Tuesday, October 16, 2012

I wonder why the average police force needs a drone costing a few hundred dollars. Is this the best use of MY tax dollars? I'm sure all the questions raised in this article (and many more) will be answered this Friday at the “Domestic Privacy and Drones” seminar the Privacy Foundation (http://privacyfoundation.org/) is sponsoring at the Sturm College of Law at DU. (Yes it's a shameless plug, but these seminars are interesting!)
As Drone Debate Rages, Police Move on to Million-Dollar Spy Planes
While the nation disputes if, when and where the government should use drones over U.S. soil, Texas state police are taking their surveillance efforts to the next level.
In a little-noticed July purchase, officials at the Texas Department of Public Safety inked a $7.4 million contract with the Swiss company Pilatus Aircraft Ltd. for a high-altitude spy plane. Unique technology affixed to the state’s new aircraft could raise the ire of civil libertarians and privacy advocates.
Among its features is a $1 million array of surveillance cameras with high-resolution and thermal-imaging capabilities, and a $300,000 downlink system that enables the plane’s crew to send real-time surveillance images anywhere in the state, according to records obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting through the Texas Public Information Act.
… Texas state police spokesman Tom Vinger said most of the plane’s missions will be carried out on the border between the United States and Mexico, and “serve as a tool in assisting specific joint operations [Joint with whom? Bob] that are clearly defined by area and duration.”
… Leonard Luke, vice president of government business for Pilatus, which has operations in Colorado, said the aircraft was developed because both federal and local law enforcement “inquired about the possibility of a surveillance-type platform.”
… Texas politicians have long asserted that Washington wasn’t doing enough to secure the nation’s boundary with Mexico. The Lone Star State has reportedly devoted $600 million in taxpayer money to beef up the border since 2007, according to news accounts.
No one has benefited more than the Texas Department of Public Safety, which formed military-esque Ranger Reconnaissance Teams, constructed intelligence command centers and procured high-speed gunboats with .30-caliber, fully automatic machine guns.
… Congressional researchers in September examined (.pdf) how the Fourth Amendment might affect the use of drones domestically and the surveillance technology that accompanies them. In a 2001 case, the Supreme Court ruled police cannot use thermal imaging to “look” inside someone’s home for heat produced by marijuana cultivation. Other rulings have held that police can use aircraft to hunt for illegal activity in a resident’s yard if anyone else could easily witness it by flying overhead.
“Piloted or unpiloted, the issues posed are the same,” said Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology in San Francisco. “Does the use of the technology constitute a ‘search’ under the Fourth Amendment? Regardless of whether it does or not, what checks and balances do we think are appropriate for the use of such technology?”
… Experts are now asking what 21st-century law enforcement tools may require a warrant.
“Currently, (drones) carry high-megapixel cameras and thermal imaging, and will soon have the capacity to see through walls and ceilings,” reads a September report from the Congressional Research Service, which provides nonpartisan legal and policy analysis to lawmakers. “These technologies are not generally available to the public, and under current jurisprudence, their use by law enforcement would probably constitute a search covered by the Fourth Amendment.”
However, public access might not be an issue for long. High-powered digital technologies evolve rapidly enough that costs will decrease, argued Tomas Mijares, a Texas State University criminal justice professor and former Detroit police officer. Thermal imagery, he added, is often critical for locating injured and stranded people when visibility is poor.
… Not to be outdone by Texas, the Phoenix Police Department acquired its own $4.1 million Pilatus PC-12 in 2009 complete with an $800,000 high-definition camera that operates in the dark and features “ultra long-range imaging performance,” according to the surveillance system’s manufacturer and records obtained from the Federal Aviation Administration. It’s also capable of transmitting live video feeds to the ground “for surveillance tasks and other public safety applications,” FAA documents show.
… Using a private company, police in Los Angeles began surveillance flights (.pdf) in August with a small Cessna plane that can linger in the air for as long as 10 hours a day and send live video to a dispatch center. The program will reportedly cost taxpayers $90,000 per month after an initial one-year $1.3 million contract expires.


