You have to ask, “When is public data actually public?”
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=8682
Data sifted from Facebook wiped after legal threats
March 31, 2010 by Dissent
As a follow-up to a report that Pete Warden was harvesting social network data discussed here, Jim Giles reports:
Legal threats from Facebook have led to the destruction of a social science dataset about to be released to researchers.
Lawyers from the social networking site contacted Pete Warden, an entrepreneur based in Boulder, Colorado, in February after he announced plans to release data he had collected from the public profiles of 210 million Facebook users.
Read more on NewScientist.com
Facebook may have lucked out that Warden does not have the resources to fight them, as Giles points out other instances where researchers have used crawler software to capture Facebook data. Facebook’s robots.txt file does not prevent such crawling.
Has the FTC ever looked at the issue of whether failure to at least try to block such crawling constitutes “reasonable security?” I don’t know.


The wispy uncertainty of Cloud Computing.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/03/31/1955242
Yale Delays Move To Gmail
Posted by timothy on Wednesday March 31, @04:13PM
Mortimer.CA writes
"The Yale Daily News is reporting that the move to Gmail has been postponed. After further consultations with faculty and staff, the concerns raised 'fell into three main categories: problems with "cloud computing" (the transfer of information between virtual servers on the Internet), technological risks and downsides, and ideological issues.' In the latter category, 'Google was not willing to provide ITS with a list of countries to which the University's data could be sent [i.e., replicated], but only a list of about 15 countries to which the data would not be sent.'"


If Washington hadn’t insisted, the King of the United States would have these powers.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/023905.html
March 31, 2010
Court Rejects Government's Executive Power Claims and Rules That Warrantless Wiretapping Violated Law
Follow up to previous postings on the Domestic Surveillance Program, via EFF, Kevin Bankston: "Today, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the federal district court in San Francisco found that the government illegally wiretapped an Islamic charity's phone calls in 2004, granting summary judgment for the plaintiffs in Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Obama. The court held the government liable for violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Today's order is the first decision since ACLU v. NSA to hold that warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency was illegal. The decision in ACLU v. NSA was overturned on other grounds in 2007, and the focus of the government's litigation strategy since then has been to avoid having any court rule on the merits of the issue. The court's thorough decision is a strong rebuke to the government's argument that only the Executive Branch may determine if a case against the government can proceed in the courts, by invoking state secrets. The Obama Administration adopted this "state secrets privilege" theory from the Bush Administration's legal positions in this and other warrantless wiretapping cases."

(Related) Another “read”
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=8703
What Al-Haramain Says, And What It Doesn’t Say
April 1, 2010 by Dissent
Orin Kerr comments on the reporting of the Ninth Circuit’s decision in the Al-Haramain case, gently pointing out the the New York Times and others in the media somewhat mischaracterized the ruling: [Kell Supreeze, as the French say. Bob]
The New York Times reports on Judge Walker’s new decision in Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Obama with the following opening:
A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the National Security Agency’s program of surveillance without warrants was illegal, rejecting the Obama administration’s effort to keep shrouded in secrecy one of the most disputed counterterrorism policies of former President George W. Bush. In a 45-page opinion, Judge Vaughn R. Walker ruled that the government had violated a 1978 federal statute requiring court approval for domestic surveillance when it intercepted phone calls of Al Haramain, a now-defunct Islamic charity in Oregon, and of two lawyers representing it in 2004. Declaring that the plaintiffs had been “subjected to unlawful surveillance,” the judge said the government was liable to pay them damages.
The ruling delivered a blow to the Bush administration’s claims that its surveillance program, which Mr. Bush secretly authorized shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was lawful. Under the program, the National Security Agency monitored Americans’ international e-mail messages and phone calls without court approval, even though the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, required warrants.
I’ve seen some similar reports online, so I thought I would register a somewhat technical objection to this characterization of the opinion. The Obama Administration wasn’t arguing that the surveillance program was lawful. As a result, the decision doesn’t rule that the program was unlawful. Rather, the Obama Administration was just arguing that Judge Walker couldn’t reach the merits of the case because of the state secrets privilege. After Judge Walker rejected the state secrets privilege claim, the case was over: DOJ not having argued that warrantless monitoring was lawful, Walker had no choice but to grant relief to the plaintiffs on their claim.
Read more on The Volokh Conspiracy.


