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thinkahol *

Cell Phone Censorship in San Francisco? » Blog of Rights: Official Blog of th... - 0 views

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    Pop quiz: where did a government agency shut down cell service yesterday to disrupt a political protest? Syria? London? Nope. San Francisco. The answer may seem surprising, but that's exactly what happened yesterday evening. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) asked wireless providers to halt service in four stations in San Francisco to prevent protestors from communicating with each other. The action came after BART notified riders that there might be demonstrations in the city. All over the world people are using mobile devices to organize protests against repressive regimes, and we rightly criticize governments that respond by shutting down cell service, calling their actions anti-democratic and a violation of the rights to free expression and assembly. Are we really willing to tolerate the same silencing of protest here in the United States? BART's actions were glaringly small-minded as technology and the ability to be connected have many uses. Imagine if someone had a heart attack on the train when the phones were blocked and no one could call 911. And where do we draw the line? These protestors were using public transportation to get to the demonstration - should the government be able to shut that down too? Shutting down access to mobile phones is the wrong response to political protests, whether it's halfway around the world or right here at home. The First Amendment protects everybody's right to free expression, and when the government responds to people protesting against it by silencing them, it's dangerous to democracy.
Skeptical Debunker

Leaked intelligence documents: Here's what Facebook and Comcast will tell the police ab... - 0 views

