RIAA

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

The RIAA has been able to run free for years suing just about anyone it can using dubious legal methods. Well, their glory days may be over. The Free Software Foundation has pledged funds to "pay fees and/or expenses of technical expert witnesses, forensic examiners, and other technical consultants assisting individuals named as defendants in non-commercial, peer-to-peer file sharing cases brought by the RIAA, EMI, SONY BMG, Vivendi Universal, and Warner Bros. Records, and their affiliated companies, such as Interscope, Arista, UMG, Fonovisa, Motown, Atlantic, Priority, and others".

That is awesome.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Rather than preventing the problem, many companies are satisfied (and make tons of profit) by inventing new services to attack the symptoms rather than the problem.

Don't waste your time or money. Get a credit freeze and don't worry about all the snake oil.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

"DHS is essentially whittling Real ID down to nothing—all in the name of denying Real ID is a failure," said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani. "Real ID is in its death throes, and any signs of life are just last gasps."

Let's hope so.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

A depressing report from a few California universities shows that most people have no idea to what extent their online activities are tracked and used against them. This report doesn't offer any solutions other than to try to opt-out of tracking (if it's even possible to do so) though they also state that many companies find clever ways of circumventing promises not to track and do it anyway.

If you don't want to be tracked, make sure to use adblocking software and turn off images in your e-mail. This removes many of the techniques used to track you.

(Image is used under the Pixabay license)

There's noise about the government trying to secure the right to read anyone's e-mails any time without any kind of warrant. Since this is still in the works and nothing concrete has happened yet, I'll wait before saying much about it. You're free to read up on the issue using that link though.

AT&T

(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

AT&T is a company who needs to be watched having been recently discovered that they built a custom algorithm to: "crunch through tens of millions of long distance phone records a night to draw up what AT&T calls "communities of interest" — i.e., calling circles that show who is talking to whom".

(Image is in the Public Domain)

So much for CSI.

In actuality, this is only a ruling on partial fingerprint evidence. I'm not sure if I agree that a partial print can't be considered as one piece of the evidence though I do agree that you can't make a case solely on a partial print. In this case, the judge ruled that a partial print can't be used as evidence in a murder investigation.

The more disturbing part of this article is this:

... the FBI mistakenly linked Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer, to a fingerprint lifted off a plastic bag of explosive detonators found in Madrid after commuter train bombings there killed 191 people.

So not only can your fingerprints be used to identify you as a criminal in this country, you might get nailed for crimes in completely different countries as well. Always be wary of providing fingerprints.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Here we go again. At least this time, it's only on the order of a few hundred thousand people.

Note: it's a little sad to have to say that.

(Image used under: Creative Commons 3.0 [SRC])

Well this is different. I knew that posting online can have severe negative effects on the poster, but I hadn't considered the effect on the parents.

"Whether we're talking about dad's work secrets or problems between mom and dad with their relationship," Sgt. MacDonald said.

We asked him to show us just how easy it is to find incriminating posts. It didn't take long.

"Not only do I have to live with my nagging mom, my dad does drugs. This person, Tara, says her parents are lazy alcoholics," reads Sgt. MacDonald.

He says it's not hard for police, or employers, to uncover the identity of teens from the details in their profiles.

While drugs and underage drinking are likely problems that should be dealt with, some other things should remain private:

even innocent-sounding news can do damage. "They may be talking about how their father is losing a job, and perhaps a neighbor who's the mortgage broker for the father isn't aware that the father's job is in jeopardy,"

(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

Nothing like treating people like animals to be tagged and tracked. Of course, it's much easier to start by tracking kids because they don't have much choice in the matter and when they grow up, they'll be less resistant to the practice. Enter surveillance society…

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. They portray the tests as successful, but as Bruce Schneier points out, "So now it's easy to cut class; just ask someone to carry your shirt around the building while you're elsewhere."

Or how about, "it's easy to get someone you hate in trouble by wearing their uniform for a few minutes while vandalizing the teacher's lounge."

Or "We had no idea that constantly bombarding students with radio frequencies in closed spaces during their formative years would lead to these kinds of mutations! Mrs. Johnson, you can't honestly expect us to pay to have Timmy's third arm removed can you?"

I love how companies start implementing RFID without any thought to the consequences.