bigbrother
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Webcam-spying school district settles out of court, FBI declines to press charges
Looks like the Lower Merion School District will be paying off kids who got zinged by its laptop tracking program -- to the tune of some $610,000. As you might recall, there was quite a bit of hubbub earlier this year when students discovered that their school issued computers tended to activate their webcams and shoot the photos back to administrators. Apparently the FBI has decided not to bring any charges in the case after all, and the various families of the students settled with the school district out of court. And yes, the schools have discontinued the tracking program.
Leon, Mexico to use biometric scanners in 'all aspects of life'
First it was CCTV surveillance, and now a Mexican security firm called Portoss is teaming up with biometrics manufacturer Global Rainmakers, Inc., to make the city of Leon in Guanajuato the most potentially oppressive in the world. The secure city initiative will provide "unparalleled iris identity fusion" by wrapping the city in miles of fiber optic cable, creating a central database that will contain of all convicted criminals (as well as any good citizens who wish to "opt in"), and a network of iris scanners. As you can imagine, the man in charge of selling this stuff -- Global Rainmakers CDO Jeff Carter -- is something of a "true believer." Fast Company attributes the following quote to him: "Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected [to the iris system] within the next 10 years." Great! There's also this one: "If you've been convicted of a crime, in essence, this will act as a digital scarlet letter. If you're a known shoplifter, for example, you won't be able to go into a store without being flagged. For others, boarding a plane will be impossible." And how about embittered bloggers? Will we be prevented from accessing the Internet to point out how unbelievably frightening this is? PR after the break.
India's desire to snoop on BlackBerry users continues unabated, UAE wants in on the act
Governments have traditionally had a "love-hate" relationship with technology: they love using it to keep tabs on you and your cronies, but they hate the idea that you could be using it to protect your privacy. One clear example of this is the whole back'n'forth that's been playing out between RIM and the nation of India over the last couple years. Remember way back in '08 when the country demanded that the company give it access (one way or another) to encrypted BlackBerry Messenger traffic and email? Well, it looks like nothing's been resolved after all: just last week the Indian telecommunications ministry gave RIM until the end of the month to provide said access, otherwise it could ban BBM altogether -- much as it tried to do two years ago. Meanwhile, in the UAE, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority has issued a statement claiming that "[c]ertain BlackBerry applications allow people to misuse the service, causing serious social, judicial and national security repercussions." We're not certain if things will go quite so far in Abu Dhabi as they seem to be in New Delhi, but the government assured everyone that it will find "a solution that safeguards our consumers and operates within the boundaries of UAE law."
Big Brother UK invaded by Titan the robot (video)
First off let's be clear: we're not talking about an invasion of the UK surveillance society (this time), instead, we're talking about the Big Brother TV show which, apparently, is still on the air. Enter our old friend Titan the Robot, the 7-foot 3-inch tall, human-operated "robot" from Cyberstein Robots. The flatmates found him hiding in the shower a few days ago before he set off ordering them about. We're sure everyone will be safe, at least until some skank "glamour model" decides to nickname it "chicken." Watch the rather mundane video of the robot-as-answering-machine after the break. Hey, its the best we've got until some desperate-for-stardom flatmate coaxes Titan into bumpin' servos, Bjork-style, on live TV. [Thanks, Wayne Y.]
Perfect Citizen: secret NSA surveillance program revealed by WSJ
Do you trust your government? Do you just support it like an obedient Britney Spears, steadfast to your faith that it will do the right thing? Your answer to those questions will almost certainly predict your response to a Wall Street Journal exposé of a classified US government program provocatively dubbed, "Perfect Citizen." Why not just call it "Big Brother," for crissake! Oh wait, according to an internal Raytheon email seen by the WSJ, "Perfect Citizen is Big Brother," adding, "The overall purpose of the [program] is our Government...feel[s] that they need to insure the Public Sector is doing all they can to secure Infrastructure critical to our National Security." Histrionics aside, according to the WSJ, the "expansive" program is meant to detect assaults on private companies and government agencies deemed critical to the national infrastructure. In other words, utilities like the electricity grid, air-traffic control networks, subway systems, nuclear power plants, and presumably MTV. A set of sensors deployed in computer networks will alert the NSA of a possible cyber attack, with Raytheon winning a classified, $100 million early stage contract for the surveillance effort. Now, before you start getting overly political, keep in mind that the program is being expanded under Obama with funding from the Bush-era Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative. The WSJ also notes that companies won't be forced to install the sensors. Instead, companies might choose to opt-in because they find the additional monitoring helpful in the event of cyber attack -- think of Google's recent run-in with Chinese hackers as a potent example. Like most citizens, we have mixed emotions about this. On one hand, we cherish our civil liberties and prefer to keep the government out of our personal affairs. On the other, we can barely function when Twitter goes down, let alone the national power grid.
