Show called "Harassment" results in, well, harassment! MTV and their co-conspirator, the Hard Rock Hotel, are being sued for "invasion of privacy, infliction of emotional distress and fraud, among other things."
posted by ilsa
on Jun 13, 2002 -
32 comments
"British Liberty, RIP" A leader article on the danger represented by the British Government's new Statutory Order and the need for Parliamentarians to step in and resist. (The Order will allow a wide range of organisations access to phone and internet records - The Guardian's own story with details is
here.)
Ben Franklin has been quoted here many times before, but I have no hesitation quoting him again:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
posted by jonpollard
on Jun 11, 2002 -
10 comments
Government Will Ease Limits on Domestic Spying by F.B.I. (NY Times link)
As part of a sweeping effort to transform the F.B.I. into a domestic terrorism prevention agency, Attorney General John Ashcroft has decided to relax restrictions on the bureau's ability to conduct domestic spying in counterterrorism operations, senior government officials said today.
Here's the
Wash. Post's take on the story.
posted by Ty Webb
on May 30, 2002 -
21 comments
Yahoo has quietly changed its
privacy policy. Accountholders are now subscribed to lots of newsletters plus junk mail and telemarketing. You can change your
preferences and send Yahoo some
feedback. You can't prevent them from subscribing you to new products without closing your account. Will going to an opt-out system help or hurt their bottom line? Will there be a backlash?
posted by neuroshred
on Mar 30, 2002 -
27 comments
School Fascism at all-time high? Okay, forget the various and sundry
suspensions for alcohol, fighting, or bringing anything even vaguely pointy to school. This guy took innocent pictures of girls in his school
with their knowledge using his own camera, and posted them to his own web site. Are we a little overboard here?
posted by umberto
on Feb 26, 2002 -
24 comments
Do you have a 'Super Cookie' ??? Another m$ screw-up... Very interesting since wmp just minutes before tried to access the net through my firewall that is set to block all except a few programs. If you're running mozilla his
demo
doesn't hit but using msie it sures pulls up the ID# of my wmp... time to tighten things down again!!! Another blasted waste of time to fix what m$ should not have let out in the first place!!! Link via...
Inflight Correction
posted by tilt
on Jan 17, 2002 -
13 comments
How willing are you to whore yourself? City buses have been doing it for years. Now an ad company is willing to give you a free car for two years if you're willing to drive a mobile billboard for them. Ideal candidates live in busy urban and suburban areas, park on the street, and get stuck in traffic all the time. You pay for insurance and gas, and they take care of the rest (including maintenance). Or have your current car wrapped with advertisements and get up to $400 a month. The company will also entice you with free concert tickets if you'll drive the vehicle to the show.
Through a long application process, they try to match ideal candidates with advertisers. They even let you suggest 5 companies you'd be willing to whore yourself for. But if you do decide to sign up, be aware: Not only are there 70,000 + applications ahead of you, and no guarantee that you'll be selected, according to the
privacy policy, the ad company will use your detailed profile to sell more stuff to you.
posted by crunchland
on Jan 15, 2002 -
32 comments
Unknowingly sending all your personal finance information through the servers of a sleazy ad service: Priceless.
Do you pay your AMEX bill online at
americanexpress.com? If you do, you should know that you're being ported through
the ad.doubleclick.net advertising service. Mouse over the links on the AMEX homepage and see. All your information travels through doubleclick's servers on its way to AMEX. Nice, huh?
posted by jpoulos
on Nov 26, 2001 -
13 comments
Annoyance or Invasion? Sure, most of this information is available when you do a WHOIS search on someone, but does anyone else think that this site is putting a little bit too much information out in the open?
posted by almostcool
on Nov 25, 2001 -
20 comments
WE ARE WATCHING YOU. "The FBI added that its research is 'always mindful of constitutional, privacy and commercial equities,' and that its use of new technology can be challenged in court and in Congress." No really, go ahead, try and stop us if you don't like it. That's your (snicker, snicker) right.
posted by rushmc
on Nov 24, 2001 -
12 comments
Virgin Mobile Phone Records Which Map Users Whereabouts Kept Indefinitely. Admittedly, this data is only accurate to within a few hundred metres at the moment, but '
When the new breed of 3G - third generation - phones comes on stream, probably next year, they will enable the users' location to be pinpointed to within a couple of metres'. I know the current climate is increasingly pro-identity cards, pro-police state, but this can't be right, surely? Why do they want to keep this information indefinitely?
posted by boneybaloney
on Oct 30, 2001 -
15 comments
Ashcroft issues new policy on FOIA requests that rescinds a 1993 policy that made it somewhat harder for federal agencies to refuse requests for public records. No surprise, especially given the current situation, but the interesting part is the rationale: Ashcroft cites national security, the effectiveness of law enforcement and protecting sensitive business information. "I encourage your agency to carefully consider the protection of all such values and interests when making disclosure determinations under the FOIA." (via Politechbot)
posted by thescoop
on Oct 18, 2001 -
5 comments
Hmmm....maybe while they're not looking, we can do some
really bad things.