  • The "Facebook Subpoena/Search Warrant Guidelines" from the Cryptome site are dated 2008, so there's a chance they've been superseded. The document spells out how law enforcement and intelligence agenices should go about requesting information about Facebook users, and details what information is turned over. Following is what Facebook will turn over about you, taken verbatim from the guide: Types of Information Available User Neoprint The Neoprint is an expanded view of a given user profile. A request should specify that they are requesting a “Neoprint of used Id XXXXXX”. User Photoprint The Photoprint is a compilation of all photos uploaded by the user that have not been deleted, along with all photos uploaded by any user which have the requested user tagged in them. A request should specify that they are requesting a “Photoprint of user Id XXXXXX”. User Contact Info All user contact information input by the user and not subsequently deleted by the user is available, regardless of whether it is visible in their profile. This information may include the following: Name Birth date Contact e-mail address(s) Physical address City State Zip Phone Cell Work phone Screen name (usually for AOL Messenger/iChat) Website With the exception of contact e-mail and activated mobile numbers, Facebook validates none of this information. A request should specify that they are requesting "Contact information of user specified by [some other piece of contact information]". No historical data is retained. Group Contact Info Where a group is known, we will provide a list of users currently registered in a group. We will also provide a PDF of the current status of the group profile page. A request should specify that they are requesting "Contact information for group XXXXXX". No historical data is retained. IP Logs IP logs can be produced for a given user ID or IP address. A request should specify that they are requesting the "IP log of user Id XXXXXX" or "IP log of IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx". The log contains the following information: * Script – script executed. For instance, a profile view of the URL http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=29445421 would populate script with "profile.php" * Scriptget – additional information passed to the script. In the above example, scriptget would contain "id=29445421" * Userid – The Facebook user id of the account active for the request * View time – date of execution in Pacific Time * IP – source IP address IP log data is generally retained for 90 days from present date. However, this data source is under active and major redevelopment and data may be retained for a longer or shorter period. Special Requests The Facebook Security Team may be able to retrieve specific information not addressed in the general categories above. Please contact Facebook if you have a specific investigative need prior to issuing a subpoena or warrant.
  • Comcast The Comcast document is labeled "Comcast Cable Law Enforcement Handbook," and is dated 2007, so there's a possibility that it, too, has been superseded. As with the other documents, it explains how law enforcement agenices can get information, and details what information is available. There's a great deal of detail in the 35-page document, which describes what Internet, phone, and television information will be turned over. For example, here's the IP information it will make available: Comcast currently maintains Internet Protocol address log files for a period of 180 days. If Comcast is asked to respond for information relating to an incident that occurred beyond this period, we will not have responsive information and can not fulfill a legal request. (Comcast can process and respond to preservation requests as outlined below in this Handbook.) As expected, Comcast will also turn over the emails, including attachments, of those who use Comcast's email service, but "In cases involving another entity’s email service or account, Comcast would not have any access to or ability to access customer email in response to a legal request." Information Comcast turns over to law enforcement agencies varies according to the request. For example, a grand jury subpoena will yield more information than a judicial summons, as you can see in the excerpt below. Comcast notes, though, that this is just a sample, and that "Each request is evaluated and reviewed on a case by case basis in light of any special procedural or legal requirements and applicable laws." So the examples "are for illustration only."
  • For those who worry about privacy, though, all of this information is small potatoes. The real worry is about the use of what are called pen registers or trap-and-trace devices, which essentially capture all of your Internet activity --- the Web sites you visits, the emails you send and receive, IM traffic, downloads, and so on. Here's what the document says about them: Pen Register / Trap and Trace Device Title 18 U.S.C. § 3123 provides a mechanism for authorizing and approving the installation and use of a pen register or a trap and trace device pursuant to court order. All orders must be coordinated prior to submission to Comcast. Law enforcement will be asked to agree to reimburse Comcast's reasonable costs incurred to purchase and/or install and monitor necessary equipment. See "Reimbursement," below.
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  • As for your voice calls made via Comcast, here's what the company will turn over: Call Detail Records - Comcast maintains two years of historical call detail records (records of local and long distance connections) for our Comcast Digital Voice telephone service. This includes local, local toll, and long distance records. Comcast also currently provides traditional circuit-switched telephone service branded Comcast Digital Phone. Call detail records for this service are collected by AT&T and are available for approximately two years as well. To determine which type of service is involved, contact the Legal Demands Center—Voice and Video at 800-871-6298. Account Records - Account records are generally stored for approximately two years after the termination of an account. If the account has an outstanding balance due, records may be retained for a longer period of time. As with Internet information, what phone information will be turned over depends on the specific kind of legal request, and the examples "are for information only." Here's an excerpt:
  • And, as you would expect, there is the same pen register/trap-and-trace device language as in the section about the Internet. Oddly enough, it appears that when it comes to information about your television viewing habits, you have more privacy rights than you do when it comes to information about your Internet and voice use, because it can only be turned over in response to a court order, not a subpoena. Here's what the document has to say about TV information: Subscriber Account Identification and Related Records For subscribers to our cable television service, the Cable Act requires Comcast as a cable operator to disclose personally identifiable information to a governmental entity solely in response to a court order (and not, for example, a subpoena) or with the subscriber's express written consent. The Cable Act requires that the cable subscriber be afforded the opportunity to appear and contest in a court proceeding relevant to the court order any claims made in support of the court order. At the proceeding, the Cable Act requires the governmental entity to offer clear and convincing evidence that the subject of the information is reasonably suspected of engaging in criminal activity and that the information sought would be material evidence in the case. See 47 U.S.C. § 551(h). Why does the law give you more privacy protection over your television viewing habits than your Internet or phone use? I haven't a clue --- ask your congressman.
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    Wonder what information Facebook and Comcast will turn over to police and intelligence agencies about you? Cryptome, the site that last week posted the leaked Microsoft "spy" manual, has posted company documents that purport to describe what those companies will reveal about you. As with the Microsoft document, the information is eye-opening.
thinkahol *

FBI Opens Investigation Into Murdoch's News Corp. - 0 views

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    law enforcement official says the FBI has opened an investigation into allegations media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. sought to hack into the phones of Sept. 11 victims. The official spoke Thursday to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly. New York City-based News Corp. has been in crisis mode because of a scandal that sank its UK newspaper the News of the World. A rival newspaper reported last week the News of the World had hacked into the phone of UK teenage murder victim Milly Dowler in 2002 and may have impeded a police investigation into her disappearance. More possible victims soon emerged, including former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Murdoch says his media company will recover from any damage wrought by the phone-hacking and police bribery allegations. The FBI's New York office hasn't commented.
thinkahol *