Those who do not study Big Brother are doomed to live under Big Brother?
Does Surveillance Affect Us Even When We Can’t Confirm We’re Being Watched? Lessons From Behind the Iron Curtain
October 15, 2012 by Dissent
Jay Stanley writes:
During the Cold War, as I argued last week, the totalitarian governments of the Soviet bloc functioned as a standing warning to Americans of the dangers of unchecked surveillance—lessons that we would do well to remember despite the fall of the Iron Curtain.
As it happens, a coalition of civil liberties organizations from around the world has made a similar point in a very interesting amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court as it prepares to hear arguments two weeks from today in Amnesty et al. v. Clapper, our challenge to the FISA Amendments Act. (That legislation retroactively legalized much of the Bush administration’s unconstitutional warrantless NSA spying program.)
Read more on ACLU.


“It's so easy we just can't NOT do it...”
Verizon draws fire for monitoring app usage, browsing habits
Verizon Wireless has begun selling information about its customers' geographical locations, app usage, and Web browsing activities, a move that raises privacy questions and could brush up against federal wiretapping law.
The company this month began offering reports to marketers showing what Verizon subscribers are doing on their phones and other mobile devices, including what iOS and Android apps are in use in which locations. Verizon says it may link the data to third-party databases with information about customers' gender, age, and even details such as "sports enthusiast, frequent diner or pet owner."
"We're able to view just everything that they do," Bill Diggins, U.S. chief for the Verizon Wireless marketing initiative, told an industry conference earlier this year. "And that's really where data is going today. Data is the new oil."


Looks like they will have to search for a better way...
Google told to fix privacy policy by EU data regulators
October 16, 2012 by Dissent
BBC reports:
EU watchdogs have said Google’s privacy rules do not comply with their laws.
It follows the firm’s decision in March to consolidate 60 separate privacy policies into a single agreement.
The move allowed it to pool data from across its products, including use of its video site YouTube, social network Google+ and web email service Gmail – potentially helping it target adverts.
French data privacy regulator CNIL – which led the inquiry – said the US company had “months” to make changes.
Google has been told it should give clearer information about what data is being collected and for what purpose. It has also been told to give users more control over how the information is combined.
It has been warned that if it took no action, CNIL would “enter a phase of litigation”.
The company has not issued a statement at this time.
Read more on BBC.
Over on this side of the pond, Kevin J. O’Brien reports:
Regulators in Europe, Canada and Asia asked Google on Tuesday to change aspects of its 10-month-old global privacy policy, which combines data on individuals from its range of online services, to better protect personal data.
[...]
Mr. Kohnstamm [chairman of the Article 29 panel] said by telephone that privacy regulators in all 27 European Union countries, plus Canada and some countries in Asia, had signed the letter, which outlines areas for changes to improve protection of personal data.
Read more on New York Times.
Direct link to the letter to Google.


On the other hand, it's good to have a friend in the White House... “If you insist on doing your job, we'll change the law so it's no longer your job!”
Congressman to FTC: Don't mess with Google
A congressman has told the Federal Trade Commission that it better not do anything to hurt Google's business or Congress might have to step in and reduce the agency's power.
Rep. Jared Polis, a democrat from Colorado, weighed in on the FTC's antitrust probe into the search giant's dominance in the industry -- and the reported lawsuit that may come next -- in a letter sent to the commission last week (see letter below). The agency is looking into whether or not Google is using its dominance to hurt rivals.
… See the letter: [Via The Hill]


Perhaps a guideline for Google?
Singapore finally passes personal data protection bill
October 16, 2012 by Dissent
Jamie Yap reports:
The Singapore parliament on Monday night finally passed the personal data protection bill that is designed to safeguard an individual’s personal data against misuse. It encompasses a national Do-Not-Call registry and a new enforcement agency will be tasked to regulate the management of personal data by businesses and impose financial penalties.
In his speech, Yaacob Ibrahim, the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA), said Singapore had adopted a sectoral approach to data protection, but there was need for a general data protection framework to ensure a baseline standard of protection for personal data across the economy.
Read more on ZDNet for some of the background and a summary of some of the key provisions of the new law.