Intel Connected Cars will record your bad driving for posterity, take over if you're really screwing up
Intel's latest Research Day has sprung up a new vision for "smart" vehicles; a vision that frankly chills us to our very geeky core. Cameras and sensors attached to an Intel Connected Car will record data about your speed, steering and braking, and upon the event of an accident, forward those bits and bytes along to the police and your insurance company. Just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn't it? Don't get us wrong, the tech foundation here is good -- having cars permanently hooked up to the ether can generally be considered a good thing -- but what's being envisioned is as obtrusive as it is irritating. Oh, didn't we mention that the cars can become self-aware and overrule you if you try to bend the rules of the road? Because they can.
New privacy laws needed that entail GPS technology, hot-headed rogue cops
An expert testifying at a hearing of the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties said on Thursday that the government needs to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986. Among the criticisms was the fact that it doesn't adequately address location-aware technologies. "With regard to this type of location data, ECPA's statutory framework is profoundly unsatisfying," said Marc Zwillinger of Zwillinger and Genetski, a Washington DC law firm that specializes in cybercrime. "[I]t fails to provide clear guidance for situations in which the government seeks to track an individual's precise movements, leaving the answer to the general application of Fourth Amendment principles and significant variation across jurisdictions." In other words, the wording of the law is extremely nebulous, a situation that can lead to confusion (and civil right violations). And if it weren't enough that courts and law enforcement are applying decades-old law to cutting edge technology, "the current law is overly secretive because warrants for wiretaps and other communications intercepts are often sealed for years after they are issued," writes Gautham Nagesh in The Hill. He cites U.S. Magistrate Stephen Smith of the Southern District of Texas as charging that "the brunt of that secrecy is borne by people who are never charged with a crime but have the misfortune to contact someone whose communications are being monitored." Well, we're glad that someone in Washington seems to think that the ECPA needs overhauled -- but we'll remain skeptical until we see something concrete. Regardless, we doubt that a simple change in law will keep McNulty from doing whatever he has to do to make his case. He's real police.
Google flexes biceps, flicks Android remote kill switch for the first time
We knew Google had the power to remotely remove Android apps -- Microsoft and Apple have backdoors into their mobile operating systems, too -- but it's always a little disconcerting to see a kill switch used. Such is the case today, as we've just heard Google unleashed the hounds this week, siccing bits and bytes of remote deletion power on a pair of "practically useless" but still Terms of Service-infringing apps. Curiously enough, Google admits that most who'd downloaded these programs had deleted them already, and that this "exercise" of the remote application removal feature was merely a cleanup operation. Google says users will get a notification beamed to their phone if an app is removed, however -- so as Big Brother as that all sounds, at least the company's being nice and transparent about the whole matter, eh? Update: To be clear, the developers of the offending apps had already removed them from the Android Market, so this was technically a cleanup. The only question is why Google would go out of its way to mop up an app that absolutely no one would miss. [Thanks, Matt]
I2T security camera generates searchable text transcript in real-time
Researchers in California have developed a prototype camera called I2T that can capture video, parse out the background, analyze the action, and then export the content to a text file "that can be searched using simple text search," according to Song-Chun Zhu, lead researcher and professor of statistics and computer science at UCLA. Using a database of over two million images, the system is pretty good at annotating surveillance footage, which generally relies on a static camera. Before the technology can be commercialized, however, they need to significantly expand the database. "If set loose on random images or videos found online," writes Technology Review, the camera would "struggle to perform." If Song-Chun Zhu is interested, we have a library of Greatest American Hero images we can donate to the cause (they're left over from our other blog, GreatestAmericanHeroFanfiction.blogspot.com). Check out the links below to see it in action. [Warning: PDF source link]
UK police drone grounded for flying without a license
As you know, the Merseyside (UK) police department finally nabbed a suspect with its £40,000 (roughly $63,000) drone recently -- an announcement that was accompanied by backslapping and hearty cheers all around. But what happens when the police run afoul of the law? According to the BBC, the vehicle has been grounded by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) under guidelines enacted in January stating that UAVs weighing over fifteen pounds need permission to fly within 164 feet of people and 492 feet of buildings. A spokesman for the coppers said "all Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) flights have been suspended and will remain so until the appropriate license has been granted," but don't worry Britons: you should still be able to rest easily at night knowing that you're still the most surveillance-happy nation in the history of the world. Cheerio! [Thanks, Gringomoses and Ben]
TomTom data finds drivers aren't speeding much, are being watched
Sure, you might be able to avoid speed cameras with an array of dash-mounted gadgets, but there's also another unseen eye that might be keeping an eye on your speeding habits: your GPS unit. Of course, GPS makers aren't too interested in collecting individual users' data (at least, we hope not), but they are collecting some general data, and TomTom has now released a few of its findings. Most notably, it found that drivers in just about every state stay within the speed limit on average, with only Mississippi edging 0.1 miles per hour over the top speed limit of 70 MPH. Things get a bit more interesting when you get down to specific routes in the United States, however, where the I-15 in Utah and Nevada comes out on top with an average speed of 77.67 miles per hour. On the other end of the spectrum, Washington D.C. proved to have the slowest drivers, where speeds averaged a mere 46 miles per hour -- although that likely has something to do with TomTom's earlier findings that Washington D.C. also has the most congested traffic in the U.S.