Corporate lobbyists love distractions, especially a major crisis at the end of a legislative session. California is no exception. How has your state legislature been screwing you while this crisis has been going on?
posted by themikeb
on Sep 14, 2001 -
5 comments
And so it begins - "Federal police are reportedly increasing Internet surveillance after Tuesday's deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Just hours after three airplanes smashed into the buildings in what some U.S. legislators have dubbed a second Pearl Harbor, FBI agents began to visit Web-based, e-mail firms and network providers, according to engineers "
How do you think the attacks of the 11th will affect civil liberties?
posted by jed
on Sep 12, 2001 -
11 comments
To stop the credit bureaus from releasing your personal info without your knowledge, call 888-567-8688. To stop your bank, brokerage firm, credit union, etc., from doing the same, you'll need to send a
letter. More info in comments.
posted by JParker
on Aug 22, 2001 -
16 comments
Hands where I can see them, and turn off that tape recorder! Today the Massachusetts Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a man for violating the commonwealth's electronic surveillance law when he secretly recorded police who pulled him over in a traffic stop. While it's generally bad to tape people without telling them, should there be an exception w/r/t to recording public officials acting in their official capacities? Or is wrong just wrong?
posted by dchase
on Jul 13, 2001 -
22 comments
Yet another reason to avoid the Battlefield Earth DVD: A brand new "feature" called Regional Coding Enhancement, or RCE. Having the word "enhancement" in the title might make us think that we, the consumer, might actually benefit for this technology, but that isn't the case. The only people to benefit are the movie studios who, not content to gouge us on DVD prices (DVD's are cheaper to press than video tapes) have made it impossible to backup a DVD, or play a foreign DVD on a North American DVD player. Now, thanks to RCE, if you own a region-free DVD player, guess what? You can't play Battlefield Earth on it!
posted by johnnydark
on Jul 8, 2001 -
30 comments
Not embedded in your hand, just your credit card. Your Providian VISA with Smart Chip Technology comes with a smart chip that's embedded on the front of the credit card. Soon, a smart chip will let you store information and applications that make shopping easier and more secure. Anyone here a little leary of this kind of "smart"ness? Thoughts?
posted by thunder
on Jul 3, 2001 -
23 comments
The government is tracking your movements by using metal detectors and store security devices to scan anti-counterfeit threads woven into your money.
Fiction or
Fact
posted by willnot
on Jul 3, 2001 -
7 comments
Some good news about Internet Explorer 6? IE6, scheduled to be released in August, will be the first browser to support a new privacy standard called Platform Privacy Preferences, or P3P, which will allow surfers to automatically determine whether a Web site collects personally identifiable information and opt out of the data collection.
posted by tranquileye
on Jun 17, 2001 -
15 comments
Finally, some good news on the privacy front The Supreme Court today reiterated the right of privacy in the age of technology, ruling in an Oregon drug case that the police cannot use a heat-seeking device to probe the interior of a home without a search warrant. (
registration required) The heat device used by the agents "might disclose, for example, at what hour each night the lady of the house takes her daily sauna and bath — a detail that many would consider `intimate,' " the majority held.
daily sauna?
posted by 4midori
on Jun 11, 2001 -
11 comments
ALL YOUR EMAIL ARE BELONG TO US! How serious is this threat? What precautions do you routinely take? What precautions do you think you *should* be taking? What viable options do we have today, for those of us who aren't computer programmers by profession? And how secure are they, anyway?
posted by rushmc
on May 30, 2001 -
12 comments
Social Security Numbers and privacy. I refuse to give my number out whenever possible, but it is getting worse all the time. Thankfully I can still buy batteries and refuse to give Rat Shack my telephone number, and tell Toy R Us where to go when they ask for my zip, but this is frustrating. Wasn't this what people feared about having identification numbers in the first place?
posted by thirteen
on May 14, 2001 -
41 comments
No Hiding Place "According to most experts in the field, a police state with powers of control and surveillance beyond the wildest dreams of Hitler or Stalin could now be established in Britain within 24 hours" Here's how...
posted by hmgovt
on Apr 20, 2001 -
4 comments
The ACLU wants to protect your privacy from government electronic surveillance programs like Echelon and Carnivore. Their
full page ad in today's NYT claims
4th amendment rights are being violated by the US government, which is overstepping their bounds, and nearly free of up-to-date laws. Is it to late or can anything be done to protect civilian electronic communication?
posted by mathowie
on Apr 15, 2001 -
7 comments
Kill Your PC: a new website launches concentrating on tracking online privacy and fair-use issues. They also are providing information on how to get rid of banner ads, as well as a big list of links you can use to opt-out from user-spying on the major advertising networks. Necessary consumer education, or a dangerous idea that threatens the viability of websites?
posted by matthew
on Apr 4, 2001 -
3 comments
