DHS seems to see almost everything as a threat.
Bob Knudsen writes that our beloved Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) wants hotels to report guests
for having too much sex.
Ostensibly the request is to quell sex trafficking, despite that fact that sex trafficking is a relatively minor problem in the United States. To be sure, there are certainly instances of the illicit sex trade taking place in the nation, but the numbers have been vastly overinflated to the point of being meaningless. Sadly, all it takes to allow citizens’ rights to be eroded is to stoke fears and play on their emotions, as we have seen recently with attempts at gun control and the war on terror.
DHS is asking hotel staffs to report guests who have “many” condoms in their garbage (whatever that means), rooms that smell like cigarettes, and even tattoos that are “unusual.” Those are just a few of the highlights from the list of 18 items and behaviors to look out for, almost all of which could be considered normal behavior for anybody who doesn’t live in Pleasantville.
Read more on The
Examiner.
(Related) If it truly was anonymous, would
answering “352” raise concerns?
Nancy Dillon reports:
A survey of students’ carnal knowledge sparked a national controversy Tuesday — and led to an apology from the University of Southern California.
The clash was over a mandatory online class that asked students to tally and reveal the number of sex partners they had been with over the last three months, multiple students confirmed to the Daily News.
The course grew out of a federal mandate to address sexual assault on campus and was a prerequisite for all incoming and continuing students at USC, an email to undergrad Jacob Ellenhorn said.
Read more on NY
Daily News.
And if this story is triggering deja vu for you,
yes, I reported on exactly
the same problem back in 2014 when a South Carolina university
also had this as part of their Title IX compliance.
[From
the article:
"It said it was anonymous, but at the same
time, they were keeping track of whether I was answering or not,
because I wouldn't be able to take classes or graduate without
completing it," he told The News.
"It's tied to my account somehow," he
said.
Not uncommon.
Yahoo
settles e-mail privacy class-action: $4M for lawyers, $0 for users
In late 2013, Yahoo was hit with six lawsuits over
its practice of using automated scans of e-mail to produce targeted
ads. The cases, which were consolidated in federal court, all argued
that the privacy rights of non-Yahoo users, who "did not consent
to Yahoo's interception and scanning of their emails," were
being violated by a multi-billion dollar company.
Now, lawyers representing the plaintiffs are
singing a different tune. Last week, they asked US District Judge
Lucy Koh to
accept a proposed settlement (PDF). Under the proposal, the
massive class of non-Yahoo users won't get any payment, but the class
lawyers at Girard Gibbs and Kaplan Fox intend to ask for up to $4
million in fees. (The ultimate amount of fees will be up to the
judge, but Yahoo has agreed not to oppose any fee request up to $4
million.)
While users won't get any payment, Yahoo will
change how it handles user e-mails—but it isn't the change that the
plaintiffs attorneys were originally asking for. Yahoo won't stop
scanning e-mails. Instead, the company has agreed to make a
technical change to when it scans e-mails. In the
settlement
(PDF), Yahoo has agreed that e-mail content will be "only
sent to servers for analysis for advertising purposes after a Yahoo
Mail user can access the email in his or her inbox." [That
does not seem to be much of a change. Bob]
“Thanks for the free stuff, but I have to hate
you now.”
The
Convenience-Surveillance Tradeoff
… A new Pew Research Center report
found that many people in America are upset about the extent to which
their personal data is being collected, but feel it is largely out of
their control.
“The data is there, and it’s being used, and
there isn’t a damn thing most of us can do about it, other than
strongly resent it,” one respondent told Pew. “The data isn’t
really the problem. It’s who gets to see and use that data that
creates problems. It’s too late to put that genie back in the
bottle.”
… “Free is a good price,” Pew said in its
report. People like no-cost services, and are willing to forfeit
some privacy in exchange for them. An individual’s data has become
its own kind of currency.
Amusing. (Does this closely parallel “fair
use?”)
Recently, Orin Kerr and I had a brief conversation
on Twitter regarding the Fourth Amendment and the content/non-content
distinction. Specifically, Orin asked
those of us who subscribe to the mosaic theory of intelligence if
some large amount of metadata can become content, can some small
amount of content become metadata by the same logic? That is, if
non-content in sufficient quantities can become content under the
Fourth Amendment, shouldn’t the inverse of this function mean that
sufficiently small amounts of content can become non-content?
(Remember that content receives great constitutional protection than
non-content.) There is a fair amount of unpacking to do in this
short question, so let’s start by exploring the mosaic theory as it
applies to Fourth Amendment law.
Perspective. More players and the beginning of
niche markets?
Comparing
Cloud Storage Alternatives: Beyond the Big Three
A recent InfoStor
article called Cloud
Storage Comparison covered Gartner’s view of the public
marketplace and gave a rundown of the top three players, Google,
Microsoft and Amazon. Gartner – surprising no one – places
Amazon in top the spot.
… The Nasuni
2015 State of Cloud Storage Report noted that 2013 and 2014 were
record-setting years for cloud service adoption in the enterprise.
Why do I get the feeling that this has never
happened before in the history of real estate and that it can only
happen in Miami and NY? Oh yeah, that's what the government is
saying.
U.S. Boosts
Scrutiny of N.Y., Miami Cash Real Estate Deals
President Barack Obama’s administration, citing
concern about the origin of funds used for all-cash purchases of
luxury real estate, said it is stepping
up scrutiny of transactions in New York City and Miami.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said on
Wednesday that it will temporarily require title insurance companies
to identify individuals behind companies that pay cash for high-end
residential real estate in Manhattan and Miami-Dade County.
Something I'll mention to my students who think
I'm speaking Greek.
All Skype
for Windows users get real-time translation
Skype today announced
that its Skype Translator tool is now built directly into its main
app for all Windows users. This means Skype for Windows users no
longer need a separate app to translate conversations in seven
languages (Chinese Mandarin, English, French, German, Italian,
Portuguese, and Spanish) and 50
messaging languages.
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