Pikavu GPS tracker teaches kids to abandon privacy for safety
You can't put a price on your child's well-being -- but if you could, we're guessing that it'd fall a little short of the €990 (roughly $1,440) that's being charged for the Pikavu Express Locator. A child-friendly (read: gaudy) take on the Keruve GPS tracker being used to keep track of Alzheimer's patients, the package includes a water- and impact-resistant watch that locks to your kid's wrist and a 4.2-inch touchscreen base station. Four positioning systems (SBAS-GPS, indoorVision, VisionCellid and T-GSM) are employed to keep track of the little guy, and the watch itself has a battery life of up to 4.5 days. Expensive? Indeed. Worth the investment? Well, we don't know your kids -- but probably not. PR after the break. %Gallery-80423%
Sprint handed customer GPS data to law enforcement over 8 million times last year
Privacy advocates and career criminals alike are in a lather over reports that between September 2008 and October 2009, Sprint Nextel ponied up customer location data to various law enforcement agencies more than 8 million times. Speaking at ISS World 2009 (a conference for law enforcement and telecom industry-types responsible for "lawful interception, electronic investigations and network Intelligence gathering"), Sprint Nextel's very own Paul Taylor, Manager of Electronic Surveillance, lamented on the sheer volume of requests the company's received in the past year for precise GPS data for Sprint customers. How did the company meet such high demand? Apparently, his team built a special "web interface" which "has just really caught on fire with law enforcement." We're glad that Sprint's plans to streamline the customer service experience don't stop short of those who serve and protect, but as the EFF points out, plenty of nagging questions remain, including: How many individual customers have been affected? Is Sprint demanding search warrants? How secure is this web interface? Check out an excerpt from Taylor's speech after the break.
BlackBerrys for coppers: UK law enforcement to smarten up in 2010
Police men and women of Blighty are about to step into the 21st century, albeit a decade late, with a new weapon in the fight against boredom on the beat. The BBC reports that smartphones will become standard issue throughout the Queen's realm by March 2010, as a result of successful trials carried out in 30 constabularies through this year. Improved "operational efficiency" and reduced bureaucracy are argued as the key benefits, with a solid 30 minutes less time being spent in police stations each day. And we're absolutely positive that extra half hour will go toward increased "visibility in the community" and not checking out friends' Facebook status updates. No, really! Read -- BBC report Read -- Bedfordshire case study
Amazon clarifies Kindle book-deletion policy, can still delete books
Amazon might have been extremely contrite about remotely deleting 1984 from Kindles, but a Jeff Bezos apology and an offer to restore the book doesn't necessarily add up to a meaningful change in policy. As part of the settlement with that student who sued over the 1984 situation, Amazon's had to clarify its remote-deletion guidelines, and they're pretty much the same as ever: they'll hit the kill switch if you ask for a refund or if your credit card is declined, if a judge orders them to, or if they need to protect the Kindle or the network from malware. Sounds simple, right? Well, sort of -- saying they'll delete content at the behest of judicial or regulatory decree pretty much leaves the door open to exactly the same situation as the 1984 debacle, just a couple procedural steps down the line and with less blame placed on Amazon. If you'll recall, 1984 was deleted after the publisher was sued for not having the proper rights, and Amazon took the proactive step of deleting the content -- and although Amazon won't do that on its own anymore, all it takes now is one strongly-worded motion before a sympathetic judge and we're back at square one. That's pretty troubling -- no judge can order a physical bookseller to come into your house and retrieve a book they've sold you, and saying things are different for the Kindle raises some interesting questions about what Amazon thinks "ownership" means. We'll see how this one plays out in practice, though -- we're hoping Amazon never has to pull that switch again.
