Apr 27

Video: UK Home Secretary delays 1984 by a few years

Posted in: privacy, Today's Chili, uk, united kingdom, UnitedKingdom

The UK Home Secretary (whatever that is) has put the kibosh on plans for a giant government database that would track all of the country’s emails, phone calls and internet activity. But not so fast, civil libertarians! According to the Telegraph, the onus will merely shift to the private sector — with telecoms and Internet providers being required to retain the data, at a cost of around £2 billion (over $2.9 billion US). According to the plan, every Internet user will be given a unique ID code that the government can use to access the data in the event of a threat — whether terrorist, criminal, or extraterrestrial. It just goes to show you how lucky Britons are to have a government that cares so much about their well being. Video after the break.

Continue reading Video: UK Home Secretary delays 1984 by a few years

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Video: UK Home Secretary delays 1984 by a few years originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apr 14

Gaze tracking system keeps an eye on CCTV operators as they keep an eye on you

Posted in: privacy, Today's Chili

In his analysis of control systems, William S. Burroughs once noted that as they become larger, so do the opportunities for evasion increase. Sure, you can have CCTV cameras at (nearly) every intersection in your sleepy village, but someone has to watch all those things. What do you do when the sheer number of displays becomes too much for our poor Big Brother? Researchers at the Gebze Institute of Technology in Turkey have developed a gaze tracking system that trains cameras on the irises of the CCTV operator — noting which video sequences he or she views on the shift, and producing a summary of video sequences they’ve overlooked. If that weren’t enough, the system uses an algorithm that discards frames with no people or moving vehicles in them, leaving only a few key frames for each scene of interest. According to New Scientist, this all runs on a standard PC and processes and catalogs images in real time. Now, if only there were a system that let us watch Two And A Half Men and Becker at the same time — that would be sweet.

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Gaze tracking system keeps an eye on CCTV operators as they keep an eye on you originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apr 03

Angry British villagers block Google Street View car, incident captured on CCTV

Posted in: Google, privacy, Today's Chili, uk

Look we understand demands for privacy. We just find it ironic that citizens of Broughton (pronunciation: bak-wərd), a small village in a nation where CCTV cameras look, evaluate behavior, and sometimes speak at virtually every intersection, would block a Google Street View car on grounds of invasion of privacy. Seems to us that they’ve given up on that right a long, long time ago. Though the police were called, the villagers eventually let Google’s contractor pass peacefully — presumably after assurances were given that cameras can not, in fact, steal your soul.

Angry British villagers block Google Street View car, incident captured on CCTV originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Apr 2009 06:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feb 20

Proposed bill would force ISP, WiFi logs for security, criminal investigations

Posted in: privacy, Today's Chili, wifi

This proposed bill has been floating around the ether for a long time — and it’s just made a big time comeback. Essentially, the Republican-backed bill would be a “sweeping” federal measure which would require all ISPs and many WiFi access point providers to keep records of their users for two years, in order to aid police investigations. There are two separate bills — one in the Senate and one in the House — both named the “Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act,” or Internet Safety Act. Catchy, right? The bill would cover, as already stated, not just the major ISPs, but WiFi providers, including both public and password protected access points. The bill is undoubtedly going to be quite controversial, but is also expected to appeal to legislators across both parties. We’ll see what, if anything, becomes of it, but in the meantime, what are your thoughts on this one?

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Proposed bill would force ISP, WiFi logs for security, criminal investigations originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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