Bypassing the government shut-down of the Internet.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/some-weekend-work-that-will-hopefully.html
Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard
… We worked with a small team of engineers from Twitter, Google and SayNow, a company we acquired last week, to make this idea a reality. It’s already live and anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt. No Internet connection is required. People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet.
Too scary to report when it happened?
London Stock Exchange Was 'Under Major Cyberattack' During Linux Switch
"The London Stock Exchange's new open source trading system may have been hacked last year, according to a report. The alleged attack came as the LSE began the switch over to the Linux-based systems, according to the dates referred to in the Times newspaper. The continued threat of cyber attack has resulted in the LSE keeping a close dialogue with British security services, which this year branded cyber attacks as one of the biggest threats to the country. There were major problems on the exchange on 24 August, when stock prices of five large companies collapsed."
Remember the magazine that put your house (via Google Earth) on the cover?
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=20168
Behind the scenes of Wired magazine’s personalized covers
January 31, 2011 by Dissent
David Rowan writes:
A few selected readers have received an ultra-personalised cover on their issue of Wired this month. We wanted to see how much personal data we could easily find about them from publicly available sources — as a means of emphasising some of the points made in our cover story by Andrew Keen, Jeff Jarvis and Steven Johnson on “what the end of privacy means for you”.
Wary of scaring off our entire readership, we sent the personalised copies of Wired to some randomly selected subscribers rather than all of them, as well as to a few people we know with some media influence. Well, the media can take a little scaring.
Read more on Wired.co.uk.
[From the article:
We used sources such as the edited electoral register, Companies House, the Land Registry and the social networks. We cross-matched data from one source against others -- and so found some fascinating truths about, for instance, what readers are buying and selling on eBay (does the taxman know?), what revealing videos their children are posting online (you would be shocked), and what their exes have lately been saying about them. The level of detail we found -- from children's school reports to property profits -- may worry some recipients, but that was the point.
Privacy we agree on, or Privacy as an inalienable right?
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=20141
Numerous Groups Submit Comments to Commerce Department on Privacy
January 31, 2011 by Dissent
Melissa Ngo writes:
Numerous groups have filed comments in response to the Commerce Department’s December release of and request for comments on a green paper (Commerce pdf here; archive pdf here) on privacy, “Commercial Data Privacy and Innovation in the Internet Economy: A Dynamic Policy Framework.” In it, the agency included a proposal for a Privacy Protection Office that would reside within the Commerce Department. I have excerpted a few comments from groups below, but all comments can be viewed here.
Read more on Privacy Lives.
(Related) Why must I be mentally or physically ill before my rights kick in?
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=20149
Cal.6th: There is a federal constitutional right of privacy in medical and psychiatric records
January 31, 2011 by Dissent
From FourthAmendment.com:
There is a Griswold constitutional right of privacy in medical and psychiatric records which can only be disclosed when there is a compelling state interest, which the court finds here in a SVP [Sexually Violent Predator] case. People v. Gonzales, 2011 Cal. App. LEXIS 91 (6th Dist. January 27, 2011)
Read more on FourthAmendment.com.
From the opinion’s Statement of the Case:
In 2007, the Santa Clara County District Attorney filed a petition to commit defendant Ramiro Gonzales as a sexually violent predator (SVP) under the SVP Act. (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 6600 et seq.) A jury found the defendant qualified as an SVP, and the court ordered defendant committed to the custody of the Department of Mental Health (DMH) for an indeterminate term.
On appeal from the commitment order, defendant claims the trial court erred in releasing psychological records to the prosecution and admitting the testimony of a former therapist. He claims there is insufficient evidence that his circumstances had materially changed since a previous determination that he did not qualify as an SVP. He claims the court erred in refusing to instruct the jury that mental retardation could not be considered a mental disorder in determining whether he qualified as an SVP. He claims the indeterminate commitment violates his constitutional rights to equal protection and due process and also the constitutional protections against ex post facto legislation and double jeopardy. Finally, he claims the SVP law, as amended, violates his First Amendment rights.
We conclude that the court committed reversible error in releasing privileged psychotherapeutic records and admitting testimony concerning privileged information. Accordingly, we reverse the commitment order.
Is the basis for the suit that Apple violated it's policy? Would violation of any policy (which can be changed unilaterally at any time) be grounds for a lawsuit?
