Not only do you get to feel like a criminal upon entering the US, but your private information is also shared with other governmental agencies for no apparent reason. And if you come from the EU, you get to pay for the privelige on entry too. VS belast verplicht afgeven Nederlandse privédata | Webwereld.

Well, there’s a surprise: airport full body scanners not only get peeked at by their collegues and turn into full colour pictures when you put a negative filter on them in photoshop, but they’ve been storing the images for ages. For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all [...]

Which basically means that the arm of the law becomes the arbiter of the law, instead of just carrying out the aims of the law. As this concerns freedom of speech and expression, these decisions need to be made by judges. Hosters furieus over ‘censuurplan’ Justitie | Webwereld.

Why don’t people get it? Centralised databases are dreadfull things! The CIOT (Centraal Informatiepunt Onderzoek Telecommunicatie) database, which contains IP addresses, email addresses and name and address data, is accessed around 3m times a year. Apparently only 1% of these accesses is legal. Not only that, but users freely trade logins to the database, meaning [...]

So anyone with a friend in the Greek police force (and by friend I mean name and bank account number) can find out allll kinds of stuff about anyone in the database – which will soon be everyone. Sounds secure. Not. Vingerafdruk Nederlanders in 2011 Europees gedeeld | Webwereld.

Apple claims that allthough it the new privacy policy enables them to gather and share this information, the information is anonymised and is currently not being shared with anyone. The information is sent in batches every 12 hours and the collection can be turned off by changing the setting on locational services to off. So… [...]

In a growning and disconcerting trend among hardware manufacturers, TI has released a new version of it’s OS for the TI-Nspire series, that blocks off a whole load of its’ user base from using the machine the way they want to. I guess Apple, Android, TI, et al are afraid that the community will program [...]

So, Lucas is still making money off Star Wars and defending his copyright left right and centre (see also the lightsabre article), but the actor who played the body of Darth Vader is cut out completely. Because DMCA protects the artists, right? Darth Vader Actor Banned From STAR WARS Convention.

The EU is going  to discuss whether or not to force ISPs to save the searches you make in online search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, whatever. Apart from the privacy implications, who is going to pay the ISPs for the massive extra storage capacity they’ll need, but more importantly: what defines a ‘search’ – [...]

Apple updated its privacy policy today with an important and dare we say creepy new paragraph about location information. If you agree to the changes which you must do in order to download anything via the iTunes store you agree to let Apple collect store and share “precise location data including the real-time geographic location [...]

The US are at it again: if you tape the police, they consider you dangerous. If the judge decides in the favour of the police, any tape you bring into court showing police malpractice will be inadmissible. These laws were made in the 1970s, before even VHS was out! Traffic stop video on YouTube sparks [...]

Now that more and more police brutality is being exposed using camera’s, the police are now going after people who use their camera’s. What’s worse, the courts are standing behind them. They’re using the two party consent sureveillance law to cover their arses, even in locations where  there is no expectation of privacy. Are Cameras [...]

Showing you how much governments care about free speech, Julian Assange, who moves around every few weeks, has had his passport confiscated for looking worn. They’re not giving him a new one, it seems, which means it’ll be easy to keep close tabs on him. This makes it very difficult for people to give him [...]

The cameras, which combine number plate reading technology with a global positioning satellite receiver, are similar to those used in roadworks. The AA said it believed the new system could cover a network of streets as opposed to a straight line, and was “probably geared up to zones in residential areas.” The Home Office is [...]

Using the Google maps tool, you can see how many requests have been fielded by each government, as well as what kind of requests they have made. Government requests directed to Google and YouTube.

That’s how these misused things always start – anti-terrorlaws, jew extermination: no, we just want to do this one little thing. Once the mechanism is in there, well we might just as well increase its functionalities just a little bit – it’s there anyway! Anyway, the EC wants to implement a technically totally unviable kiddy [...]

Opinion piece by a former CIA operative on its current lack of operational capability, On December 30, in one of the deadliest attacks in CIA history, an Al Qaeda double agent schemed his way onto a U.S. base in Afghanistan and blew himself into the next life, taking seven Americans with him. How could this [...]

Yup, this is what happens to DRM servers: they go down and you can’t play your game, listen to your music, or really do anything with the product you bought. Ubisoft’s game servers have been down for longer than 10 hours, well done! The Escapist : News : Ubisoft DRM Authentication Servers Go Down.

Showing that the LibDems in the UK are now the lapdogs of major industry, they have proposed an amendment allowing copyright owners to force ISPs to take content offline without any proof that the copyright belongs to them. “During today's debate in the UK's House of Lords on the much-criticized Digital Economy Bill the unpopular [...]

And then puts them into a database accessible by… who? and why? This started in 2002 and has been going on without your knowledge ever since… Newborns’ blood used to build secret DNA database – Short Sharp Science – New Scientist.

The RIAA, the PRS, BUMA/STEMRA – all organisations claiming to exist for the benefit of musicians (who never see the money collected) are now showing – yet again – how self serving they are: The STEMRA decided they wanted to grant a pan-European musical license to beatport.com, so they wouldn’t have to go through each [...]

The Italians will sue your sorry arse for things you never did, didn’t know of and tried to fix as soon as you did know of them! In late 2006, students at a school in Turin, Italy filmed and then uploaded a video to Google Video that showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate. The video [...]

Professor Jones [NB  the guy who sent all the wierd emails that were uncovered revealing that data was spurious and that he'd hammer into the ground all global warming sceptic scientists] also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.And [...]

Yet another problem in a string of RFID related problems. Yes, your privacy is at risk. Defects in e-passports allow real-time tracking • The Register.

Well, they have tested the full body scanner on TV and the guy carrying bomb parts wasn’t stopped. And it’s not like he tried really hard to hide them either – they weren’t particularly small bomb parts and the only cavity he used was his mouth. Basically they’re just a huge invasion of privacy, an [...]