Free Republic

...Primarily, the GPS Act would require that government agencies demonstrate probable cause and obtain a warrant before being allowed access to an individual’s geolocation information. It also defines exceptions for requiring a warrant, including in national emergencies (mirroring existing wiretapping law), the monitoring of children by their parents, and emergency calling systems (e.g., 9-1-1). The GPS Act is vitally important not only to protect 4th Amendment rights, but also to provide clear, consistent, and understandable standards for law enforcement and wireless carriers. Without it, the government will maintain its vague and near limitless authority over the wireless data of American...

In a world where potential employers will almost certainly toss your name into a search engine before considering you for a job, we should all be very careful about what we put online. However, sometimes we slip up, leaving a nasty smear on an otherwise pristine social networking persona. Now, thanks to a ruling by the FTC, background checking services can store those unfortunate moments for up to 7 years after you've deleted them from the web. A company called Social Intelligence — which provides background checks for companies during the hiring process — recently drew ire from would-be employees...

If you’re still not using any of the privacy settings on Facebook, here’s the most compelling reason why you need to change that as soon as possible. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has given the thumbs up to Social Intelligence Corp, which keeps files of Facebook users’ posts as part of a background-checking service for screening job applicants. The FTC decided Social Intelligence complies with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the same set of rules that keeps your bill-payment records on file with the consumer bureaus for seven years, according to Forbes. That’s how long your social media postings remain...

A Collier County judge will allow a lawsuit against the Collier County School Board to continue, but only if the ACLU of Florida amends its complaint. Circuit Court Judge Hugh Hayes denied the Collier County School Board’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit Wednesday. The ACLU of Florida has sued the Collier County School Board, alleging it failed to comply with its repeated requests for public records about 10 North Naples Middle School students who held a “Kick-a-Jew Day” in 2009. Instead, Hayes asked the board to file a motion for a more definitive statement and gave the ACLU of Florida...

Lord Bute is aiming a blunderbuss at colonial America; a member of Parliament, tells Bute "I give you that man's money for my use", the American responds, "I will not be robbed". To the right, a blindfolded, Britannia is ready to stumble into "The pit prepared for others" behind her, "The English Protestant town of Boston" is in flames. On the left is a monk with a gibbet and a cross, behind him, a Frenchman with sword raised; on a cliff and forming the backdrop to Bute, is the city of Quebec. Published: April 1. 1775 Most of us...

Unprecedented? The pro-unionist New York Times encourages unpaid readers to comb through Palin’s work emails. There’s a form. Derek Willis’ request below: On Friday, the State of Alaska will release more than 24,000 of Sarah Palin’s e-mails covering much of her tenure as governor of Alaska. Times reporters will be in Juneau, the state capital, to begin the process of reviewing the e-mails, which we will be posting on NYtimes.com starting on Friday afternoon. We’re asking readers to help us identify interesting and newsworthy e-mails, people and events that we may want to highlight. Interested users can fill out a...

.....Taken together, the email correspondence underscores Palin's polarizing effect long before she was a ubiquitous figure on the national political stage. Palin's disgust with the media was apparent as soon as she was tapped to be Sen. John McCain's running mate — a decision that happened with a suddenness that seemed to take her and her aides by surprise as much as it did much of the country. "Can you believe it!" Palin wrote to one aide who had sent her a congratulatory email. "He told me yesterday — it moved fast! Pray! I love you." She was much less...

Facebook has quietly expanded the availability of technology to automatically identify people in photos, renewing concerns about the privacy practices of the world's top social networking service. The feature, which Facebook automatically enabled for Facebook users, has been expanded from the United States to "most countries", Facebook said on its official blog on Tuesday. Its "Tag Suggestions" feature uses facial recognition technology to speed up the process of labeling friends and acquaintances that appear in photos posted on Facebook. "Yet again, it feels like Facebook is eroding the online privacy of its users by stealth," wrote Graham Cluley, a senior...

Jacksonville Fl - -(Ammoland.com)- HB-155 Privacy of Firearms Owners by Rep. Jason Brodeur & Sen. Greg Evers to stop pediatricians from invading privacy rights of gun owners and bringing anti-gun politics into medical examining rooms was signed into law June 1, 2011 and took effect IMMEDIATELY. HB-45 Penalties for Violating Firearms Preemption Law by Rep. Matt Gaetz & Sen. Joe Negron to stop local governments and government officials from enacting gun control ordinances in violating of Florida law was signed into law June 1, 2011 and will take effect October 1, 2011. The delay in the effective date is to...