Pam would know…
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/023906.html
March 31, 2010
Report - The One-Way-Mirror Society: Privacy Implications of the New Digital Signage Networks
World Privacy Forum: "New forms of sophisticated digital signage networks are being deployed widely by retailers and others in both public and private spaces. From simple people-counting sensors mounted on doorways to sophisticated facial recognition cameras mounted in flat video screens and end-cap displays, digital signage technologies are gathering increasing amounts of detailed information about consumers, their behaviors, and their characteristics, like age, gender, and ethnicity. These technologies are quickly becoming ubiquitous in the offline world, and there is little if any disclosure to consumers that information about behavioral and personal characteristics is being collected and analyzed to create highly targeted advertisements, among other things. Few if any consumers expect that the video screen they are watching, the kiosk they are typing on, or the game billboard they are interacting with is watching them back while gathering images of them and behavioral information. This is creating a one-way-mirror society with no notice or opportunity for consumers to consent to being monitored in retail, public, and other spaces or to consent to having their behavior analyzed for marketing and profit. The privacy problems inherent in digital networks are profound, and to date these issues have not been adequately addressed by anyone. This report by the World Privacy Forum seeks to shed light in a dark area and to start a more robust public debate. In addition to the report, the WPF has released with a group of the nation's leading consumer groups a set of privacy principles to be used in digital signage networks."
The One-Way-Mirror Society, Privacy Implications of the new Digital Signage Networks, by Pam Dixon, January 27, 2010


No doubt some bright young law school student will read this and figure out how to ride this wave to fame and fortune.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/023899.html
March 31, 2010
Pew: The Impact of the Internet on Institutions in the Future
The Impact of the Internet on Institutions in the Future, Janna Quitney Anderson, Elon University, Lee Rainie, Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, March 31, 2010: "Technology experts and stakeholders say the internet will drive more change in businesses and government agencies by 2020, making them more responsive and efficient. But there are powerful bureaucratic forces that will push back against such transformation and probably draw out the timeline. Expect continuing tension in disruptive times.
"By an overwhelming margin, technology experts and stakeholders participating in a survey fielded by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center believe that innovative forms of online cooperation could result in more efficient and responsive for-profit firms, non-profit organizations, and government agencies by the year 2020."


For my Computer Security students.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/catch-snoop-computer-windows/
To Catch A Snoop: How To Tell If Someone Has Been On Your Computer [Windows]


For my Math students.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/google-calculator/
How To Use Google As A Calculator


Thousands of years of scientific data vetted by politicians in weeks! We’re paying the wrong people!
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/03/31/1913225
House of Commons Finds No Evidence of Tampering In Climate E-mails
Posted by timothy on Wednesday March 31, @03:30PM
dwguenther writes
"The first of several British investigations into the e-mails leaked from one of the world's leading climate research centers has largely vindicated the scientists involved. The House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee said Wednesday that they'd seen no evidence to support charges that the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit ... had tampered with data or perverted the peer review process to exaggerate the threat of global warming."
According to the article, the head of committee which produced the report "said the lawmakers had been in a rush to publish something before Britain's next national election, which is widely expected in just over a month's time"; two further inquiries are to examine the issue more closely. The "e-mails appeared to show scientists berating skeptics in sometimes intensely personal attacks, discussing ways to shield their data from public records laws, and discussing ways to keep skeptics' research out of peer-reviewed journals," but the committee concluded that East Anglia researcher Phil Jones was not part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that weakens the case for global warming. [Is that the same as “there was no conspiracy?” Bob]