(iverson's) currentbuzz

These reports make it clear that, like everyone else, federal investigators have learned the value of cyberstalking when it comes to getting information about a person of interest. The groups behind the suit don't necessarily have a problem with that practice, recognizing it's done “often for laudable reasons.” What they would like to know is whether there are any procedures in place to limit its abuse and, if so, what they are.

The FOIA requests included a laundry list of the information that the EFF and Samuelson Center think would clarify the policy and highlight any potential for illegal overreach by the government. These include manuals on the procedures for accessing social sites and the circumstances that would trigger this action. Any policies for creating fake identities and retaining data harvested were requested, as was information on any software used to analyze the content. The groups also want details on whether any sites provide privileged user access to their content.

via EFF sues feds: tell us how you use Facebook for cyberstalking.

Panic + stupid = RFID passports

In 9/11’s aftermath panic ruled the nation’s domestic security bureaucracies, Congress and the White House. Paranoid mid-level bureaucrats were given free rein to “innovate” and guess what popped up? RFID tags in your passport.

And now they are adding them to driver’s licenses too.

via RFID passports: a tragedy waiting to happen | Storage Bits | ZDNet.com.

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Excellent podcast on privacy risks of RFIDs.

From boingboing and Surveillance Nation. I love the image of “every dude walking around with a thirty foot cloud of data emanating from his pants is so tantalizing that it invites sinister conspiracies.” If you haven’t read about RFID tags, you might want to. Got a passport? Got a driver’s license? You probably have a couple of those data clouds emanating from your self, then too.

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“I always said the next interface would be Quake,” said Steve Capps, one of the designers of the original Macintosh interface, referring to the popular video game. “How long will it be before you come out of the subway and you hold up your screen to get a better view of what you’re looking at in the physical world?”

via The Cellphone, Navigating Our Lives – NYTimes.com.

John Markoff hits paydirt with this story. Like it or hate it, this is going to be one of those disruptive technologies that is going to make some fortunes and destroy some as it unbalances the way things have been. More on this later. Thanks to Thom Clark for sending me a link.

To Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet law at Harvard…there is so much information out there. Supply creates demand, he argues.

via Link by Link – As Data Collecting Grows, Privacy Erodes – NYTimes.com.

Take the case of A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez), a baseball player who believed he was just a number and thus anonymous when he was tested by steroids. The list of names of those tested was never supposed to be matched with the test results, but the data was out there, and the Feds had a demand for it.

A “surveillance business model” is what  Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says is part of the problem.  The EFF told Noam Cohen of the NYTimes that  “online service providers — social networks, search engines, blogs and the like — should voluntarily destroy what they collect, to avoid the kind of legal controversies the baseball players’ union is now facing.”

This is a problem that no one wants to face head-on, but is building into a real headache with the introduction of the new driver’s licences and ARPHIDs in U.S. passports.

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Your mobile carrier will sell you for pennies