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=20157
Lawsuit filed against Apple over apps collecting personal information
January 31, 2011 by Dissent
From Courthouse News, word of a lawsuit filed by Anthony Chiu in federal court for the Northern District of California against Apple for violations of the Stored Communications Act, invasion of privacy, and other claims.
The lawsuit seems to be based on an Wall Street Journal “What They Know” article and research by Eric Smith of Bucknell and emphasizes the combination of the unique ID (UDID) with browsing history to create a profile. Chiu argues that Apple has violated its own privacy policy.
(Related) “That's our policy and we're sticking to it – unless you threaten to sue...”
Apple Changes Stance On Water Damage Policy
"It appears Apple has changed its stance on whether an iOS device is actually water damaged. If you remember when the 13-year-old girl sued Apple in December, it was because her iPhone's moisture sensors had gone off and Apple voided her warranty. Those sensors have also been triggered by simply exposing the phone to low temperatures. Now Apple says that if the moisture sensors are red but the customer disputes and says no liquid has come into contact with the device, the warranty may still apply."
(Related) Is this a “billing policy?”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-20030151-94.html
Lawsuit claims AT&T overbills for iPhone data use
… Now, AT&T finds itself at the center of a class action lawsuit that alleges that the provider's bills "systematically overstate the amount of data used on each data transaction." Granted, the overstatement that's being alleged is small--somewhere in the range of 7-14 percent monthly, [“It depends on what your definition of “small” is...” Bob] according to a post on the Electronista blog.
What's especially telling is how a consulting firm that was hired by the lawyers of the plaintiff conducted its own test of the data billing. Instead of using data and trying to measure it independently for comparison against the bill, the consultant did the exact opposite. The firm bought a new iPhone and immediately turned off all push notifications and location services, made sure that no apps or e-mail accounts were active and then left the iPhone idle for 10 days.
AT&T billed the account for 2,292 kilobytes of data over 35 transactions.
Read more of "Lawsuit: AT&T 'systematically overstates' data usage on iPhone bills" at ZDNet.
Would any other types of organizations benefit from following this model?
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/026395.html
January 31, 2011
Report - An Open Government Implementation Model: Moving to Increased Public Engagement
An Open Government Implementation Model: Moving to Increased Public Engagement, IBM Center for the Business of Government, January 2011
"This report presents an Open Government Implementation Model (OGIM) for guiding government agencies towards open government. Our model defines four implementation stages and describes the focuses, deliverables, benefits, challenges, best practices, and metrics for each stage. A key tenet of the Implementation Model is that government agencies should advance their open government initiatives incrementally, focusing on one implementation stage at a time. Starting from increasing data transparency (Stage One), the process moves on to improving open participation (Stage Two), enhancing open collaboration (Stage Three), and realizing ubiquitous engagement (Stage Four). We argue that by following this sequence, agencies can minimize risk and effectively harness the power of social media in order to engage the public."
Green Nukes?
China Starts Molten Salt Nuclear Reactor Project
"The Energy From Thorium blog reports, 'The People's Republic of China has initiated a research and development project in thorium molten-salt reactor technology. It was announced in the Chinese Academy of Sciences annual conference on Tuesday, January 25.' The liquid-fluoride thorium reactor is an alternative reactor design that 1) burns existing nuclear waste, 2) uses abundant thorium as a base fuel, 3) produces far less toxic, shorter-lived waste than existing designs, and 4) can be mass produced, run unattended for years, and installed underground for safety."
For my students taking Computer Archeology – primitive Internets site of the late 20th century...
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/026397.html
January 31, 2011
The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine New Beta Version
"Surf the web as it was - BETA version! The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine puts the history of the World Wide Web at your fingertips. We invite you to explore this new, BETA version of the Wayback Machine and contact us with any feedback. The classic version of the Wayback Machine is still available at web.archive.org/."
For those of us who don't have a Kindle...
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/borrow-kindle-ebooks-kindle-lending-club/
Borrow Kindle eBooks From The Kindle Lending Club
When Amazon made the amazing move allowing people to lend their Kindle eBooks to each other, it was only a matter of time before a service popped up making it easy to find the exact book that you’re dying to read but don’t necessarily want to buy.
… The Kindle Lending Club started out as a Facebook page, growing to over 8,000 members in less than a month. The best part is that you don’t even have to own a Kindle to get in on the action. You can use the free Kindle apps op your Mac, PC, iOS, Blackberry or Android devices.
For my website students who can never find the right video...
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/search-youtube-pro-google-advanced-operators/
How to Search YouTube Like a PRO with Google Advanced Operators
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