Privacy
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Monday, July 19, 2010; 4:50 PM The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work. These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine. The investigation's other findings include:
A hidden world, growing beyond control (Printer friendly version)| washingtonpost.com
China Installed More Than 10,000,000 Surveillance Cameras in 2010 | Public Intelligence
Beijing police have ordered supermarkets and shopping malls to install high-definition security cameras, as China continues its huge expansion in monitoring technology. The country has added millions of surveillance cameras over the last five years, part of a broader increase in domestic security spending. In May, Shanghai announced that a team of 4,000 monitor its surveillance feeds to ensure round-the-clock coverage.
Against Transparency | The New Republic
In 2006, the Sunlight Foundation launched a campaign to get members of Congress to post their daily calendars on the Internet. "The Punch-Clock Campaign" collected pledges from ninety-two candidates for Congress, and one of them was elected. I remember when the project was described to me by one of its developers. She assumed that I would be struck by its brilliance.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin adores the company's social network called Google Buzz . We know this because an engineer working five feet from Brin used Google Buzz to say so. "I just finished eating dinner with Sergey and four other Buzz engineers in one of Google's cafes," engineer John Costigan wrote a day after the Twitter-and-Facebook-esque service was announced. "He was particularly impressed with the smooth launch and the great media response it generated." You might call Brin's enthusiasm premature, especially since privacy criticisms prompted Google to make a series of quick changes a few days later.
Why no one cares about privacy anymore | Politics and Law - CNET News
Seeking to head off escalating scrutiny over Internet privacy, a group of online tracking rivals is building a service that lets consumers see what information those companies know about them. Seeking to head off escalating scrutiny over privacy, a group of online data and tracking firms are joining forces to build a service that lets consumers see what information those companies know about them. WSJ's Emily Steel reports.
Some Internet-Use Tracking Firms to Reveal What They Know - WSJ.com
Vendredi 3 avril 2009, l’assemblée nationale a adopté la loi "Création et Internet", avec seulement 16 députés dans l’hémicycle. Pourtant ce texte risque, s’il est appliqué, d’apporter de profondes modifications au web français tel que nous le connaissons. Cette loi instaure entre autres la "riposte graduée", qui en cas de téléchargement illégal, après l’envoi de 2 avertissements, prévoit la coupure de la connexion internet de l’abonné contrevenant. La plupart des arguments qui s’opposent à cette loi étant assez techniques, je vais tenter d’expliquer certains éléments de fonctionnement du net qui sont utiles pour les comprendres, puis j’aborderai point par point les éléments de la loi qui selon moi sont problématiques.