Tag Archives: Technology

Supreme Court declines to require a warrant to get cell site data

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“Cell-site tracking has become extremely important to crime fighting in the wake of the high court’s 2012 ruling that they need a warrant to place GPS trackers on vehicles. Equally important, in all the cases on the cell-site location tracking, the government argues that cell-site records are not constitutionally protected. Instead, the authorities maintain that they are business records that the telcos may hand over if the government asserts that reasonable grounds exist to believe the data is relevant to an investigation.”

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/supreme-court-punts-issue-if-warrants-needed-to-get-your-cell-site-data/

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Failed Windows 3.1 system blamed for shutting down Paris airport

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“Paris Orly airport had to close temporarily last Saturday after the failure of a system running Windows 3.1—yes, the operating system from 1992—left it unable to operate in fog.  This use of ancient systems is apparently not unusual. Vice quotes Alexandre Fiacre, the secretary general of France’s UNSA-IESSA air traffic controller union, as saying that ‘The tools used by Aéroports de Paris controllers run on four different operating systems, that are all between 10 and 20 years old,’ with Windows 3.1 being joined by Windows XP and unspecified UNIX systems. Fiacre says that the systems are poorly maintained as well.”

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/11/failed-windows-3-1-system-blamed-for-taking-out-paris-airport/

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Who controls the cop cam?

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“Once a simple stun-gun manufacturer, Taser has reinvented itself as an all-in-one law enforcement technology ecosystem: less-lethal weapons linked to cameras that automatically send footage to Taser’s evidence management database, where it can be edited and packaged using Taser’s cloud software tools. It’s a single walled garden, explicitly modeled after Apple’s software controls, extending from the camera lens to the prosecutor’s laptop. And as it grows more popular, that system has put us on the cusp of a fundamental change in the way law enforcement works in America, shaping police departments to the logic of a software startup.”

http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/16/9724644/police-tech-body-cams-transparency-violence-taser

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The App That Can Help Prevent Asset Forfeiture

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“One of Waze’s most popular features is a little mustachioed head in a blue hat and dark sunglasses — a policeman. That means there’s a speed trap up ahead. On my recent trip, I reported several lurking police cars, and received dozens of in-app ‘Thanks!’ from other users. (My personal data isn’t included in Waze because I set it up with an anonymous user profile, as always.)  And that’s precisely why the National Sheriffs’ Association — the other ‘NSA’ — wants Waze banned.  Apparently it’s fine for government to know everything about you, but it’s not OK for you to know something about the government … such as where a policeman might be lurking on the road.”

http://thesovereigninvestor.com/asset-protection/app-prevents-asset-forfeiture/

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Jeffrey Tucker: The Shoemaker and His Capitalist Elves

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“We were born into a world of amazing prosperity that our generation did not create. We have the expectation of living to old age, but this is completely new in the sweep of history. The shift in population reflects that dramatic change, too. There were most probably 250 million people alive 2,000 years ago, and it took until 1800 for the 1 billion mark to be reached. One hundred and twenty years later, that was doubled. Three billion people lived on the planet by 1960, and there are 7 billion today. Charting this out, you gain a picture of a world of stagnation and stasis from the beginning of recorded history until the Industrial Revolution, when life as we know it today was first experienced by humankind.”

https://tucker.liberty.me/the-shoemaker-and-his-capitalist-elves/

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Facebook Monitors Private Messages and Photos, Reports to Police

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“Facebook has a new little known software that monitors your profile chat and pictures for criminal activity. The software will proceed to alert an employee at the company who will then decide whether to call authorities or not.  Facebook’s software focuses on conversations between members who have a ‘loose’ relationship on the social network. For example, if two users aren’t friends, only recently became friends, have no mutual friends, interact with each other very little, have a significant age difference, and/or are located far from each other, the tool pays particular attention.”

http://www.copblock.org/146809/facebook-monitors-private-messages-photos-criminal-activity-reports-to-police/

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U.S. immigration forms project digitizes one form, at cost of $1 billion

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“This project, run by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, was originally supposed to cost a half-billion dollars and be finished in 2013. Instead, it’s now projected to reach up to $3.1 billion and be done nearly four years from now.  A decade in, all that officials have to show for the effort is a single form that’s now available for online applications and a single type of fee that immigrants pay electronically. The 94 other forms can be filed only with paper. Agency officials did not complete the basic plans for the computer system until nearly three years after the initial $500 million contract had been awarded to IBM, and the approach to adopting the technology was outdated before work on it began.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-decade-into-a-project-to-digitize-us-immigration-forms-just-1-is-online/2015/11/08/f63360fc-830e-11e5-a7ca-6ab6ec20f839_story.html

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“Free Trade Has Destroyed American Manufacturing”: False.

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“Manufacturing is going the way of agriculture. But we are not getting poorer. This has been true since at least 1840.  Free trade in manufactured goods is of marginal overall importance. Free trade in digital services will increase. The government cannot easily tax this kind of international trade. There are no tariffs and quotas on information. But protectionists never mention this aspect of free trade. They are focused on physical production, which is of declining value in our lives. The decline in American manufacturing is not the result of free trade. It is the result of our increasing wealth. We buy services and digits, not space-occupying stuff.”

http://www.garynorth.com/public/14455.cfm

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The Future Is Unimaginably Better than Expected

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“Today’s televisions are far superior to the ones shown in the film. Video calling is cheaper and easier than predicted, with apps like Skype and FaceTime. Virtual reality is not yet mainstream, but it may soon be, and we already have plenty of wearable tech such as Google Glass. We don’t have fax machines in every room because we have a far cheaper, easier and more environmentally friendly alternative in email. Nobody can predict the future, not even sci-fi screenwriters who are paid lots of money to try. [..] Entrepreneurs respond to our wants and needs today, but they also tap into our latent demands — creating amazing new stuff we didn’t even know we wanted.”

http://fee.org/anythingpeaceful/the-future-is-unimaginably-better-than-expected/

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California pushes 350-foot no-fly drone law; government exempt

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“The drone wars are heating up in California as legislators move to ban unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from flying within 350 feet above property ground level without the operators having received express permission.  Senate Bill 142 contains an exemption for lawful flights of government and law enforcement drones.  In other words, you can consider it a proposed ban on private and commercial UAV use – a dismal prospect for companies such as Amazon, with its plans to fill the sky with delivery drones; Google, with its own drone delivery service; and GoPro, the body-wearable camera maker that recently announced it was making its own drone.”

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/08/27/california-pushes-350-foot-no-fly-drone-law/

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