Quirks in Tech

Damning findings removed from Sen. Mike Duffy

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:19:57 -0700

Damning findings removed from Sen. Mike Duffy:

The Senate

5/8 chapters done. 1 to write over the weekend and do a...

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:15:47 -0700

5/8 chapters done. 1 to write over the weekend and do a near-final proof of what’s already written. The end nears…

Arizona Man Winds Up Jailed, Unemployed and Homeless After Photographing Courthouse

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:48:01 -0700

Arizona Man Winds Up Jailed, Unemployed and Homeless After Photographing Courthouse:

nyxxisnite:

Raymond Michael Rodden was bored this week, so he drove to downtown Phoenix and began walking around, snapping photos of the federal courthouse and the state capitol with his iPhone.

The 33-year-old man ended up jailed, unemployed and homeless; his iPhone, iPad and Macintosh laptop confiscated as “evidence.”

All because they found it odd he was taking photos at 3 a.m.

“They told me they’re going to keep my computer because they want to see my search history,” he said Saturday evening in a telephone interview with Photography is Not a Crime.

“They wanted to know if I belonged to any extremist groups like the national socialist movement or sovereign citizens. They wanted to know what kind of books I checked out of the library.”

However, the only charges pending against him, if you even want to call them charges, are citations that he walked into an alley – a bogus charge that applies only to motorized vehicles – and that he neglected to change the address on his driver license after moving to Phoenix from Tucson last August.

They couldn’t even keep him jailed on the initial charge of an outdated warrant out of California because the San Obispo County Sheriff’s Office did not want to bother extraditing him from Phoenix.

“The warrant was not even valid in Arizona,” adding that it was over a probation violation for unlawful use of a vehicle, stemming from a 2001 incident in which he took his roommate’s car without permission after a heated argument.

That old roommate is still one of his best friends, allowing him to stay in his Tucson home after he was kicked out of the Phoenix home that was part of his employment.

“I was living in my boss’s house taking care of his son,” he said. “Now he thinks I’m some crazy person.”

The fact that the Phoenix police bomb squad tore his boss’s car apart searching for explosives before impounding it most likely convinced him that Rodden was not the most suitable person to care for his six-year-old son as he worked as a long-distance truck driver.

“The most radical thing I do is read Photography is Not a Crime and Cop Block,” he said.

So like most people who read those sites, he knows his rights when it comes to dealing with police.

And that is exactly why he is going through this ordeal.

It started Thursday at 3 a.m. when he was sitting at home, unable to sleep. He decided to drive to downtown in his boss’s car, which he had permission to do.

He parked the car in front of the Phoenix Police Department and began walking around downtown, which is a ghost town at that time.

This is particularly insane.

michaeltalbot: Indeed. I exported my content out months ago;...

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:05:25 -0700

michaeltalbot:

Indeed. I exported my content out months ago; with the original [albeit about six months out of date] content from TKM being imported into a password protected wordpress account.

To be fair - well who knows? It’d be hypocritical of me to assume the worst, given how I bitched about the people bitching about Amazon buying up GoodReads.

Yeah, but Yahoo! has a history of letting great services languish until they nearly atrophy. Flickr and Delicious are both good examples of what happens under Yahoo! ‘management’.

A Facebook update in real life

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:05:40 -0700

A Facebook update in real life

azspot: Nick Anderson: Missile Launches Droney’s coming to...

Fri, 17 May 2013 09:21:02 -0700

azspot:

Nick Anderson: Missile Launches

Droney’s coming to help Americans understand their rights. Aggressively.

Life is filled with surprises!

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:15:53 -0700

Life is filled with surprises!

Video

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:14:01 -0700

RCMP members watch porn, snoop on spouses, files show - Politics - CBC News

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:52:36 -0700

RCMP members watch porn, snoop on spouses, files show - Politics - CBC News:

In another case of private information being misused, one RCMP officer left his patrol area to snoop on his ex-wife.

According to the discipline documents, the officer’s ex-wife and her boyfriend saw an RCMP patrol car driving through the parking garage of her Winnipeg condominium building at around 11:30 p.m. on May 8, 2010.

Suspecting the car was being driven by the ex-husband, the incident was reported to the RCMP’s D Division headquarters in Winnipeg, which revealed the ex-husband had queried the boyfriend’s licence plates in the police force’s database.

The officer admitted that he performed the database search in the hopes of identifying his ex-wife’s new boyfriend.

The discipline board considered the officer’s acceptance of “responsibility for his actions and [participation] in the early resolution process” when deciding what actions to take. They also noted that the officer had co-operated with the investigation.

In their decision, members of the board said they hope the officer had “learned from his mistake and trusts he is indeed prepared to abide by a Code of Conduct,” noting that “members of the Force are expected to act in an exemplary manner, and their conduct must be beyond reproach.”

The officer was issued a reprimand and docked three days’ pay.

So, two things here:

These are some of the dangerous uses that a group of BC residents identified with regards to automatic license plate recognition, namely the use of non-hit data (i.e. information not linked to motor vehicle crimes) in excess of the ALPR program’s stated mandate;
Holy hell. This is a case of a police officer stalking/inciting fear in a civilian and her current romantic partner, and there was a reprimand and a few days of docked pay? It’s these kinds of actions that teach people ‘the police won’t protect me if their own interests are involved.’

