privacy issues

It started when I accidentally hit "add a caption" to a picture on my phone. It produced my image, only with my dachshund's body outlined and identified as a dachshund. So photo recognition software is going into my photos and identifying things, great. (I wonder how it would react to human...

My first question is, what is this? Yesterday I got an email from a friend. Or so I thought. The title was "Robert Smith sent you a message." It looked a little hinky but I was at work so I opened it on a company computer. :o The text read the same as the title: "Robert Smith sent you a...

Google deceived some Australian mobile users about collection of location data, court finds

Don't worry folks we promise that Big Brother will not really listen to you. No wait!! . . . More at: http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/samsungs-warning-our-smart-tvs-record-your-living-room-chatter/ Come on trust us. :boggled:

Supreme Court says police must get warrants for most cellphone searches From the SCOTUS Blog analysis: Chief Justice Roberts, delivering the Court's opinion in Riley v. California:

US Internal Revenue Service demands donor list: http://washingtonexaminer.com/ron-paul-group-to-defy-irs/article/2547261 "There is no legitimate reason for the IRS to know who donates to Campaign for Liberty," Megan Stiles, the communications director at Campaign for Liberty, told the...

Newsweek is running an article called The Face Behind Bitcoin Below is the URL and an excerpt: http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/bitcoin-satoshi-nakamoto.html Two police officers from the Temple City, Calif., sheriff's department flank him, looking puzzled. "So, what is it you want to ask...

Cops use cellphone tracking without warrants "due to Non-Disclosure Agreement" The police in Florida have used "Stingray" cell phone tracking technology over 200 times without getting a warrant, or even ever telling a judge about it. It seems the reason for this is that they signed a...

The Guardian has obtained a copy of a court order by which Verizon is required to give an electronic copy of all 'call details' from phone calls originating in the domestic US, to the NSA. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order Is this...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/us/supreme-court-says-police-can-take-dna-samples.html So they compare taking DNA to fingerprinting and say they can take it after being arrested for a "serious offense" "supported by probable cause". I actually have no problem with this.

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Controversy-swirls-around-local-transgender-college-student-177055311.html Apparently they have girls ages 6-18 using the college's facilities. In general, I support trans people being recognized as the gender they're transitioning to, but I have serious...

Inspiration for this thread came from Humes Fork and his link to PZ Myer's blog post, Sunday Sacrilege: Free speech is not freedom from responsibility. The question is, when does one's right to privacy (if one exists) come into conflict with the right to free speech? Suppose someone has a...

Let me be the first to state: If you require a prospective employee to fork over his or her facebook ID and Password, you're a butt hole. But apparently that's exactly what's happening. There is NO good reason for asking for such information. Is this another example of real-life and...

Justices Rein In Police on GPS Trackers Seems like a no-brainer to me. Glad it was unanimous.

Hi, Just came across this in my meanderings regarding whether you can tape in-person or telephone conversations - thought it might be useful: http://www.rcfp.org/taping/

Back in 2001, there was a case involving a Washington D.C. nightclub owner by the name of Antoine Jones who was suspected of dealing cocaine. He was tracked for an entire month without a warrant via a GPS device attached to his vehicle. The information gathered from the vehicle was then used...

I came across a Youtube video where a guy introduces a small GPS tracking device and suggest that viewers may put it in the bottom of their girlfriend's purse to track her and find out if she's cheating. I assume that this is against that law, but IANAL, so I'd like to find out more. Here's...

A friend of mine recently showed me the following video (I can't post the links in full as I require more posts to obtain the privileges). youtube.com/watch?v=R7yfV6RzE30 After doing a bit of a search, I found a very similar video which was published in 2008 expressing similar concerns...

http://www.indystar.com/article/20110302/LOCAL18/103020335/Judge-Star-IBJ-must-identify-anonymous-poster

Interesting story about the number of CCTV cameras in use in the UK. It's often claimed that there are 4.2 million CCTV cameras in the UK, although many of us have often rejected that claim and pointed out the flaws in how that number was estimated. And it seems that the figure is a lot lower...

How does one distinguish Hilary Clinton from Richard Nixon these days Also credit card numbers it appears. This suggests that a. the US has no problem accessing the servers where the personal information is stored of these identifiers b. the most likely motivation is to gain leverage (from...

So, I am seeing a lot of protests and complaints about the new TSA procedures. I really want to enter the debate, but I need to back up and get some basic things explained to me? Why do people feel this is wrong? I simply have no empathy for the people complaining. Not by choice. I just have...

CCTV in the Sky: Police Plan to Use Military-Style Spy Drones Source: The Guardian, UK News URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/23/cctv-sky-police-plan-drones Does anybody who lives in the UK, or in any part of the E.U., for that matter, have a problem with this? INRM BTW: I...

Being that the government is so into making everything "wiretap friendly" so they can snoop in on us whenever they want, this interesting technological development raises a cause for concern that I raised awhile back. It's called a memory aid, and IBM is developing it URL...

Recently, the government has been pushing to require servers, and wireless phones to be made more wiretap friendly. While most people seem to think that requirements around wiretap friendliness started after 9/11, the requirements actually first started with CALEA, which stands for...

The new TSA scanners are able to effectively photograph people naked. Our friends in UK were so offended by the proposition of photographing their children naked that they forced legislation making anyone under the age of 18 exempt from these new "nude scanners". In the USA, those who opt-out...

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/10/27/shipley.stolen.brain/index.html This young man was killed in a car accident and the young man was buried. To their shock and horror they discovered that their sons brains was being kept in a jar at the autopsy lab.

Tyler Clementi was a gay student at Rutgers University. Unbeknownst to him, he was filmed having sex with another guy by two of his fellow classmates, who then posted the video on the internet. After finding out, he committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. Honestly, the...

"To amend the Public Health Service Act to require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to ensure that each HHS health service program or HHS health survey provides, to the extent the Secretary determines appropriate and practicable, for the voluntary collection of data on the sexual...

Getting Some Rays: Forget Radar, Now The Government is X-Raying You as You Drive URL: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/04-1 So much for the 4th Amendment... I for one, find the practice of using fears of terrorism as an excuse to monitor every aspect of our existence to be repulsive...