RFID Sensor Network Tested in Denmark
If you thought it was hype and paranoia, you were wrong. Not only CAN they create a sensor network to track people with RFID, but they're doing it right now. Denmark's Lego Land puts bracelets on kids that lets them be monitored by the park's many sensors.
Says Katherine Albrecht of spychips.com:
Tags: Big Brother, Denmark, Kids, RFIDRFID Myth Busted – That Was Fast…
Of the proponents of RFID, one of their strongest defenses was, "but RFID can only be read from a few inches away, so it can't every be a problem…."
CASPAIN's newsletter points to this article showing that one company is using RFID to let drivers change the messages on billboards over .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Tags: Big Brother, RFIDForida Pays $35 Mil for E-voting mistake
Here's a heartwarming tale. Forida decides that the e-voting was a mistake and goes back to optical votes:
Rumor has it that Florida governor Charlie Crist will announce tomorrow that his state plans to scrap tens of millions of dollars worth of touchscreen voting equipment and move to a system based completely on optical scan ballots. The .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]Internet Explorer’s Year Long Terror
According to the Washington Post, IE was unsafe for more days out of the year than not in 2006.
For a total 284 days in 2006 (or more than nine months out of the year), exploit code for known, unpatched critical flaws in pre-IE7 versions of the browser was publicly available on the Internet. .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]TJ Maxx Sued for Data Breach
Consumer Affairs follows the story of TJ Maxx vs Consumers as they get sued for losing data due to "failing to maintain adequate computer data security of customer credit and debit card data". Well good.
.... [Click here to read the rest of this post]Tags: Data Breaches, Identity Theft, TJ MaxxCredit Card Companies May Get Slapped by Congress
Consumeraffairs writes that congress may take a look at the credit card industry and how it's been hurting consumers for years. They talk about the practice of assessing fees for anything and everything, but don't forget about those difficult to understand agreements:
"Anyone who has ever tried to read .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]Consumer’s Guide to the State of the Union Address
Another neat nugget from Public Citizen: A consumer's translation of the Bush's Speech.
After seven years of State of the Union addresses from the Bush administration, the American public has learned that President Bush’s policy recommendations are often based on misinformation. As such, Public Citizen has prepared the following guide to the 2007 speech so consumers .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]No Fly List Bites American Airlines in the Butt
Public Citizen reports one of their recent victories against American Airlines on behalf of John Cerqueira, who was denied the right to fly after airline authorities thought he might be "Arab, Middle Eastern or South Asian descent".
$400,000 dollars is a small price to pay for taking away an American's freedoms. I .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Tags: American Airlines, No-Fly List, public citizen, Security TheaterRide an Airplane, Lose Your Status as a Human?
A group of passengers was treated like livestock by being trapped on a grounded American Airlines plane for 9 hours. I can't imagine what I would have done after even an hour like that.
I don't know why this kind of thing is allowed, but it's customer abuse, plain and simple.
.... [Click here to read the rest of this post]Tags: Airline Bill of Rights, Airlines, Customer Abuse, Legal Kidnapping, Trapped on a planeMore Vista Trouble
Apparently, Vista will not let you install on an empty hard drive with the "upgrade version" as previous versions of Windows did. This is a problem only for some, but it's significant.
What Microsoft is trying to do is convert their software market into a licensing market. This way, no one owns software, only licenses. As .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Tags: Microsoft, Oops, Windows, Windows Vista