I wonder why no one noticed this 10 years ago?
U.K. blocks extradition of Gary McKinnon
Gary McKinnon, the British hacker who allegedly broke into NASA's computers, will not be extradited to the U.S., ending his 10-year fight against the process.
Home Secretary Theresa May blocked the extradition on human rights grounds, saying she has "carefully examined the medical evidence" and concluded that his extradition would "give a high risk that he would end his life," the BBC reports.


For my Disaster Recovery students...
October 15, 2012
Identifying Threats to Successful Digital Preservation: the SPOT Model for Risk Assessment
Identifying Threats to Successful Digital Preservation: the SPOT Model for Risk Assessment, Sally Vermaaten, Brian Lavoie and Priscilla Caplan. D-Lib Magazine, September/October 2012. Volume 18, Number 9/10
  • "Developing a successful digital preservation strategy amounts to accounting for, and mitigating, the impact of various threats to the accessibility and usability of digital materials over time. Typologies of threats are practical tools that can aid in the development of preservation strategies. This paper proposes a new outcome-based model, the Simple Property-Oriented Threat (SPOT) Model for Risk Assessment, which defines six essential properties of successful digital preservation and identifies a limited set of threats which, if manifested, would seriously diminish the ability of a repository to achieve these properties. We demonstrate that the SPOT Model possesses the attributes of conceptual clarity, balanced granularity, comprehensiveness and simplicity, and provide examples of practical uses of the model and suggestions for future work."


Perspective
October 15, 2012
OECD Internet Economy Outlook
  • "The Internet is now a fundamental infrastructure supporting the economy and is firmly in its second stage of development, having evolved from a data network connecting PCs with wires to a much broader network of new portable devices from mobile phones to tablet computers. It is also on the cusp of a much larger expansion to objects that typically did not have communications capabilities: the “Internet of things” is projected to have more connections than the people using them. This raises many important socio-economic and political issues for stakeholders to consider, as economies and societies become increasingly inter-meshed."


Free is good!
Hundred Zeros is a web service that book lovers are going to highly appreciate. The web service provides an up-to-date list of bestselling books that have been made free on Amazon. You can either browse the titles available on the site or search books by entering their name or browsing the many available categories.

(Related) What to do with all those free books... All kinds of tools including DRM removal!
First off, there is an abundant amount of articles about Calibre on MakeUseOf. This is because the entire eBook manager cannot be contained in one article – there’s so much it can do and so much to cover that it literally needed its own guide on MakeUseOf. Simon wrote an excellent article regarding the first initial steps of using Calibre from creating and managing your library using Metadata to converting different eBook formats. That’s one thing I want to briefly say - Calibre supports pretty much every eBook format imaginable.
… We all know that Calibre is a great program for all platforms, but maybe you don’t know that you can throw it on a flash drive and bring your library with you – brilliant. What’s even more brilliant is using it along with PortableApps, which if you don’t know what that is, I highly recommend you check it out.
It is important to note, however, that the portable version only runs on Windows. Again, this is only the case for the portable version – the normal version runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.


For my students who create Infograms...
Infogr.am Launches To Kill The Careers Of Struggling Infographic Designers
Infogr.am wants to create a sort of Adobe Illustrator in the Cloud, allowing anyone to create cool info-graphics on the fly. Back in February European accelerator HackFwd invested in the startup from Riga, Latvia, and now it’s fully launched its service. It’s competing in the space with Piktochart and Easel.ly. And not to mention one or two infographic designers out there…
It’s launched with 20 new data visualization formats from the simple like pie charts and graphs to the complex like multi-layer data-grids.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)