California Judge Routes Campaign Robocalls Through Colorado
Posted by timothy on Sunday June 06, @02:58PM
"Victoria Kolakowski, a current sitting law judge at the California PUC, is running for Alameda Superior Court judge in California. As part of her campaign she is robodialing people in California with a pre-recorded message. The only problem is that in Califorina robodials are actually illegal unless first introduced by a non-recorded natural person who gains consent to play the call. Ironically, the agency set up to protect our privacy and enforce this law, the California PUC, is the very agency where Kolakowski works today. Kolakowski originally apologized for the calls but then later deleted messages on her Facebook account from people objecting to her use of these calls. Now Kolakowski is trying to argue that because 'technically' she is routing her calls through Colorado from outside the state that her robodials are actually legal."
I can't wait to see how this turns out.
Australian Police Ask Facebook For Police Alarm Button
Posted by timothy on Sunday June 06, @06:07PM
"The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has requested social networking site Facebook install a law enforcement representative in Australia and introduce some sort of button in which users can immediately report online crime to the police in a single click. It is National Cyber-Security Awareness Week in Australia, so the AFP is on an all-out offensive — announcing it is also investigating whether Google committed offences under Australia's Telecommunications Interception Act when it harvested Wi-Fi data."
Something like this has been in the works for a while.
So, is this illegal, immoral or fattening? Interesting take on the “expectation of Privacy” argument. (Also see the MTV article at the end of this post.)
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=10836
How ‘BT Sarah’ spies on your Facebook account
June 6, 2010 by Dissent
Jason Lewis reports:
Some of Britain’s biggest firms were last night accused of ‘spying’ on their customers after they admitted ‘listening in’ on disgruntled conversations on the internet.
The companies include BT, which uses specially developed software to scan for negative comments about it on websites including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
Budget airline easyJet, mobile-phone retailer Carphone Warehouse and banks including Lloyds TSB are also monitoring social networking sites to see what is being said about them.
The firms claim there is nothing sinister about the practice, with BT insisting it is merely acting as ‘a fly on the wall’ to ‘listen and engage with our customers’.
[...]
Simon Davies, director of human rights group Privacy International, said: ‘People venting to their friends do not suddenly expect the object of their anger to be listening in and then to butt in on their conversations. This is nothing short of outright spying.
‘The firms liken this to listening to a conversation in the pub. But it is more like listening at someone’s door with a very large glass. It may not be illegal but it is morally wrong. And it is unlikely to stop there. If the regulators decide there is nothing wrong then political parties are sure to use it, along with lobbyists and firms trying to sell us things. ’ [Hello? Where have these guys been for the last few years? Bob]
Dr Yaman Akdeniz, a legal expert and director of online privacy group Cyber-Rights, also warned that many of the firms could be breaking data protection laws.
‘Just because I am on Facebook or Twitter does not give BT or any other company the right to contact me unsolicited,’ he said. ‘These may be public conversations but firms should not be contacting users without their consent.
Read more in the Daily Mail.
If people post complaints publicly, then the “no reasonable expectation of privacy” argument would probably apply here in the U.S. People set up Google alerts on themselves all the time to find out if their name is coming up anywhere, so how is it any different for businesses to do it? But consider the second part of the issue in the U.K. — can the company you are publicly complaining about then contact you? Here in the U.S., I don’t think consumers would have grounds for filing any legal action, and I suspect a lot of people might be pleasantly surprised if a company that they were upset with reached out to try to resolve the complaint, but does the U.K. afford greater protection on this?
A brief video that suggests anonymity makes us un-civil...
Debate: The Internet and Democracy
Miller Center of Public Affairs
Facts or Marketing?
Google Does The Hard Sell On Security For Its Enterprise Apps
by Leena Rao on June 6, 2010
It’s no secret that Google has ambitions of becoming an Enterprise productivity suite powerhouse; perhaps one day taking over the top spot from Microsoft. As Google’s President, Global Sales Operations and Business Development Nikesh Arora told us at TechCrunch Disrupt a last week, Google hopes for Apps to be a billion dollar revenue stream in three to four years.
But one challenge has been convincing businesses that a move to the cloud promises security. And some early Apps users have even questioned the security of the suite, which includes e-mail, calendaring, document sharing and chat applications. To mitigate these concerns, Google has released a white paper to give enterprise customers greater transparency into Google’s security practices, policies, and technology involving Google Apps. And of course, the white paper is also intended to also assure current and potential clients of its “strong and extensive security infrastructure.” Google has even created a special portal about privacy and security for the educational institutions that use Apps.
The white paper, which is embedded here, outlines Google’s corporate security policy, and then how Apps includes information security, physical security and operational security.
Going from $6 per GB to $12.50 per GB ($75/GB on the 200MB plan) illustrates the corporate equivalent of a Learning Curve. As technologies begin to offer alternatives to your product/service, raise prices to drive customers away!
http://www.gearlog.com/2010/06/new_iphone_data_plans_is_200mb.php
Thursday June 3, 2010
New iPhone Data Plans: Is 200MB Enough?
AT&T just swapped out its smartphone plans for new, lower-priced but lower-capacity plans. iPhone and other smartphone owners have a choice between a 200MB plan for $15/month and a 2GB plan for $25, instead of their old 5 GB plan for $30.
Since AT&T says the vast majority of phone users fit into these plans, we decided to check by charting the data usage of six of PCMag.com's iPhone users for the past six months.
In our quick survey, we found that 200MB just isn't enough for a tech-savvy iPhoner, but 2GB definitely is. None of our users went over 500 MB in a month. (Apparently, nobody's streaming Pandora or YouTube on their phones all day.) But several of our staffers consistently went over 200 MB. All of the users had either an iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS.
Apparently, one of the things we didn't count on was how much people use Wi-Fi. Our staffers generally have Wi-Fi networks both at home and in the office, and that really cuts down on cellular data usage. You can watch all the YouTube you want without it hitting your bill, if you're using Wi-Fi.
The real danger for iPhone users on the new plans, though, comes with the new tethering feature. It may be tough to hit 2GB using your phone alone . But with a laptop? No problem.
(Related) Symptoms of a dying industry?
Canada's Largest Cities Seeing the End of the Phone Book
Posted by timothy on Monday June 07, @02:05AM
"Telephone directories are available on the Internet, and many phones even store their own directories. There is less and less demand for a printed phone book, so residential phone books will no longer be printed and delivered in Canada's seven largest cities. Do we now expect everyone's grandma to look up phone numbers on the Internet? Of course, the Yellow Pages, where businesses pay for a listing, will still be delivered."
(Related) Republicans support business for philosophical reasons, Democrats for campaign contributions? Can it be that simple?
http://agonist.org/netbetrayal
"74 Democrats sold you out to AT&T, Verizon and Comcast"
For my Data Mining and Statistics students. Perhaps we should build one?
Attack Of The Tweets: MTV’s Movie Awards Twitter Visualization Graph
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