http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=10742
Privacy Law Scholar’s Conference to be held this week
May 31, 2010 by Dissent
“Get back.
Get back.
Get back to where you once belonged.”
That Beatles’ tune kept running through my head yesterday as I read through some of the draft papers for the upcoming Privacy Law Scholar’s Conference to be held this week in Washington, D.C. While many of the papers are forward-looking, some take us back or urge a return to earlier approaches to privacy:
Peter Winn, an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the DOJ and law lecturer at the University of Washington Law School, will be presenting an absolutely fascinating paper on the “History of the Law of Privacy in the 16th & 17th Century.” His article really left me with a better understanding of the English roots of our legal system’s approach to privacy and with new appreciation that the “right to be let alone” was not judicial activism but was more firmly rooted in English law than some current jurists and members of Congress seem to realize.
Also read to the tune of “Get Back:” Paul Ohm, an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Law School, has a paper, “The Benefits of the Old Privacy: Restoring the Focus to Traditional Harm,” while Lior Strahilevitz, Deputy Dean, Professor of Law & Walter Mander Teaching Scholar, University of Chicago, is presenting his paper, “Reunifying Privacy Law,” and Carol M. Bast and Cynthia A. Brown of the University of Central Florida are presenting their paper, “A Contagion of Fear: Post-9/11 Alarm Expands Executive Branch Authority and Sanctions Prosecutorial Exploitation of America’s Privacy.”
There are many more papers being presented this week (you can see the program here) and the only dilemma is how to decide which sessions to attend when everything sounds fascinating. As but one example of the many thoughtful and critical analyses being presented, Susan Freiwald, Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco School of Law, has a wonderful paper on “Fourth Amendment Protection for Stored Cell Site Location Information” that should also stimulate a lot of discussion.
Indeed, my fervent wish to get some of these people to guest blog on PogoWasRight.org to present their work for a public audience in a way that more people can understand the threats we face today to our privacy. I really doubt that most of the public truly understands how much information their cell phone carriers retain and can generate about them, the privacy risks we face when such data are handed over to law enforcement or combined with other databases, and why the public should care about the government’s argument that it doesn’t need a warrant to obtain location data.
Great thanks to law professors Dan Solove of George Washington University Law School and Chris Hoofnagle of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology for organizing the conference and for inviting me, and to the sponsors who are making the conference possible as a free event for attendees: The Future of Privacy Forum, Doug Curling, AT&T, Google, The Privacy Projects, Intel, and Technology | Academics | Policy (TAP).
The conference will be on Thursday and Friday, and I’ll try to blog more about it each day.
A guide for Class Action lawyers?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20006342-265.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Deciphering Google's Wi-Fi headache (FAQ)
by Tom Krazit June 1, 2010 4:00 AM PDT
How did Google's Wi-Fi spying debacle get to this point?
As Google prepares to defend itself against allegations of Wi-Fi spying, it has said very little about exactly what kind of personal data it gathered as part of its Street View project. Last week, Google also declined to provide executives willing to speak on the record about how one of the most monumental oversights in its history occurred: the inadvertent gathering of "payload" data by Wi-Fi sniffers mapping hotspots while recording street scenes for Google Street View.
But Google finally did confirm a few additional details about the type of scanning procedure it used as well as the nature of the code first written by Google engineers back in 2006. It first took responsibility for the gaffe--which only came to light after detailed inquiries from German authorities--in a blog post on May 14, and ever since then, Google critics have delighted at the opportunity the incident has provided, with lawsuits and Congressional inquiries pending.
Let's take a look at what Google has said and some of the technology issues in question to get some more perspective on Google's Wi-Fi scanning problem.
What data does Google have?
Google admitted on May 14 that it had been "mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) Wi-Fi networks" for three years. Payload data is distinct from a "header," which contains mostly benign information about the network itself: The payload is the actual data that is being transmitted over the network.
… However, Google's store of personal data might not be quite the treasure trove it may seem. Data sent back and forth between encrypted Web sites (password logins, online banking, credit-card transactions, or anything with https:// in the URL) would not be collected. Mobile workers signed into VPNs would also not be affected.
In addition, it's not totally clear how much data Google would be able to capture with a Street View car moving at about 25 miles per hour along the streets of cities and towns around the world. Google said the data was "fragmented," implying that piecing together any coherent image from that data would be difficult.
Does government have it backwards? Do they cut taxes in good times? I don't think so...
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/024380.html
Pew Report: Recession Brings Another Round of Higher Taxes and New Fees to Big Cities
(Related)
http://www.docuticker.com/?p=35947
New Law Increases Paperwork for Self-Employed Over A Thousand Percent
Twitter as a guide to “What's Hot!”
http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/zoofs-watch-videos-shared-discussed-twitter
Zoofs: Watch Most Shared Videos on Twitter
Similar tools: TwitVid and Mov.io.
(Related) Some statistics
http://www.babybacon.com/index.php/random-pictures/misc/the-amazing-stats-of-twitter/
The Amazing Stats Of Twitter
“There's an app for that!”
Study Claims Cellphones Implicated In Bee Loss
Posted by kdawson on Monday May 31, @07:56PM
krou passes along word from Telegraph.co.uk that researchers from Chandigarh's Punjab University claim that they have proven mobile phones could explain Colony Collapse Disorder.
"They set up a controlled experiment in Punjab earlier this year comparing the behavior and productivity of bees in two hives — one fitted with two mobile telephones which were powered on for two 15-minute sessions per day for three months. The other had dummy models installed. After three months the researchers recorded a dramatic decline in the size of the hive fitted with the mobile phone, a significant reduction in the number of eggs laid by the queen bee. The bees also stopped producing honey. The queen bee in the 'mobile' hive produced fewer than half of those created by her counterpart in the normal hive. They also found a dramatic decline in the number of worker bees returning to the hive after collecting pollen."
We've talked about the honeybee problem before. Today's article quotes a British bee specialist who dismisses talk of cellphone radiation having anything to do with the problem.
Tools for Geeks
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/sleek-easy-administer-ubuntu-ubuntu-control-center/
A Sleek & Easy Way To Administer Ubuntu – Ubuntu Control Center
These are definitely not the tools I would have expected.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-10-downloaded-student-tools-movers-shakers/
Top 10 Most Downloaded Student Tools
It’s time once again for our featured Movers and Shakers post. Each week, we take one software category and list the top ten most downloaded free apps.
'cause I only steal from the best!
Monday, May 31, 2010
Einztein - Locate Online Courses and Course Materials
Einztein is a new service for locating online collegiate level courses and corresponding materials. Einztein isn't your standard search engine as all courses listed by Einztein are reviewed by a PhD level editorial team. Each course listed by Einztein comes with a listing of the types of materials available for each course. Some courses have audio, video, and documents while other course may only have one or two of those elements. Visitors to Einztein can search for course by keyword or simply browse courses by subject area.
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