BART Pulls a Mubarak in San Francisco | Electronic Frontier Foundation - 0 views

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    This week, EFF has seen censorship stories move closer and closer to home - first Iran, then the UK, and now San Francisco, an early locus of the modern free speech movement. Operators of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) shut down cell phone service to four stations in downtown San Francisco yesterday in response to a planned protest. Last month, protesters disrupted BART service in response to the fatal shooting of Charles Blair Hill by BART police on July 3rd. Thursday's protest failed to materialize, possibly because the disruption of cell phone service made organization and coordination difficult.
thinkahol *

Rupert Murdoch-Owned "News of the World" to Close in Wake of Phone Hacking Scandal | Al... - 0 views

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    As AlterNet's Addie Stan reported, the phone hacking case has had broad implications, "threatening the administration of British Prime Minister David Cameron and "boomeranging back to New York, engulfing the top executive at the largest-circulation newspaper in the United States, the Wall Street Journal."
Muslim Academy

Will peace ever be restored in the northern areas of Pakistan - 0 views

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    Northern areas of Pakistan For a decade, the northern areas of Pakistan have been under terrorism. The whole area was destroyed by terrorism and then the 2005 disastrous earthquake almost destroyed the northern area of Pakistan. At first, the innocent residents of northern Pakistan were under the terrorism of the Taliban and Al Qaeda; now, they are in the fear of the U.S. drone attacks. After the event of 9/11, the world has been completely changed, the western world, especially the U.S., has been hostile to countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Will peace ever be restored in the northern areas of Pakistan? The northern area of Pakistan was under the invasion of the Taliban. The Taliban had taken over the area and enforced many severe laws. Girls were banned from acquiring education, girls' educational institutions were destroyed completely, and women were banned from earning a living. Women were also not allowed to go out of the house unnecessarily, if the situation occurs that they have to, they should be accompanied by male Mahram. If a female was caught alone in the street, then she was severely punished. A couple of years ago, a mobile phone recorded video was released in which the Taliban was spanking a girl with a leather belt in front of everyone. The girl was caught in the street with her father in law. The Pakistani Army conducted various operations in the areas and killed most of the Taliban and brought many areas back to peace.
thinkahol *

Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union » A Distu... - 0 views

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    The era that Net Neutrality supporters have long  feared is here - major companies have begun divvying up the internet. Last  month, Google and Verizon  announced a "policy framework" of how the rules for the internet  could work in  the future. The framework is a disturbing vision for the future. Wireless  internet - such as services delivered over smart phones - would be completely  unregulated; companies would be free to prioritize their own services - for  everything from music to video to chat - over those of competitors.
thinkahol *

It's Official: Tunisia Now Freer than the U.S. | Informed Comment - 0 views

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    An Arab country with neither secret police nor censorship is unprecedented in recent decades. Tunisia is inspiring similar demands in Egypt and Jordan. When skeptics wonder if the Revolutions of 2011 would really change anything essential in the region, they would be wise to keep an eye on these two developments in Tunisia, which, if consolidated, would represent an epochal transformation of culture and politics. Arguably, Tunisians are now freer than Americans. The US government thinks our private emails are actually public. The FBI and NSA routinely read our email and they and other branches of the US government issue security letters in the place of warrants allowing them to tap phones and monitor whom we call, and even to call up our library records and conduct searches of our homes without telling us about it. Millions of telephone records were turned over to George W. Bush by our weaselly telecom companies. Courts allow government agents to sneak onto our property and put GPS tracking devices under our automobiles without so much as a warrant or even probable cause. Mr. Obama thinks this way of proceeding is a dandy idea.
thinkahol *

Why Obama Isn't Fighting the Budget Battle - 0 views

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    In the next week the action moves from Wisconsin to Washington, where the deadline looms for a possible government shutdown over the federal budget. President Obama has to take a more direct and personal role in that budget battle - both for the economy's sake and for the sake of his re-election. But will he? Don't count on it. Worried congressional Democrats say the President needs to use his bully pulpit to counter defections in Democatic ranks, such as the ten Democrats and one allied Independent who on Wednesday voted against a Senate leadership plan to cut $6.2 billion from the federal budget over the rest of fiscal year 2011. They want Obama to grab the initiative and push a plan to eliminate tax breaks for oil companies and for companies that move manufacturing facilities out of the country, and a proposal for a surtax on millionaires. Most importantly, they're worried the President's absence from the debate will result in Republicans winning large budget cuts for the remainder of the fiscal year - large enough to imperil the fragile recovery. But Obama won't actively fight the budget battle if the current White House view of how he wins in 2012 continues to prevail. Shortly after the Democrats' "shellacking" last November, I phoned a friend in the White House who had served in the Clinton administration. "It's 1994 all over again," he said. "Now we move to the center."
thinkahol *

