After DNA Misuse, Researchers Banished From Havasupai Reservation
Posted by timothy on Thursday April 22, @02:31PM
bbsguru writes
"A court settlement has ended a controversial case of medical privacy abuse. From the NYTimes: 'Seven years ago, the Havasupai Indians, who live in the deepest part of the Grand Canyon, issued a 'banishment order' to keep Arizona State University employees from setting foot on their reservation, an ancient punishment for what they regarded as a genetic-era betrayal. Members of the tiny tribe had given DNA samples to university researchers starting in 1990, hoping they might provide genetic clues to the tribe's high rate of diabetes. But members learned their blood samples also had been used to study many other things, including mental illness and theories of the tribe's geographical origins that contradict their traditional stories.'"
“Full sensor sweep, Mr. Sulu.” As long as you're in the neighborhood, you might as well collect all the Elint you can. Think of it as a telephone book that eventually will include detail down to the level of your DNA.
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=9261
Google Street View logs WiFi networks, Mac addresses
April 22, 2010 by Dissent
Andrew Orlowski reports:
Google’s roving Street View spycam may blur your face, but it’s got your number. The Street View service is under fire in Germany for scanning private WLAN networks, and recording users’ unique Mac (Media Access Control) addresses, as the car trundles along.
Germany’s Federal Commissioner for Data Protection Peter Schaar says he’s “horrified” by the discovery.
“I am appalled… I call upon Google to delete previously unlawfully collected personal data [Are you sure there's a law against that? Bob] on the wireless network immediately and stop the rides for Street View,” according to German broadcaster ARD.
Read more in The Register.
We love customers – but only because we can make money by having lots of the scum...
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=9256
Facebook Used To Make Partners Delete Your Data After 24 Hrs. No Longer.
April 22, 2010 by Dissent
Ben Popken writes:
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this morning that Facebook will toss a policy that made developers and partners with access your data to delete it after 24 hours. Now they can just keep it. Turns out the privacy policy hindered growth: Zuckerberg told Inside Facebook
[...]
Coming soon after their announcement that some pieces of your personal information will never be private even if you set your profile to private, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that Facebook won’t let a little thing like respect for its users get in the way of its quest for total internet domination.
Read more on Consumerist.
(Related) “No Privacy implications here. Move along.”
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=9293
Facebook steps up lobbying, deepens ties with intelligence agencies, FTC
April 23, 2010 by Dissent
Kim-Mai Cutler writes:
Facebook has been gradually boosting its profile in Washington D.C. over the past year and is on the hunt for a second senior lobbyist to add to its office of four. Disclosures released a few days ago show that, on top of lobbying the usual suspects Internet companies reach out to like the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. senators and representatives, the fast-growing social network has also been busy deepening ties to government intelligence and homeland security agencies.
[...]
What’s interesting about Facebook’s lobbying in D.C. is what it spends money on despite its small size. It was the only consumer Internet company out of Google, Amazon, eBay, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple to reach out to intelligence agencies last year, according to lobbying disclosure forms. It has lobbied the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — an umbrella office founded in the wake of Sept. 11 that synthesizes intelligence from 17 agencies including the CIA and advises the President — for the last three quarters on privacy and federal cyber-security policy. It has reached out to the Defense Intelligence Agency too.
Andrew Noyes, the company’s manager of public policy communications, says most of Facebook’s work in D.C. consists of basic education — helping legislators and agencies understand how to use the social network for campaigning, reaching out to their constituencies and in their regular line of work.
Read more on SocialBeat.
Et tu, Hotmail?
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=9249
Hotmail’s social networking busts your privacy
April 22, 2010 by Dissent
It seems that every week, social networking sites or free services are unilaterally changing their features and exposing people’s private information without prior consent or a chance to fully opt out before changes are implemented. Over on Windows Secrets, Woody Leonhard blogs:
In its rush to take on Facebook and Google Buzz, Microsoft is now collecting and displaying personal information on your Hotmail page — information you may never have wanted to broadcast.
Exactly how it’s mining this information is something of a mystery, but if you use Hotmail or Windows Live, it’s time to review your privacy settings — lest something you said or did comes back to haunt you.
One user signed in to her Hotmail account recently and was greeted with Microsoft’s new, improved social networking splash page, shown in Figure 1.
[...]