I mean really, with regards to (2), how terrifying would it be that an ex who is legitimately empowered to exercise the law is stalking you and those associated with you, using a ubiquitous surveillance technology. And moreover, imagine that things had been reversed: that the CIVILIAN was tracking the police officer. No way there’d be a reprimand and a few days of lost pay. No, that civilian would be looking at some intense court actions.

Total. Double. Standard.

laughingsquid: Google Wallet Update Allows Users to Send Money...

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:40:32 -0700

laughingsquid:

Google Wallet Update Allows Users to Send Money Through Gmail Attachments

Almost awesome. Until you realize it comes with a 2.9% transfer fee.

Why No Big Wireless Carriers Protect Journalist Phone Records

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:08:45 -0700

Why No Big Wireless Carriers Protect Journalist Phone Records:

But there was nothing extraordinary about what Verizon Wireless apparently did. Hundreds of thousands of times every year, cellphone companies turn over personal call records to law enforcement with neither a warning nor a judge’s involvement. Privacy activists said it’s no way for carriers to treat paying customers. They said they hope the AP controversy will force the big cell companies to change their ways.

“This is the phone companies putting the interest of law enforcement before their customers, and that’s wrong,” said Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. “None of them tell users. They all suck.”

I love just how direct Chris is these days when speaking with the press about the telcos and their utterly abhorrent practices.

The secret laser-toting Soviet satellite that almost was

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:56:24 -0700

The secret laser-toting Soviet satellite that almost was:

Rushed production, faulty code doomed a Cold War game changer 26 years ago today.

A super interesting story about the politics and the (minor, but very significant) technical failure that doomed the Soviet Union’s attempt to put anti-Satellite lasers in space.

Honest question: is using a capital ‘G’ instead of a...

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:11:07 -0700

Honest question: is using a capital ‘G’ instead of a capital ‘K’ to represent ‘thousand’ a Canadianism?

Introducing Strongbox, a Tool for Anonymous Document-Sharing

Wed, 15 May 2013 09:43:54 -0700

Introducing Strongbox, a Tool for Anonymous Document-Sharing:

This morning, The New Yorker launched Strongbox, an online place where people can send documents and messages to the magazine, and we, in turn, can offer them a reasonable amount of anonymity. It was put together by Aaron Swartz, who died in January, and Kevin Poulsen.

This has lots of interesting promise, though it’ll be *more* interesting when a non-US group of journalists use the system (the code will be open sourced). Frankly, given the history of American courts, I don’t think that leaking to a US publication is a terribly good idea at the moment if you want to remain anonymous.

Dissertation pieces are now being stitched together in the über-document that conforms with grad...

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:44:06 -0700

Dissertation pieces are now being stitched together in the über-document that conforms with grad studies’ style guide. By this time next week, the first 6/8 chapters will be assembled and sent to my committee. It should total in the vicinity of 65,000-70,000 words at that point.

A little over a month after that, the last 2/8 chapters should be written and added to the über-document. And, god willing, everything defended by the end of August/very beginning of September.

Finishing is starting to feel real, and possible.

How to Fight Revenge Porn

Sat, 11 May 2013 13:42:20 -0700

How to Fight Revenge Porn:

For those whose privately shared photos have made their way to the web, an argument of implied confidentiality may be a good bet.

(…)

We should have a better national dialogue about a romantic partner’s obligations of confidentiality. Salient norms of confidentiality would strengthen our relationships as well as the legal remedies for those whose trust has been betrayed. Notably, confidentiality law is not as problematic under the First Amendment as legislation or other tort remedies. Instead of prohibiting a certain kind of speech, confidentially law enforces express or implied promises and shared expectations. The tort of breach of confidentiality is currently very limited in scope, but could be made much more robust to sit alongside the more commonly asserted privacy torts. Under an “inducement to breach confidentiality” theory, it is even possible that certain websites would not be able to take full advantage of the immunity typically provided by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

This is an interesting approach, and one that might undermine some of the protections used to shield truly abhorrent websites.

michaeltalbot: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is truly...

Wed, 08 May 2013 08:45:48 -0700

michaeltalbot:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is truly exceptional news!

The Tyee

Tue, 07 May 2013 21:59:24 -0700

The Tyee :

Last September I filed FOIs that got me blacklisted for a time, depriving voters of facts they deserve.

You should read Bob’s article in case you’re curious about why the press, academics, and active citizens laugh at the ‘transparency’ into government operations made possible by access to information, or freedom of information and access, laws.

I would note: one of my colleagues has had a federal access request open for seven years at this point. Our work on license place recognition equipment, at the federal level, has been open almost two years, with no end in sight. There have been repeated ‘inappropriate’ (read: illegal, except it’s not illegal if the police do it, right?) closures of our file, and personal involvement by the federal information commissioner.

ATIP and FOI laws are a joke, and a bad ones at that.

Can you file a harassment suit against a drone?

Sun, 05 May 2013 13:20:51 -0700

Can you file a harassment suit against a drone?

Is the law catching up to BC's police chiefs?

Sun, 05 May 2013 12:44:39 -0700

Is the law catching up to BC's police chiefs?:

For anyone curious about (some of) the absurdity concerning policing in BC, this is a must read. Rob continues to do excellent work investigating the lack of accountability in the governance of BC authorities, this time showing how the police continue to do end-runs around access requests pertaining to their lobbying activities.