Ask yourself how data gathering for “Behavioral Advertising” differs from data gathering for “detecting terrorists.”

The Continuing Public/Private Surveillance Partnership

Bruce Schneier writes:

If you’ve been reading the news recently, you might think that corporate America is doing its best to thwart NSA surveillance.

Google just announced that it is encrypting Gmail when you access it from your computer or phone, and between data centers. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg personally called President Obama to complain about the NSA using Facebook as a means to hack computers, and Facebook’s Chief Security Officer explained to reporters that the attack technique has not worked since last summer. Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and others are now regularly publishing “transparency reports,” listing approximately how many government data requests the companies have received and complied with.

On the government side, last week the NSA’s General Counsel Rajesh De seemed to have thrown those companies under a bus by stating that — despite their denials — they knew all about the NSA’s collection of data under both the PRISM program and some unnamed “upstream” collections on the communications links.

Yes, it may seem like the the public/private surveillance partnership has frayed — but, unfortunately, it is alive and well. The main focus of massive Internet companies and government agencies both still largely align: to keep us all under constant surveillance. When they bicker, it’s mostly role-playing designed to keep us blasé about what’s really going on.

Read more on Schneier on Security.

Surely this information is in the literature? Google uses a program for extracting Behavioral Advertising data from emails. Couldn't that be modified to look for specific evidence?

Problems with Search Warrants for iPhones

Ryan Abbott reports:

A federal judge denied another search-and-seizure warrant application for an iPhone because the government can’t explain how it will avoid snagging information falling outside the scope of the warrant.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola, who last week denied four applications for search-and-seizure warrants for child pornography, also denied the government’s most recent request to search an iPhone 4S.

“Specifically, the government fails to articulate how it will limit the possibility that data outside the scope of the warrant will be searched,” Facciola wrote in the ruling.

Read more on Courthouse News.

Something to meditate on?

http://aeon.co/magazine/world-views/can-we-design-systems-to-automate-ethics/?utm_content=buffercfd83&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Automated ethics

When is it ethical to hand our decisions over to machines? And when is external automation a step too far?

… If your vehicle encounters a busload of schoolchildren skidding across the road, do you want to live in a world where it automatically swerves, at a speed you could never have managed, saving them but putting your life at risk? Or would you prefer to live in a world where it doesn’t swerve but keeps you safe? Put like this, neither seems a tempting option. Yet designing self-sufficient systems demands that we resolve such questions.

I can fold paper, but it just looks like folded paper.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/make-papercraft-millenium-falcon/

How To Make Your Own Papercraft Millenium Falcon

We’ve shown you how to make papercraft figurines of Obi-Wan Kenobi, R2-D2 and other Star Wars characters but today, things get a little more exciting. We’ll share instructions on how to make your very own papercraft Millenium Falcon. This is slightly more advanced stuff than the Cubeecraft models we’re shared in the past, but it’s well worth the time and effort.

Here are the templates and instructions.