Unless somebody in Redmond shows a little common sense and restraint, this foray into public — and potentially embarrassing — data mining could bring with it legal liabilities.
Given the murkiness of this new social networking scheme, I’d just as soon opt out — if I could only figure out how.
Read more on Windows Secrets.
Adventures in Academia! “What? Youse didn't know about dat?”
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=9243
Legal spying via the cell phone system
April 22, 2010 by Dissent
Elinor Mills reports:
Two researchers say they have found a way to exploit weaknesses in the mobile telecom system to legally spy on people by figuring out the private cell phone number of anyone they want, tracking their whereabouts, and listening to their voice mail.
Independent security researcher Nick DePetrillo and Don Bailey, a security consultant with iSec Partners, planned to provide details in a talk entitled “We Found Carmen San Diego” at the Source Boston security conference on Wednesday.
“There are a lot of fragile eggs in the telecom industry and they can be broken,” Bailey said in an interview with CNET. “We assume the telecom industry protects our privacy. But we’ve been able to crack the eggs and piece them together.”
Read more on cnet.
Update: a reader sends in a link to coverage of this story on The Register.
Spying on the Court? Is the legal research done by Judges “public records?” Can I get them in advance of court decisions in order to do a bit of futures trading (as in, the plaintiff has no future)
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=9289
Were ‘governmentwatcher’ posts made by same user as ‘lawmiss’?
April 23, 2010 by Dissent
In for a penny, in for a pound? As if it was not enough to reveal the possible identity of an anonymous commenter on their web site, the Plain Dealer now goes further and attempts to link Judge Strickland Saffold to a second anonymous commenter’s account. James F. McCarty reports:
[...]
Comments under the two usernames cover many of the same topics, criticize many of the same people, misspell some of the same words and use identical colloquialisms. They also both stopped posting comments on the same day, March 19, for unknown reasons.
Saffold has denied making the lawmiss comments about cases in her courtroom, but she has declined to be interviewed about whether she posted governmentwatcher comments.
[...]
The Plain Dealer filed a request for public records showing all websites visited by the desktop computer assigned to Saffold. The computer is in Saffold’s private chambers, across a hallway from her courtroom. County computer servers keep track of the time and date and Web domain of each site visited by each computer on a county server. The servers take note every time a computer user hits the “enter” button, to visit a website, refresh a Web page or submit an online comment.
In response to the newspaper’s request, the court administrator provided 849 pages of data, detailing all Internet activity by Saffold’s computer from Jan. 4. Through March 19. Earlier records are unavailable. [I hope they asked for the record retention policy at the same time... Bob] The newspaper compared the dates and times that Saffold’s computer visited pages on cleveland.com to the dates and times that comments were left by lawmiss and governmentwatcher.
Altogether, 50 lawmiss and governmentwatcher comments were posted within two minutes of Saffold’s computer clicking on a page at cleveland.com or an affiliated site, advance.net, the analysis found.
Read more on Cleveland.com.
Here's a thought. Could this be the future of Journalism?
Googling the Trail of a Serial Rapist
Posted by timothy on Thursday April 22, @03:17PM
theodp writes
"Innovative Interactivity has a behind-the-scenes look at the Washington Post's On the Trail of a Serial Rapist series. Information Designer Kat Downs details her experience designing and building the impressive interface for the series, including the use of Google Maps to track the rapist. Wary, perhaps, that it might encourage vigilantism, the WaPo stopped short of allowing readers to add their own input to the maps and urged anyone with additional information to contact the police."
Every student a programmer? Them folks at MIT got skills!
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/create-automation-scripts-easily-screenshots/
Sikuli – Create Automation Scripts Easily Using Screenshots
by Varun Kashyap on Apr. 22nd, 2010
Sikuli takes all the pain and learning away from creating an automation script. If you can take screenshots, then you can script with Sikuli as well.
… To let Sikuli know that you want to click you write “click” and enclose a screenshot of where you want to click within a pair of braces. You don’t even have to crop and position the screenshot, Sikuli does that for you. Just type “click(” and then press SHIFT + ALT + 2 and Sikuli lets you capture a screenshot. Be concise, while including a bit of context within your screenshot. Position the crosshair roughly where you want to click and make sure that your screenshot is fairly unambiguous.
Here is a video demo to further help you along in creating your first Sikuli automation script.
Project Sikuli http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/sikuli/download.shtml
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