NYC Trying to Regulate Photon Detection and Recording

New York Times: "Some tourists, amateur photographers, even would-be filmmakers hoping to make it big on YouTube could soon be forced to obtain a city permit and $1 million in liability insurance before taking pictures or filming on city property, including sidewalks."



..meanwhile installing their own surveillance cameras on every corner.

House introduces bill to require ISPs to monitor, archive everything forever

CNet: "All Internet service providers would need to track their customers' online activities to aid police in future investigations under legislation introduced Tuesday as part of a Republican 'law and order agenda.'

Employees of any Internet provider who fail to store that information face fines and prison terms of up to one year, the bill says. The U.S. Justice Department could order the companies to store those records forever."

"Because there is no limit on how broad the rules can be, Gonzales would be permitted to force Internet providers to keep logs of Web browsing, instant message exchanges, or e-mail conversations indefinitely."

"That broad wording also would permit the records to be obtained by private litigants in noncriminal cases, such as divorces and employment disputes. That raises additional privacy concerns, civil libertarians say."


It's a given that this is a bad idea for several reasons - from 'this completely guts the notion of personal privacy' to 'the law of unintended consequences'. While surely a boon for storage companies, it pretty much sucks for everyone else.

1. Tremendous privacy implications for individuals, small business, anyone using an ISP for any reason.

2. Giant cyber-criminal target (crack, mine, build profiles for spearphishing, compromise unencrypted passwords, find legal but extortable information, etc)

3. Will trap data of normal people and do exactly zero to trap info on criminals (who are using encryption, other people's connections, blah blah)

4. IP and behavioral data doesn't prove identity or intent. Functionally useless. (see Splunk'd AOL Search Info, wardriving, RIAA/MPAA dragnets, log poisoning and rewriting, etc.)

So how do people (law enforcement, divorce lawyers, lawyers) access the traffic? where is it stored? how is it secured? how does one review the data for accuracy? will slightly different system-times wrongly implicate individuals based on timestamps and IPs ? (See 'DHCP for Dummies). How do we treat wifi hotspots? Open home and business wifi access points? Rogue ISP employees? Worms, botnets and malware infected computers (and whatever they might do)? Compromised law enforcement logins? We could do this all night.

It's retarded, impractical, an abhorrent breach of privacy, and dangerous for everyone.

On the plus side, maybe this will finally negate the 'net neutrality' argument (treating different bits differently) as users start using Tor, anonymizers, tunneling to Russian VPNs, etc. to encrypt all traffic - leaving nothing for ISP logs to grab or interpret. Maybe this is a good thing.

This is the litmus test for "do everyday people value their own privacy - and is the government still of, by, and for the people"...

Brittain planning cottage industry around "crowdporn" cameras

The Sun Online: "As part of the most shocking extension of Big Brother powers ever planned here, lenses in lampposts would snap “naked” pictures of passers-by to trap terror suspects.

The proposal is contained in leaked documents drawn up by the Home Office and presented to PM Tony Blair’s working group on Security, Crime and Justice. But the prospect of the State snooping on individuals’ most private parts is certain to spark national fury. And officials are battling to find a way of dealing with that reaction."

"Officials have agreed one solution would be to allow only women to monitor female subjects — although they admit this would be “very problematic” in crowds... “Privacy is an issue because the machines see through clothing.”"

"Cops would also get the power to build a database of everyone in the land. Three-dimensional CCTV pictures would be coupled with records of people’s mobile phones and even their travel cards to get details of their movements and habits. Facial recognition systems to help track individuals’ movements are also being considered."


And UK parents want some perv behind a government camera looking through their children's clothes because....?

Face search engine will let anyone find every picture of you on the Internets...

New Scientist: "A search engine that uses sophisticated facial recognition to allow users to identify and find people in online images will launch next month. But civil liberties groups say the biometric-style tool could compromise the privacy of anyone who has their picture online."


Yikes. And people have called us paranoid for years because we chose not to be in photographs or put our mugs on the Internets... Nice search tool for stalkers, ID thieves and governments.. Not to mention blackmailers. Or employers who want to pre-screen candidates for 'youthful indiscretions'..

Come to think of it, this is a huge risk to undercover officers, CIA or other covert operatives... Take a picture of someone who's past or loyalty or identity may be suspect, post it to the web, then run a cross index for every photo of this person -- turning up any family photos (and in the process, identifying family members), further leveraging any surrounding ID or metadata to suss out the real identity of the individual in question... This could go very dark very quickly.

It's like a huge internet-wide social network that you can't opt out of.

The idea's out there now (and was originally developed for governments), but it should still die a fiery death on principal.

Microsoft wants robots to run Windows

CNet: "Microsoft on Wednesday took the wraps off its first commercial operating system for robots, with hopes of paving the way for a broader robotics industry and taking a central role in its development. "


What could possibly go wrong?

Democrats carefully aim gun at foot, prepare to pull trigger...

CNN.com: "Americans would have to sign up for a new military draft after turning 18 if the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has his way.

New York Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel said Sunday he sees his idea as a way to deter politicians from launching wars. He believes a draft would bolster U.S. troop levels that are currently insufficient to cover potential future action in Iran, North Korea and Iraq."

"In 2003, he proposed a draft covering people age 18 to 26. This year, he offered a plan to mandate military service for men and women between age 18 and 42."


...so... days after winning elections, and they're already busy engineering a resounding loss in 2008. And we were hoping for more than 2 years of gridlock. (sigh).