Author Archives: gtdonovan

Recent Bookmarks

• Wired: Supreme Court Takes ‘Informational Privacy’ Case:
  From the article: "The U.S. Supreme Court is agreeing to decide how much personal information the federal bureaucracy may acquire on its workers. The justices decided to review a lower-court decision surrounding the concept of informational privacy."
• Seattle Times: School used its laptops to spy on students at home:
  From the Article: "A suburban Philadelphia school district used webcams in school-issued laptops to spy on students at home, potentially catching them and their families in compromising situations, a family claims in a federal lawsuit."
• Facebook Settles ‘Beacon’ Data Breach Lawsuit:
  Facebook will setup a $6M “Digital Trust Fund” to fund research on privacy in response to allegations that its Beacon program breached federal wiretap and video-rental privacy laws by monitoring what users were doing on over 44 external sites.
• McClatchy: Most Americans would trim liberties to be safer:
  New McClatchy-Ipsos poll: 51% of Americans think it's necessary to give up some civil liberties to make the country safe from terrorism, while 36% think some of the government's proposals will go too far in restricting civil liberties.
• Silicon Alley Insider: Health Insurers Pay Facebook Gamers Virtual Currency To Oppose Reform Bill:
  From the article: "Health insurance industry trade groups opposed to President Obama's health care reform bill are paying Facebook users fake money -- called "virtual currency" -- to send letters to Congress protesting the bill."
• Wired: Body Scanners Might Violate U.K. Child Protection Laws:
  Meet the new pornographers . . .
• AP: NYPD Must Show GOP Convention Surveillance:
  From the article: "A federal judge has ruled the New York Police Department must release 2,000 pages of documents related to its surveillance of protesters before the 2004 Republican National Convention."
• AASCU Report on U.S. Higher Education:
  The state of higher education in the US: less investment in basic research, decreased interest in science among undergraduates, fewer young people getting college degrees, and price of higher education only increasing.
• FT: Microsoft and News Corp eye web pact:
  From the article: "Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company’s being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google. . ."
• Vimeo: The Internet Is Serious Business:
  "Have you ever wondered how the Internet’s physical infrastructure works? Who owns it and why that might matter? In the spring and summer of 2008, youth from NYC's City-As-School worked with CUP and People's Production House to investigate..."
• HuffingtonPost: Government Pushes To Create New Health Internet:
  From the article: "The concept has drawn intense interest from technology firms, including Microsoft & Google, which are scrambling to find new, & profitable, uses for digital medical records & the cyber healthcare services they are starting to spawn."
• Wired: Feds Admit AT&T Is Arm of Government in Spy Suit:
  From the article: "The Department of Justice has finally admitted it in court papers: The nation’s telecom companies are an arm of the government — at least when it comes to secret spying"
• BusinessWeek: The Lost Generation:
  BusinessWeek discusses some of the consequences of rising unemployment among U.S. youth & proposes a reduction in the minimum wage as a solution - with no explanation of how this reduction would address the problem of a "lost generation."
• NY Daily News: NYPD tracking cell phone owners, foes aren't sure it's legal:
  From the article: "A recent internal memo says that when cops make an arrest, they should remove the suspect's cell phone battery to avoid leakage - then jot down the International Mobile Equipment Identity number."
• U.S. Department of Labor: Employment and Unemployment Among Youth:
  From the report: From April to July 2009, the number of employed youth 16 to 24 years old increased by 1.6 million to 19.3 million . . . the proportion of young people who were employed in July was 51.4 percent, the lowest July rate on record
• StatShot: U.S. Web Users’ Time on Social Networks Has Tripled:
  From the article: 17% of all time spent on the web in August in the U.S. was on social networks, up from 6 percent during the same period a year ago . . . advertising on social networks rose to $108M last month from $49M in Aug of 2008
• Wired: Britain Puts CCTV Cameras Inside Private Homes:
  From the article: "Why? To make sure the kids are doing their homework, going to bed early and eating their vegetables. The scheme has, astonishingly, already been running in 2,000 family homes."
• Wired: Obama Stimulus Buys $8M in Airport Spy Cameras:
  Welcome to the surveillance-informational-complex.
• NYT: The Digital Age Is Stamping Out Serendipity:
  Darlin states the obvious and argues that our need for serendipity creates "an opportunity for new businesses." How could a business "re-create" serendipity? Isn't that the root of this problem?
• NYT Op-Ed: Lost in the Cloud:
  Key quote from Zittrain: "If the market settles into a handful of GATED CLOUD COMMUNITIES whose proprietors control the availability of new code, the time may come to ensure that their platforms do not discriminate" (emphasis added).