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Government

Obama Administration Withholds FoIA Requests More Often Than Bush's 601

Posted by timothy from the no-conspiracy-necessary-note dept.
bonch writes "Agencies under the Obama administration cite security provisions to withhold information more often than they did under the Bush administration. For example, the 'deliberative process' exemption of the Freedom of Information Act was used 70,779 times in 2009, up from the 47,395 of 2008. Amusingly, the Associated Press has been waiting three months for the government to deliver records on its own Open Government Directive."
Privacy

Yale Law Student Wants Government To Have Everybody's DNA 544

Posted by Soulskill from the just-the-junk dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Seringhaus, a Yale Law School student, writes in the NY Times, 'To Stop Crime, Share Your Genes.' In order to prevent discrimination when it comes to collecting DNA samples from criminals (and even people who are simply arrested), he proposes that the government collect a DNA profile from everybody, perhaps at birth (yes, you heard that right)." Regarding the obvious issue of genetic privacy, Seringhaus makes this argument: "Your sensitive genetic information would be safe. A DNA profile distills a person’s complex genomic information down to a set of 26 numerical values, each characterizing the length of a certain repeated sequence of 'junk' DNA that differs from person to person. Although these genetic differences are biologically meaningless — they don’t correlate with any observable characteristics — tabulating the number of repeats creates a unique identifier, a DNA 'fingerprint.' The genetic privacy risk from such profiling is virtually nil, because these records include none of the health and biological data present in one’s genome as a whole."
Advertising

Window Pain 223

Posted by timothy from the shut-the-windows dept.
Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton contributes the following piece on trying to get some measure of satisfaction in the struggle against pop-up ads, writing "The most annoying thing about some pop-up ads, is that you have no way of knowing which ad-serving network served them or who the responsible parties are. Could we reduce the incidence of illegal or deceptive pop-up ads, by giving users an easier way to trace their origin and figure out where to send complaints? Here's one way to do it with a simple right-click." Read on for the rest.

Comment Re:Where are the recommendations and targeted ads? (Score 1) 90

by megamerican (#31290860) Attached to: Recommendation Algorithm Wants To Show You Something New

That's because they are probably lying to you.

The example I'll use is google but it applies to most companies. Whenever they come out with a press release saying that they're now collecting this or that information it is only to serve you targeted ads, yet every ad I've ever seen while logged in to Google is directly related to my search terms or the e-mail I'm currently reading.

Here is an article from 2006 that states that Google is going to listen in to your microphone and webcam to serve ads. Where are these targeted ads?

Now it's 2010 and most people know about the PA school district dialing into kids' laptops to spy on them with webcams.

There is also a less known PBS documentary from last year called Digital Nation which celebrates the fact that school administrators are spying on kids with laptops and webcams.

I'd love to know what these companies are really doing with the data and the sad fact is we probably aren't suspicious enough about it.

Comment Re:Openness (Score 4, Informative) 176

by megamerican (#31277934) Attached to: Microsoft Says It Never Meant To Knock Cryptome Offline

I should have added that Yahoo had tried taking down their lawful spying guide but wasn't as "successful" as Microsoft. I say "successful" because Microsoft claims they only wanted to take down the document and not the website. However, it resulted in the takedown of the website and thus generated much more interest in the document and had the opposite effect of what they wanted.

Thankfully for us most corporations and governments don't realize this. If MS had done nothing the majority of people would have never read this because most people don't visit cryptome or other whistleblowing websites on a regular basis.

Comment Re:Openness (Score 2, Informative) 176

by megamerican (#31277840) Attached to: Microsoft Says It Never Meant To Knock Cryptome Offline

http://cryptome.org/ is back up and has dozens of different companies similar documents from the likes of yahoo, facebook, paypal, myspace, aol, skype, et al.

Since coming back online he has made all of those available at the top of his website because of the interest generated from his temporary censorship.

Comment Re:I thought open source was communism? (Score 5, Interesting) 650

by megamerican (#31265144) Attached to: Use Open Source? Then You're a Pirate!

OSS is free market enterprise and has nothing to do with socialism.

Socialism is when the government forcefully confiscates someones time, money or resources and gives it to someone else.

OSS is 100% voluntary and thus is free market enterprise. Voluntary associations are essential to any capitalist society because individuals and corporations can not fill the needs of everyone.

The kind of society we are living in now is Piracy, where large corporations can keep their profits and then plunder the public treasury when things go bad. Piracy is what this IIPA organization is advocating, not capitalism.

As funny as it may sound, when you freely give away your time and money to a cause, such as OSS you are being a capitalist and when you pay any non-voluntary taxes you are participating in socialism.

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