For Activists, Tips in Safer Use of Social Media - Noticed - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    several groups of free information advocates have emerged to help educate the latest generation of activists. To that end, one such group, Access, just released its guide to maintaining online and mobile phone security, with versions in Arabic and English.
S D

Text Messaging for Political Candidates - 4 views

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    With the rise of cell phone usage, candidates across the country are starting to use mobile texting as an effective campaign tool. As mobile computing blurs the line between online and offline campaigning, we are going to see more use of crossover technologies by political campaigns.
findanotary

Mobile Notary Devices like Smartphones - 1 views

With the advent of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, trying to find a notary public online has never been easier. And with that, many notaries public have now taken their local notary se...

Notary Service

started by findanotary on 02 Jul 12 no follow-up yet
yosefong

What are Online Notary Services? - 2 views

With the advent of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, trying to find a notary public online has never been easier. And with that, many notaries public have now taken their local notary se...

notary public

started by yosefong on 11 Jun 12 no follow-up yet
Levy Rivers

Tom Watson MP » Blog Archive » Power of Information: New taskforce and speech - 0 views

  • We commissioned Ed Mayo and Tom Steinberg to write the Power of Information report because we knew that information, presented in the right way, was a potent driver for improving public services and government.
  • Today I am going to offer two arguments that I think compliment the Prime Minister’s recent announcement on public service reform
  • Firstly, that freeing up data will allow us to unlock the talent British entrepreneurs. And secondly, engaging people - using the simple tools that bring them together - will allow the talents of all our people to be applied to the provision of public services.
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  • The difference of course is that today we contend with what Richard Saul Wurman describes as a ‘tsunami of data’
  • My job is to make sure that government can benefit from this new thinking too. When we were first elected in 1997 people had a recipient relationship with data, they got what they were given when they were given it. It was static.
  • In scale, the spread of social media is comparable to the spread of telephones in the 1930’s to the 1950’s. Yet it’s happened in two years not 20.
  • As Clay Shirky would say, we’ve reached a point where technology is simple and boring enough to be socially useful and interesting.
  • Over 7 million electronic signatures have been sent, electronically, to the Downing Street petition website. 1 in 10 citizens have emailed the Prime Minister about an issue. The next stage is to enable e-petitioners to connect with each other around particular issues and to link up with policy debates both on and off Government webspace.
  • Only last week, the Prime Minister became the first head of Government in Europe to launch his own channel on Twitter, which I can tell you from experience, is extremely useful to his ministers at least
  • Richard is here tonight and I hope that after the formal proceedings you might like to share some of your own ideas with him. Richard is also joined by a number of other taskforce members. They’re all people with remarkable track records in this field. We’re lucky. The UK has some of the world’s leading talent.
  • And today the PM announced an initiative that would allow you to find your community Bobbies using your postcode.
  • The taskforce will bring its expertise to bare on existing initiatives to see if we can what we already do better
  • I want the taskforce to ensure that the COI and Cabinet Office produce a set of guidelines that adheres to the letter of the law when it comes to the civil service code but also lives within the spirit of the age. I’ll be putting some very draft proposals to the taskforce to consider later this week.
  • By bringing people onto the taskforce with the skills and experiences of people like Sally Russell we can move further and faster in this area.
  • Two weeks ago the Prime Minister signalled that we were moving public services to the next stage of reform. He said that we were not only going to, further enhance choice but also empower both the users of services and all the professionals who deliver them - to drive up standards for all.
  • Transformational government is about wrapping services around the citizen, not citizens around the services.
  • Last month DirectGov had over 7 million visitors. Peter is seeing the aggregate desires of millions of UK public service using citizens. I had half an hour with him a fortnight ago and came away with a dozen ideas as to how we can improve our public services.
  • I’m the Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East and I didn’t know about an important recycling initiative going on in my own patch. This information now means that a bag load of clothing for a small child and a habitat sofa are about given a second chance to give pleasure.
  • And much of that information has the potential to be reused in data mashups. Some of it already is, like Hansard on theyworkforyou, or Google Maps using Ordnance Survey data.
  • The Power of Information Report recognised that, and made recommendations to the Treasury. The Treasury, with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, published an independent economic study in the Budget and announced its intention to look at these issues during this spending review cycle.
  • It was this early open source approach that arguably fostered 500 years of Islamic scholarship in important fields like medicine, astronomy, lexicography, literature and science. In contrast, European data was stored in monasteries and did not foster easy knowledge transfer. As Gibbon wrote in the ‘Decline and fall of the Roman empire’ the ‘age of Arabian learning continued about five hundred years’ and was coeval with the darkest and most slothful period of European annals?
  • I believe in the power of mass collaboration. I believe that as James Surowiecki says the many are smarter than the few. I believe that the old hierarchies in which government policy is made are going to change for ever. I said that I don’t believe the post-bureaucratic age argument. It’s just old thinking, laissez faire ideas with a new badge. The future of government is to provide tools for empowerment, not to sit back and hope that laissez-faire adhocracy will suffice.
  • The irony that laying claim to the ownership of a policy on open source was lost to the poor researcher who had spent a day dissecting the speech. He’d been able to do so easily because it was freely available on my blog, a simple tool used for communicating information quickly and at nearly zero cost without the requirement to charge for access. The point is, who cares? It doesn’t matter who has the ideas. It’s what you do with them and how you improve on them that counts.
Skeptical Debunker

