Myth No. 1: This bill is a compromise.
Myth No. 2: We need the bill to intercept our enemies abroad.
Myth No. 3: The courts will still review the telecom cases.
Myth No. 4: The Democrats must fold because of the November election.
Myth No. 5: The law will be the “exclusive means” for surveillance.
Full Story: Slate
(via Cryptogon)
Unable to afford a proper camera crew and equipment, The Get Out Clause, an unsigned band from the city, decided to make use of the cameras seen all over British streets.
With an estimated 13 million CCTV cameras in Britain, suitable locations were not hard to come by.
They set up their equipment, drum kit and all, […]
The New Normal is an art show in Germany on the subject of privacy in the post 9/11 world. Above:
Submitting oneself to security measures can be turned upside down by adopting what Hassan Elahi calls an “aggressive compliance.” Elahi daily points a mocking finger to absurd security measures with the real-time self-tracking website he set […]
As a promotion for the new Cory Doctorow book Little Brother, Instructables is running a series of related “how to” articles, including:
How to blend in with crowds
How to lie to authority figures
Encrypt your Gmail Email!
How to locate pinhole cameras
Spice Mister
Avoiding Camera Noise Signatures
How to Start A Flash Mob
How to block/kill RFID chips
Photo-emulsion Screen Printing
What to […]
This story’s been in high circulation on the blogosphere lately:
Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved […]
“Miranda is a black box-like arrest documentation device that records video, audio, motion, impact, location, and other data and streams it over cell phone data networks to third party observers such as the ACLU.”
More information
Is this a real, available device or just a design concept?
(Thanks Michael)
The secretive graffiti artist managed to erect three storeys of scaffolding behind a security fence despite being watched by a CCTV camera.
Then, during darkness and hidden behind a sheet of polythene, he painted this comment on ‘Big Brother’ society.
Yesterday the scaffolding gang returned to remove all evidence - again without the camera operator stopping […]
The site was created by Witness, a Brooklyn-based group founded by the globe-trotting pop star Peter Gabriel in 1992. Conceived in the wake of the Rodney King beating, the group initially focused on getting camcorders into the hands of human rights activists around the world. The goal, in Gabriel’s phrase, was to create a network […]
Four other Big Brothers:
(I started this back when Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo!, but I’ve only just not gotten a chance to finish up).
We all know about the potential “Big Brother”hood of Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo!. Here are four other organizations with massive databases or the potential to collect extensive personal data.
Amazon, the other data […]
Info here.
(via The Agitator).
Meanwhile, this isn’t as harrowing as the other stuff I’ve posted recently, but here’s a video of a cop wrestling a kid to the ground, stealing his skateboard, and threatening to beat him up:
Follow-up.
(Via Wendy McElroy).
Wikia Search launched today. So far it’s nothing much, but the plan is to grow the product over the coming years. Jimmy Wales said in a comment on TechCrunch:
When I launched Wikipedia, I wrote at the top of the first page “Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaâ€. On that day, anyone reviewing it would have laughed. What’s […]
It seems that people in the UK are on a rampage against surveillance cameras… but not to worry, the authorities have a solution:
Speed cameras in the Scottish Borders may soon be monitored by security cameras to protect them from vandals.
Brilliant.
Hit and Run has coverage.
Nicholas Carr on the fact that Google and Windows Live Search place hate site as one of the top results for “Martin Luther King”:
A Microsoft spokesman is even more explicit in asserting that the King result is a manifestation of algorithmic “integrity”:
###The results on Microsoft’s search engine are “not an endorsement, in any way, of […]
I remain skeptical of whether we’re truely entering some sort of post-capitalist “attention economy.” But I’m a techie, not an economist, so I’ll leave that discussion to people better suited for it for the time being.
Regardless, attention is the new technological frontier. Reading through notes from ETech 2006, as well as other recent blogosphere […]
Josh has some ideas for Witness, in response to Joi Ito’s joining their board:
Here’s my observation and suggestion, Joi: Witness is a really, really great program with a really brilliant idea behind it. So why haven’t most web surfers seen these materials, especially in an era when video of civil rights violations circulates almost as […]
Business 2.0 speculates that Google may be readying a free wifi program. Sounds cool, but: “Google’s interest in Feeva likely stems from the startup’s proprietary technology, which can determine the location of every Wi-Fi user and would allow Google to serve up advertising and maps based on real-time data.”
A number of people, notably Abe, […]
Chicago Sun Times:
Space may be the next frontier for the district, under a plan that would use a satellite system to track some Parks employees.
Anyone thinking what I’m thinking?
Camera phone movie
$200 digital film
Machinima
3D gaming on cell phones
Voodoo
DIY video projectors (or and commercial portable projectors)
Red | Blue
Wireless future
Open Source TV