Saurik live chat: Learn about Apple's new signature server
Something new, unexpected, and possibly worrying has popped up in iTunes. iTunes now "calls home" to the Apple mothership whenever you restore an iPhone or iPod touch. It tells you that it's "Verifying restore with Apple...", checking your device identifier and the firmware with Apple's new signature server.Today, TUAW has the pleasure of talking with Jay Freeman, otherwise known as "Saurik", the developer of Cydia. Saurik has constructed a server that duplicates Apple's functionality, ensuring that you'll be able to downgrade your iPhone or iPod in the future, even if you have not jailbroken your device. This topic is for all iPhone users, regardless of whether they use jailbreaking. Please join us with your questions and comments as we hear from Freeman about why this move matters to you. Read on to see the full live chat transcript.
England puts CCTVs in the homes of lousy parents
We love England, especially the way they use all these adorable names for things: "lorry," for truck, or "loo" for bathroom, or "sin bin" for an Orwellian program whereby "problem families" (currently numbering 2,000, but someday as many as 20,000) are placed under 24/7 CCTV surveillance in their own homes. Chris Grayling, something called the "Shadow Home Secretary," puts it thusly: "This Government has been in power for more than a decade during which time anti-social behavior, family breakdown and problems like alcohol abuse and truancy have just got worse and worse." Meaning, of course, that cameras must be moved from the streets of England into people's homes, where they'll be used to make sure that kids go to school, go to bed at a decent hour, and eat proper meals. If only they'd had programs like this when we were kids -- maybe things would have turned out differently.
The Shack: You have questions, we have propaganda
tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/04/the-shack-you-have-questions-we-have-propaganda/'; tweetmeme_source = 'engadget'; Here are some of the memorable catchphrases you can expect from the retailer formerly known as Radio Shack's rebranding, as caught on camera from an anonymous tipster: "The Shack is fluent in mobile. The Shack is a big hug for your mobile life. The Shack is music to your ears. The Shack is your path to wireless wisdom. The Shack helps you get it right. The Shack is like a GPS to your GPS. The Shack knows what you want to hear. The Shack is not camera-shy." The Shack is not at war with Eastasia. The Shack has never been at war with Eastasia.
Amazon remotely deletes Orwell e-books from Kindles, unpersons reportedly unhappy (update)
If you're into keeping tabs on irony, check this out. Amazon apparently sent out its robotic droogs last night, deleting copies of the George Orwell novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four from Kindles without explanation, then refunding the purchase price. As you can imagine, a lot of people caught in the thick of Winston and Julia's love story aren't very happy -- and rightfully so -- the idea that we "own" the things we buy is pretty fundamental to... ownership. We're not sure exactly what happened, but it seems that the publisher of said novels, MobileReference, has changed its mind about selling content on the Kindle, and poof! Amazon remotely deleted all previously purchased copies. It's all a bit Orwellian, is it not? Good thing we "permanently borrowed" hard copies of both from our middle school library, huh? Let Hate Week commence.Update: According to commenters on Amazon, this message was sent out from the company's customer service department:The Kindle edition books Animal Farm by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) & Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase. When this occurred, your purchases were automatically refunded. You can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available. Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store.While that publisher's version of the book may have been removed, it appears other versions of the novels are still available.Update 2: Drew Herdener, Amazon.com's Director of Communications, pinged us directly with the following comment, and now things are starting to make a lot more sense. Seems as if the books were added initially by an outfit that didn't have the rights to the material.These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books. When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers. We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances.Still, what's upsetting is the idea that something you've purchased can be quietly taken back by Amazon with no explanation and no advance notice. It's a rotten policy, regardless of the motivations behind this particular move.
India issuing biometric IDs to all 1.2 billion citizens
While not busy being the destination of Westerners seeking spiritual growth and the birthplace of the beloved Bollywood song and dance flick, apparently India is home to some 1.2 billion people -- many of whom possess no proof of identification whatsoever. According to The Times (UK), less than seven per cent of the population are registered for income tax, and the voting lists are terribly inaccurate. Hoping to bring the nation's census data into the 21st century, India has created the Unique Identification Authority. Under the direction of Nandan Nilekani, one of the founders of Infosys, the plan is to outfit every one of the nation's citizens with a biometric ID card that contains personal data, fingerprint or iris scans, and possibly even criminal records and credit histories. Gathering the data is projected to cost at least $4.9 billion, a figure that's likely to soar once the ball gets rolling. While the Government expects that the first cards will be issued within 18 months, analysts say that project won't likely reach "critical mass" for at least four years.[Via Switched]