Abstract. We investigate the degree to which modern web browsers are subject to "device fingerprinting" via the version and con figurtion information that they will transmit to websites upon request. We implemented one possible fingerprinting algorithm, and collected these fingerprints from a large sample of browsers that visited our test site, panopticlick.eff.org. We observe that the distribution of our fingerprint contains at least 18.1 bits of entropy, meaning that if we pick a browser at random, at best we expect that only one in 286,777 other browsers will share its fingerprint. Among browsers that support Flash or Java, the situation...

In what is an astonishing development, Mark Zuckerberg's social media sensation, Facebook, has been slowly and quietly clamping down on the use of the site for political purposes. Kellen Giuda, an architect who started the NY Tea Party, has a column today in The Daily Caller to expose the Facebook hypocrisy, and to announce an alternative social medium to replace the FB void after a series of policy and site changes that are designed to limit the scope of use of Facebook related to political purposes. What makes an American entrepreneur's blood run cold is the quote from Facebook's Adam...

The National Traffic Highway Safety Association expects to have a decision by the end of the year on whether all new vehicles will be required to have 'event data recorders' installed. Known as 'black-boxes' the recorders collect vehicle data in the moments leading up to during, and after a crash. Unlike aircraft 'black-boxes' the vehicle data recorders do not make audio recordings.

TONIGHT at 9 pm ET...Each time you use a search engine, you disclose something about yourself. And it tends to be more than just passing interests; your searches reveal your wants, needs, desires, and fears. Over time, you may unwittingly divulge your age, sex, religion, ethnic group, profession, political views and medical concerns.That information can be exploited by its owners (ED: i.e. Google) to create dossiers on you that would make former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover look like a piker.Google is not the company it claims to be. Evolving from an information servant to master, the company's unprecedented centralization...

The personal data of millions of passengers who fly between the US and Europe, including credit card details, phone numbers and home addresses, may be stored by the US department of homeland security for 15 years, according to a draft agreement between Washington and Brussels leaked to the Guardian. The "restricted" draft, which emerged from negotiations between the US and EU, opens the way for passenger data provided to airlines on check-in to be analysed by US automated data-mining and profiling programmes in the name of fighting terrorism, crime and illegal migration. The Americans want to require airlines to supply...

Nearly every smartphone running the Google Android platform today is readily vulnerable to data snoops and cyberthieves, who can easily pluck information from them over ordinary Wi-Fi networks, German security experts discovered. [snip] The problem doesn't affect Apple's iPhones, experts noted, which don't rely upon communication with Web-based servers as heavily as Google's platform does.

The Yomiuri Shimbun A group of 14 Muslims has filed suit against the central and Tokyo metropolitan governments, demanding 154 million yen in compensation for violations of privacy and religious freedom after police antiterrorism documents containing their personal information were leaked onto the Internet. The lawsuit filed at the Tokyo District Court accused the Metropolitan Police Department and the National Police Agency of systematically gathering their personal information, including on religious activities and relationships, merely because they are Muslims. The lawsuit also alleged that after the information was leaked last October, the MPD failed to take sufficient action to prevent...

Often when the government tries to suppress information about its surveillance programs, it cites national-security concerns. But not always. In 2008, a few years after the Bush administration's warrantless-wiretapping program was revealed for the first time by the New York Times, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act. That act authorizes the government to engage in dragnet surveillance of Americans' international communications without meaningful oversight. As we've explained before (including in our lawsuit challenging the statute), the FISA Amendments Act is unconstitutional.In 2009, we also filed a Freedom of Information Act request to learn more about the government's interpretation and...

GENEVA (AP) -- Google is threatening to wipe photographs of streets and houses in Switzerland from its online maps unless the country's supreme court overturns a ruling requiring an absolute guarantee of anonymity for people captured on the popular Street View service. Shutting down Street View in an entire country would be the Internet search giant's most severe response yet to complaints it is violating people's privacy. The Mountain View, California-based company said Wednesday it will ask the Swiss Federal Tribunal to throw out a lower court decision that obliged it to ensure all faces and vehicle license plates are...

An SUV with the word "Nateveo" [or something like it] just cruised through my neighborhood. It had a 5-foot tall rig attached to its roof. Wondering if it is an imaging company ala Google Earth OR someone trying to capture Wi-Fi nets. Tried Googling - no help there ... Any thoughts ???

Google Inc.’s “Don’t Be Evil” slogan is seductive but misleading. It is the lowest business ethics standard ever devised, excusing everything Google does short of evil. Google isn’t evil – but neither is it ethical. While perceptions of the world’s erstwhile No. 1 brand remain exceptionally strong, Google’s ethical blind spots regarding privacy and property rights are beginning to erode the public’s trust and eventually could threaten the company’s market domination. Anyone who follows Google closely knows that the company is a serial scandal machine. One of the world’s most powerful companies, with its vainglorious mission to “organize the world’s...