from the Great Plains to the Northeast, following a weekend of heavy snow. The reading of minus-16 degrees in St. Joseph, Mo., Monday marked the city's coldest Jan. 4 since 1947, while minus-37 in International Falls, Minn., Sunday was the coldest there since 1911, said Frank Pereira, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service. Dallas, Jacksonville, Fla., and Little Rock, Ark., fell nearly 20 degrees below their average temperatures for this time of year on Monday, he said. The cold snap is one of the nation's most widespread since January 1985, according to meteorologists at Accuweather.com. While the cold is expected to ease slightly starting Thursday, this winter is on track to be one of the coldest in the past decade or two, said Ken Reeves, director of forecasting operations at Accuweather.com"
Useful hacks.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10423985-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Understanding Windows 7's 'GodMode'
by Ina Fried January 4, 2010 12:41 PM PST
Although its name suggests perhaps even grander capabilities, Windows enthusiasts are excited over the discovery of a hidden "GodMode" feature that lets users access all of the operating system's control panels from within a single folder.
By creating a new folder in Windows 7 and renaming it with a certain text string at the end, users are able to have a single place to do everything from changing the look of the mouse pointer to making a new hard-drive partition.
For all my students. Definitely worth a read, but it could be greatly expanded.
The Complete Guidebook To Web Searching [PDF]
By Simon Slangen on Jan. 4th, 2010
… Don’t just stand there waiting, it’s free! You can find The Guidebook to Internet Searching in PDF, but also read it online on Scribd.com.
(Related) For my twit students? I have long regretted the fact that there are no “how to” guides for new yet widespread technologies.
An Inside Look At A Twitter Style Guide: 140 Characters
by Daniel Brusilovsky on January 4, 2010
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