It's Just Too Hard to Tail a Vehicle...Too Hard!

Ah.

The St. Pete Times asks the age-old question.

Should authorities need a warrant to put a GPS tracking device on your car?

(...)

"We do utilize GPS for investigations, and we do have a policy that addresses the usage," wrote Hillsborough sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter in an e-mail. "But we cannot release the policy due to the fact that it reveals investigative techniques."

Procedure that was actually upheld by the courts.

Enter Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

(...)

"The needs of law enforcement, to which my colleagues seem inclined to refuse nothing, are quickly making personal privacy a distant memory," he wrote in a widely read dissent.

(...)

He wrote that there seems to be no limit to what technologies the government can use to violate privacy.

He noted that in 2009 a Sprint Nextel official revealed that the company gave its customers' cell phone locations to the government more than 8 million times that year. The company said that it was all done legally and that the number of customers affected was far less.

"By holding that this kind of surveillance doesn't impair an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy," wrote the judge, "the panel hands the government the power to track the movements of every one of us, every day of our lives. …

"There is something creepy and un-American about such clandestine and underhanded behavior."

Yep.

Could not have put it better myself.

While I'm off checking beneath my car, check out the commentary beneath the above article.

Priceless.

The Social Network's Social Message to Young Men

I finally got a chance to take in The Social Network and was struck by an implied message that likely I--as the only Frog in the movie's audience--picked up on.

In at least three specific scenes, young college-aged men acted in their own best interest and inquired after the ages of young women in attendance at various parties.

And in one scene, the young lady had lied about her stated 21 years of age.

My hopes are a young man does not need to attend Harvard to get the point.

Live Stream Chilean Miner Rescue

We watch and wait.

The New Web

We told you so.


As reported by The New York Times:

Nearly everyone who uses the Internet will face the privacy risks that come with those capabilities, which are an integral part of the Web language that will soon power the Internet: HTML 5.

(...)

“It’s going to change everything about the Internet and the way we use it today,” said James Cox, 27, a freelance consultant and software developer at Smokeclouds, a New York City start-up company. “It’s not just HTML 5. It’s the new Web.”

But others, while also enthusiastic about the changes, are more cautious.

Most Web users are familiar with so-called cookies, which make it possible, for example, to log on to Web sites without having to retype user names and passwords, or to keep track of items placed in virtual shopping carts before they are bought.

Read how soon nothing will be sacred here.

***

"Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds."

--John Perry Barlow

NASA Meets SCOTUS

Does NASA have the right to probe medical records, finances and drug history of employees?

Twenty-eight scientists--who work at positions that do not require security clearance--think not. Because of the unclassified nature of their employment, the plaintiffs cite the background checks as an invasion of their personal privacy.

(...)

The controversy began in 2004 when NASA, then under the direction of Michael Griffin, ordered all scientists working at JPL to undergo comprehensive, open-ended background checks — beyond the standard pre-hiring reviews for federal employees — or risk losing their jobs.

Read more here.


The Supreme Court will hear formal arguments today.