Legal & Privacy
Open Proxies and Edit Wars on Wikipedia
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009There was an interesting article earlier this week concerning IP blocking by Wikipedia, a wildly popular online encyclopedia tool. Wikipedia’s “Arbitration Committee” of experienced volunteer editors voted to block changes from all IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates.
Is this censorship or good enforcement? Read on, and you decide.
After [...]
Free the Security Researchers
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009There is news of a controversial bill before the Nevada legislature that would make felons of people that possess, read or capture the personally identifying RFID information of others. In general, it is a good idea to protect personally identifying information, but let’s separate the good from the bad. The bill in its current form [...]
On Demand Health Records in Emergency Rooms
Monday, February 9th, 2009How many times have medical efforts been delayed or just incomplete because the emergency room personnel did not have access to patients’ medical records? I recently read about an exciting (and scary) initiative in Wisconsin to provide emergency room clinicians with access to patient health records via a health information exchange.
Wisconsin Health Information Exchange [...]
Would you sacrifice your Facebook friends for a Whopper?
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009Some of you are old enough to remember Burger King’s Where’s the Beef commercial from the 1980s. The commercial features three old ladies looking at an exaggeratedly large hamburger bun with a tiny hockey puck of a hamburger. Famously crabby Clara Peller, exclaims “Where is the Beef?” Now, the Web 2.0 folks are asking ‘where [...]
Child Pornography Charges against Your Teenager?
Thursday, January 15th, 2009Do you know what your kids are doing on the Internet?
Are your kids uploading pictures to social networking sites, or uploading videos to sites like You Tube?
No big deal?
Don’t ask, don’t tell?
Think again parents…
The London Times reports an alarming trend with teenagers and tweens emailing and texting suggestive messages and pictures. What started out as [...]
Big Brother is Waking up in Ohio
Saturday, December 27th, 2008The Register.com recently reported on a disturbing announcement from the University of Ohio. Professor James W. Davis and grad student Karthik Sankaranarayanan have developed software that can independently, without human intervention, track a person via the CCTV cameras.
Davis and Sankaranarayanan’s software works by using a pan-tilt-zoom camera to create a panoramic image of its entire [...]
Gasp! Lindsay Lohan violates Facebook’s Terms of Service
Friday, December 5th, 2008The Los Angeles Times reported earlier this week that Lohan gave Facebook folks an earful (ironically on MySpace) for supposedly erroneously disabling her real account. Celebrities often have difficulties securing their online identities. This was not another case of mistaken identity, this was a case of violating the TOS. Facebook most likely disabled her account [...]