Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Another Way to Break the Internet: ‘The Right to Be Forgotten’
February 14th, 2012Not April 1st: Check. Not The Onion: Check. Via: Stanford Law Review: At the end of January, the European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights, and Citizenship, Viviane Reding, announced the European Commission’s proposal to create a sweeping new privacy right—the “right to be forgotten.” The right, which has been hotly debated in Europe for the […]
LAPD: High-Tech Crime-Fighting ‘War Room’
February 10th, 2012Via: CBS: The LAPD is fighting crime from a high-tech war room that gives it eyes all over the city. The surveillance hub is now a model for police forces around the world and KCAL9 got an exclusive tour inside from Chief Charlie Beck. “We are targets on our own soil,” says Beck. “We have […]
Britain: TomTom Tech to Set Driver Insurance Premiums
February 9th, 2012Definitely watch, “15 Million Merits,” the second episode of Black Mirror, to see where this economic model is headed. The potential for nightmarish implementations of this is pretty much unlimited. Via: PC Pro: TomTom has signed a deal with an insurance company to use its satnav technology to measure driving ability to set premiums. The […]
Google Will Pay People to Authoritatively Root Themselves: Track 100% of Web Usage Via Dedicated Hardware
February 9th, 2012If that black box option doesn’t require the browser plugins… 1) Connect to VPN 2) Let Google collect a bunch of encrypted data that tells them nothing about what you’re doing online 3) Profit? haha. I haven’t read the fine print, though. Via: Ars Technica: Google is working to collect information about Internet users that […]
Britain: Undercover Police Officer Chased Himself Round the Streets for 20 Minutes After a CCTV Operator Mistook Him for Suspect
February 8th, 2012Via: Telegraph: The junior officer, who has not been named, was monitoring an area hit by a series of burglaries in an unnamed market town in the country’s south. As the probationary officer from Sussex Police searched for suspects, the camera operator radioed that he had seen someone “acting suspiciously” in the area. But he […]
Putin’s Internet Troll Army
February 8th, 2012Via: Guardian: The Russian youth group Nashi has paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to a vast network of bloggers, journalists and internet trolls to create flattering coverage of Vladimir Putin and discredit his political rivals, according to a haul of thousands of emails allegedly sent to and from the group that have been released […]
Britain: Royal Society Report Discusses Development Neural Interface for Weapons Systems
February 7th, 2012…and much, much more. Via: Royal Society: Neural interfaces can be broadly separated into devices that input into neural systems and interfaces that record activity from brains to predict motor intentions. The most common method of establishing an interface is through the external recording of EEG signals although more invasive methods, such as implanting microelectrodes […]
New York City Surveillance Center Staffed with Employees from Large Wall Street Firms
February 7th, 2012Via: Counterpunch: The New York Times, the worldwide news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), Wired Magazine, the New York City Council had all previously reported the location of the supposedly super secret counter terrorism center on their public web sites: 55 Broadway in the bowels of the financial district. What was a secret about the operation, […]
The Army Wants You … to Be a Virtual Lab Rat
February 7th, 2012Via: Wired: American soldiers already prep for war using virtual worlds. One day, the Army hopes, you’ll join the GIs in a military-approved digital realm. In the Army’s latest call for research proposals, the service is looking for ways to develop a “Virtual Laboratory of Aggregate Behavior,” or VLAB. Put simply, the program would yield […]
Congress Passes Bill That Opens U.S. Skies To Unmanned Drones
February 7th, 2012Via: AP: A bill to speed the nation’s switch from radar to an air traffic control system based on GPS technology, and to open U.S. skies to unmanned drone flights within four years, received final congressional approval Monday. … The FAA is also required under the bill to provide military, commercial and privately-owned drones with […]