Daughter says pilot in Texas IRS crash was a hero - Yahoo! News - 0 views

  • Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, spoke to ABC's "Good Morning America" from her home in Norway. Asked during a phone interview broadcast Monday if she considered her father a hero, she said: "Yes. Because now maybe people will listen." Authorities say Stack, 53, targeted the IRS office building in Austin on Thursday, killing employee Vernon Hunter and himself, after posting a ranting manifesto against the agency and the government. He apparently set fire to his home before flying his plane into the office building. Hunter's son, Ken Hunter, said he's alarmed by comments that the pilot was a hero. "How can you call someone a hero who after he burns down his house, he gets into his plane ... and flies it into a building to kill people?" Hunter told ABC." "My dad Vernon did two tours of duty in Vietnam. My dad's a hero." Bell said she offered her deepest condolences to Hunter's family. She said her father's last actions were wrong. "But if nobody comes out and speaks up on behalf of injustice, then nothing will ever be accomplished," she told ABC. "But I do not agree with his last action with what he did. But I do agree about the government,"
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    The daughter of a man who crashed his small plane into a building housing offices of the Internal Revenue Service called her father a hero for his anti-government views but said his actions, which killed an IRS employee, were "inappropriate."
Arabica Robusta

Bloggers are Africa's new rebels - Chicago Tribune - 0 views

  • Dagem, as he chose to be called, was a new type of African revolutionary: a blogger.
  • The U.S. should take note. As it prepares to engage with Africa more intensely than at any time since the Cold War, in part by the Pentagon’s establishment of a new Africa Command headquarters to coordinate military and security interests, the U.S. will be competing on an increasingly flat information playing field.
  • Gone are the days when Washington could control its messages in client states. The scruffy cyber cafes of Chad and the man in Congo who rents his cell phone by the minute – sometimes climbing atop a tree to improve reception – ensure that Washington’s voice will have to vie with those of the resource-hungry Chinese, or with the designs of Al Qaeda recruiters.
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    "The U.S. should take note. As it prepares to engage with Africa more intensely than at any time since the Cold War, in part by the Pentagon's establishment of a new Africa Command headquarters to coordinate military and security interests, the U.S. will be competing on an increasingly flat information playing field."
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    This older article highlights the immorality of much that is called U.S. foreign policy and journalism. The lesson learned here is not what it should be, that people on the grassroots are fighting against authoritarian violent governments funded by the U.S. Rather it is a bland, neoimperialist comment about what the U.S. propaganda machine has to deal with in future interventions.
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