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Submission + - Police can keep Ring camera video forever, and share with whomever they'd like (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Police in those communities can use Ring software to request up to 12 hours of video from anyone within half a square mile of a suspected crime scene, covering a 45-day time span, Huseman(Amazon’s vice president of public policy) wrote. Police are required to include a case number for the crime they are investigating, but not any other details or evidence related to the crime or their request.

Ring allows users to decline police requests for video and does not directly identify them based on their refusal, which Huseman wrote would “eliminate the pressure implicit in receiving an inperson request from police.” “Users must expressly choose to assist police, the same way they would traditionally answer the door or respond to a public request for tips,” he added.

Submission + - Cops Put GPS Tracker On Man's Car, Charge Him With Theft For Removing It (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Back in 2012, the US Supreme Court ruled that it's illegal for the police to attach a GPS tracking device to someone's car without a warrant. But what if you find a GPS tracking device on your car? Can you remove it? A little more than a year ago, the state of Indiana charged a suspected drug dealer [Derek Heuring] with theft for removing a government-owned GPS tracking device from his SUV. This month, the state's Supreme Court began considering the case, and some justices seemed skeptical of the government's argument. "I'm really struggling with how is that theft," said Justice Steven David during recent oral arguments.

At trial, Heuring's legal team argued that the search had been illegal because the police didn't have probable cause to believe their client had committed theft. The defense pointed out that the device could have fallen off the car by accident or simply malfunctioned. Even if Heuring did take the device off the vehicle, he couldn't have known for sure that it belonged to the government. It wasn't exactly labeled as the property of the Warrick County Sheriff's Office. Most important, it's not clear that taking an unwanted device off your car is theft—even if you know who it belongs to. With the case now at the state Supreme Court, the stakes are high. If Heuring can show that the police lacked probable cause to search his house, he could get all of the evidence gathered in the search thrown out — not only evidence of GPS device theft, but evidence of drug dealing, too.

Submission + - Why Office Noise Bothers Some People More Than Others (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to a 2015 survey of the most annoying office noises by Avanta Serviced Office Group, conversations were rated the most vexing, closely followed by coughing, sneezing and sniffing, loud phone voices, ringing phones and whistling. Why do we find it so hard to be around these everyday noises? What is it about them that allows them to lodge in our brains and make it impossible to think? [...] Back in 2011, researchers from University College London and the University of London decided to find out. First of all, the researchers asked 118 female secondary school students to complete a questionnaire, which revealed how extroverted or introverted each was – essentially, whether they thrive on socialising and being immersed in the outside world or if they find these experiences exhausting. Next the students were subjected to a battery of cognitive challenges – and to add extra difficulty, they were asked to complete them while listening to British garage music, or the clamor of a classroom. A control group completed them in silence.

As the researchers suspected, all the students performed better in silence. But they also found that, in general – with the exception of one test – the more extroverted they were, the less they were affected by noise. A person’s level of extroversion is thought to be a key aspect of their personality – one of the so-called ‘Big Five’ factors that determines who we are, along with things like how open we are to new experiences. According to one prominent theory, extroverts are inherently "understimulated," so they tend to seek out situations which increase their level of arousal – like noisy environments. Meanwhile, introverts have the opposite problem; as the famous poet, novelist and introvert Charles Bukowski put it: “People empty me. I have to get away to refill.” With this in mind, it makes sense that more introverted workers would be more affected by the background noise, since anything that increases their level of arousal, like music or the chatter of colleagues, could be overwhelming.

Comment Re:A stupid answer to a silly question. (Score 2) 223

by NG Resonance (#59410974) Attached to: Are We Living In a Blade Runner World?

Are we living in a police state (and where is that in the movie? Nowhere. WTF are they talking about?)

There are several hints at a police state in Blade Runner:

From the police chief's own mouth, "If you're not cop, you're little people." It was powerful enough of a threat to get Deckard on board...

The ability of Blade Runners to execute replicants without due process.

Masked cops everywhere on the street and patrolling the sky. It's also implied that the beams of light penetrating through Deckard's apartment windows are from surveillance.

And finally, the fact that replicants are used as offworld slaves for endless, normalized conflict. That's not quite a police state, but it slouches toward a military state.

Submission + - China Boosts Government Presence At Alibaba, Private Giants (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The government of one of China’s top technology hubs is dispatching officials to 100 local corporations including e-commerce giantAlibaba, the latest effort to exert greater influence over the country’smassive private sector. Hangzhou, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, is assigning government affairs representatives to facilitate communication and expedite projects, the city government said on itswebsite. Chinese beverage giantHangzhou Wahaha.and automakerZhejiang Geely.are among the other companies based in the prosperous region that have been singled out, according to reports in statemedia.

The Hangzhou government said the initiative was aimed at smoothing work flow between officials and China’s high-tech companies and manufacturers. But the move could be perceived also as an effort to keep tabs on a non state-owned sector that’s gaining clout as a prime driver of the world’s No. 2 economy. Representatives of the country’s public security system are alreadyembeddedwithin China’s largest internet companies, responsible for crime prevention and stamping out false rumors. Government agencies may also be heightening their monitoring of the vast private sector at a time China’s economy is decelerating — raising the prospect of destabiliziing job cuts as enterprises try to protect bottom lines. Alibaba is hosting its annual investors’ conference this week in Hangzhou against the backdrop of a worseningoutlookfor the country.

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