Here's a guide on how to make a very low cost GPS tracking device useful for monitoring your own car, your loved ones, or anyone else for that mater so long as you can slip this device into their bag or car.
From the "Well flipping duh" committee as assisted by the "It's about freaking time" guild, a NJ court has ruled that we have privacy rights online and that "law enforcement officials need a grand jury warrant to have access to their private information".
There are some cases where you might want to download software, movies, etc and it would be morally correct, but perhaps not strictly legal to do so.
For example, your son plays with your only copy of a rare movie and scratches it beyond recognition. I doubt any reasonable person would disagree with you downloading and burning a replacement (if you hadn't made a backup copy already).
Anyway, I'm not going to argue the ethics of downloading here. It's up to you to decide whether what you do online is correct and that's why this article about protecting you downloading privacy is important. Use the tips provided to make sure that the only person making a judgement call about your online activity is you.
Much love to my UK bretheren, but how the hell did you end up with such bad leadership?! (I know, pot, keddle and all that)…
Currently they're planning to add children to the DNA database:
Home Office officials said plans to include primary school children on the DNA record would be kept 'under review'. The DNA database includes 4.5 million samples of genetic material, many taken from people who have been arrested but never charged with a crime.
By next year, it is expected that 1.5 million of the samples will be from youngsters aged between ten and 18.
Of course, they still have their problems. The existing DNA registry is filled with data from criminals, but also people who were only suspects. Obviously criminals should have a reduced set of privacy rights, but people who have never been convicted is another story entirely. Still, props to the UK for having the brains to reject such a flagrant rights violation.
Can and would they use your DNA results against you? Do credit card companies raise your rates according to unrelated things on your credit report? Do insurance companies raise your rates due to traffic tickets that have little to do with telling how good or safe a driver you are?
Like I said, avoiding a record of your DNA is a smart idea.
It should be no surprise to anyone that enterprising scumbags everywhere are using the hopes of the economic stimulus package to scam people out of their information.
"They're calling people on the phone and asking for their personal information, and the people are thinking they're going to get some money quicker than they normally would," Special Agent Jeff Lanza, spokesman with the FBI Bureau in Kansas City, told WDAF-TV.
Remember simple safety: don't give out information over the phone especially to someone who calls you.
Granted, this was a case of child pornography and I think in the case of certain types of crimes, it doesn't matter how the evidence was obtained, it should be admissable. Of course, I believe any evidence should be admissable as long as there are significant consequences for doing a search and seizure where nothing turns up.
Their new ad software broadcasts your current activities to your facebook friends. If you just bought a ticket to a concert, your friends might see an alert to that effect. If you just bought medication for your embarassing personal issue, they might see that too. But it gets worse:
Beacon will report back to Facebook on members' activities on third-party sites that participate in Beacon even if the users are logged off from Facebook and have declined having their activities broadcast to their Facebook friends.
A depressing report from a few California universities shows that most people have no idea to what extent their online activities are tracked and used against them. This report doesn't offer any solutions other than to try to opt-out of tracking (if it's even possible to do so) though they also state that many companies find clever ways of circumventing promises not to track and do it anyway.
In actuality, this is only a ruling on partial fingerprint evidence. I'm not sure if I agree that a partial print can't be considered as one piece of the evidence though I do agree that you can't make a case solely on a partial print. In this case, the judge ruled that a partial print can't be used as evidence in a murder investigation.
The more disturbing part of this article is this:
… the FBI mistakenly linked Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer, to a fingerprint lifted off a plastic bag of explosive detonators found in Madrid after commuter train bombings there killed 191 people.
So not only can your fingerprints be used to identify you as a criminal in this country, you might get nailed for crimes in completely different countries as well. Always be wary of providing fingerprints.
Rather than try to prevent people from copying or sharing music with drm, Microsoft has patented a watermarking procedure that will allow them to tag music with IDs that are very hard to remove.
First take: this is bad, bad news. While Ars Technica believes that this could help to get rid of the much hated DRM, I believe the replacement is far worse. Now instead of merely being annoying in preventing you from copying a CD, the RIAA will be able to track music by ID to see where (and who) it came from. If your son shares a song online that's from your CD collection, you will be much easier to find and prosecute.
I have always said that Google has the best search engine and I still believe that (for now). But when it comes to their other offerings, they've proven to be a bit dodgy. Now comes news from someone who's been paying attention that according to their terms of service, any content you produce with their Google Apps belongs to them!
Write a love letter to your girl and find it on a greeting card later with no royalty fees or otherwise due to you.
