Group items tagged

Very timely for our forthcoming privacy class. Google has been wardriving. Which makes perfect sense. Useful for business and so easy to do when they're driving by. Who owns info that we put out on the street?

Google Australia will today be sent a "please explain" letter from two local privacy organisations demanding to know why the company has been collecting personal Wi-Fi network data from Australian homes alongside the images it takes with its Street View cameras. Google has taken some heat lately about its commitment to privacy after officials from 10 governments - including New Zealand, Canada and France - wrote a letter to chief executive Eric Schmidt to express their concern over data collection for Street View and the implementation of its Buzz social networking tool.

Ofcom has conducted a survey in the UK on the handling of personal data online. The result: In the light of recent news about privacy issues online (Facebook for example) people have become more weary about Internet privacy. The Scottish are the least worried. Also interesting: "about a quarter of internet users say they 'lack confidence' in installing filerting software or security features."

When it works the world of instant connectivity and social convergence is a wonderful place. Although I personally find the comments illustrative in a more depressing fashion. Derogatory comments, hotness debate and sudden normalising of "Welcome to the internet" where women are sex things and men are whatever they want to be.

Google and Facebook are both fired under privacy issue. One thing about the Internet is its border less feature, but when it comes to regualtion, this becomes a big problem. American based companies should or should not follow local ligislations? Which country can take the responsible for indivisual interllectual property or private information internationally?

People are taking actions to express their feeling about Facebook privacy issue.

This article discusses the rhetorical question of how the Internet culture of youths, does not have laws that adequately serve or protect. Some laws are too concrete, while others are non existent. Laws need to be redefined, as the Internet culture does not necessarily dictate the same types of culture and attitudes we experience in person. The laws at present, provide loopholes, that either are not justified persecutions, or are simply to harsh, and or simply allow the offender to walk away.

The White House will now archive its tweets. Wonder what role Twitter will play in the not-so-far-away 2012 US presidential campaign. If Obama runs for re-election... will he start the race ahead?

Internet censorhip and interenet surveilance in South Korea have been very harsh in recent years; therefore, the freedom of speech and the public's right to know has been restricted. Internet surveilance has been less tolerant on not only violent and explicit content but also on the political issue-related online discussion. After the South Korean government has arrested the netizens for posting personal and critical views on the goverment, internet users in South korea are now silenced. South Korea is allegedly a "democratic country."

Who's a villain and who's not? "Villain"? That's like a comics term..... Lex Luthor better not have Facebook.... "Bought 300 grams of kyyptonite today..."

New Zealand is getting ready for a potential patent reform? Predominantly this bill includes an exclusion of patents on software which is a big development in a digital commercial industry which is rife with conflict over intellectual property. Personally, I feel it is a step in the right direction? But I guess that is the point of view of an end user.

A group of independent film producers have initiated court actions against over 20,000 Bit Torrent users, through an organisation of their own design, a group of lawyers known as the U.S Copyright Group. This group are demanding users to either defend themselves in court or alternatively, to settle outside of court for downloading particular movie titles. Most accused will settle to avoid the costs of litigation. Actions such as this are worrying as may give rise to a standard in which large numbers of corporates, not only in film but in all types of media, may start bringing forth unrelenting actions against individual users- holding them personally accountable. This is problematic (amongst a variety of reasons) that in the identification process through IP addresses is not 100% accurate, leaving room to wrongly accuse some users.

Talks about the proposed Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act which, if passed, would outlaw speech meant to "coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person." Critics see it as a form of censorship.

I know this is a piece of fluff, but it raises some questions for me: 1. Was Twitter the only medium through which this event was advertised? Could there not have been other ways to advertise the cancellation of the signing? 2. Is private Twitter usage able to be publically regulated? If so, to what extent? 3. To what extent is the shopping mall responsible? OHS and Fire codes would have mandated the number of people allowed in an area - should they not have made provision for that? 4. Was the failure to tweet reckless endangerment on the part of the manager, or have the law enforcement agencies taken social networking and used it to increase the level of responsibility a person owes to the general public (at least in this instance)? I'm not saying that the manager is in the right, I'm just wary of the level of importance placed on one aspect of this event. Has the way we operate changed to such an extent as to warrant this sort of police interference?

Creepy: airport checks might now include checking the files in your laptop. 

The founder and Chief Executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, announced at a recent conference that Facebook's Open Graph project will soon enable an even greater degree of personalisation as people surf the net. I think this probably has implications for user experience, in terms of viewing popular sites through the prism of social networking - and it gives sites more authority to store data about individuals. Because Facebook seems to be so pervasive nowadays, it seems like we won't have much say in the matter...

Allison, that's a great point, I've tried to quit using the site but I stop when I realise that I won't know about upcoming social events - unfortunately its the primary means of communication used by some friends!

Yes and I think Facebook take full advantage! A lot of my friends have been posting notes on FB about changing privacy settings now that the new features have come in. So, people are trying to resist but in a more subtle way than dropping out of FB altogether.

The year was 2008. The person was Dan Kaminsky. The discovery: DNS has security flaws. Translation: the website you are visiting may not actually be the genuine site. This might take you 15 minutes to read through, and perhaps longer to absorb....but I highly recommend spending time on learning about the technicalities of DNS and the vulnerabilities of its functionality. The discovery of its weak points is what DNS security is addressing. Briefly, it covers the distributed nature of DNS, how cache poisoning occurs and patch recommendations to provide a 'fix'.

Attacking a person's reputation via the Internet has become a very quick and easy process through sites like Facebook and Twitter. However, the author argues (and hopes) that maybe in time, since bashing of a person's online reputation is evolving into common behavior, it wont really matter anymore - that incriminating photos on Facebook wont have that much of an impact in a few years.

This article (posted yesterday) is about the announcement of a huge China-based cyber espionage which stole thousands of documents - including classified information, visa applications, and personal identities - from "politically sensitive targets" around the world using platforms such as Twitter, Google Groups, Blogspot, Baidu Blogs, blog.com and Yahoo Mail to maintain persistent control of infected computers. Among the targets: the offices of the Dalai Lama, the United Nations as well as Indian and Pakistani government officials. Also available in this article, a report document of 58 pages about "Investigating Cyber Espionnage" (scribd application)

What happens when an institution that is supposed to be safe, violates your personal rights? This article discusses how a high school in Philadelphia installed software on their lap tops that would capture photos of the user of the lap top. Though the software was intended for recovery measures of stolen lap tops, it appears that the software goes beyond photos taken from the software contained images of chats, and content that the user was viewing, to the users themselves dressing., as it spies upon the user's interactions with peers. This brings to question whether or not to trust institutional technology, and whether or not they should stipulate that some software installed may violate the users right to privacy.

It is the first time in North America that assisted suicide laws have been applied to the Internet. William Melchert-Dinkel has been charged with assisting in 2 suicides, where he posed under several aliases and made suggestions of suicides from medication to advice on how to tie nooses. Though the argument was that suicide is the behaviour done unto oneself, and suggestion is freedom of speech, this is no different than cyberbullies who also suggest the same thing, however this heinous individual offered information to those that were indanger of commiting suicide. Based on the wording in the state of Minnesota, assisted suicides do not require the actual physical presence of the person, hence the prosecution stands.