Posts Tagged ‘data’
European Union proposes a right to edit or delete personal info recorded on the Internet
Click image to enlarge
A new law promising internet users the “right to be forgotten” will be proposed by the European Commission on Wednesday. It says people will be able to ask for data about them to be deleted and firms will have to comply unless there are “legitimate” grounds to retain it…
Details of the revised law were unveiled by the Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich…
“These rules are particularly aimed at young people as they are not always as aware as they could be about the consequence of putting photos and other information on social network websites, or about the various privacy settings available,” said Matthew Newman.
He noted that this could cause problems later if the users had no way of deleting embarrassing material when applying for jobs. However, he stressed that it would not give them the right to ask for material such as their police or medical records to be deleted.
Although the existing directive already contains the principle of “data minimisation”, Mr Newman said that the new law would reinforce the idea by declaring it “a right”…
The commissioner said that firms would have to explicitly seek people’s permission to use data about them and could not proceed on the basis of “assumed” consent in situations where approval was required.
Her proposed law says that internet users must also be notified when their data is collected, and be told for what purpose it is being processed and for how long it will be stored.
The bill also suggests people must be given easier access to the data held on them, and should have the right to move it to another provider in addition to the right to have it deleted.
However, the commissioner said that she recognised there were some circumstances under which this right would not apply. “The archives of a newspaper are a good example. It is clear that the right to be forgotten cannot amount to a right of the total erasure of history,” Ms Reding told delegates.
RTFA. There’s a certain amount of regulatory crap I’ve left out. The core of the concept is worth discussing throughout the Web.
I’m surprised an effort as specific as this hasn’t been proposed in the United States. Certainly folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation are cognizant of this effort. No doubt they are as frustrated as the rest of the nation is with our incompetent lawmakers in DC – and are waiting to see if the real world gets a chance to intervene after the coming elections?
There’s hardly a nation with an intelligentsia more concerned with privacy – and achieving less towards expanding those rights – than the United States. For their part, our political “leaders” have spent a serious amount of time since the end of World War 2 dedicated to reducing privacy in parallel with their goal of reducing dissent and free speech.
And, yes, there was a time when conservatives were as concerned with these topics as liberals or progressives. Not anymore, man.
E-readers get heavier with each book – WTF?
E-readers are meant to let bookworms carry their entire libraries with them without any additional weight – but the devices actually get heavier every time a new text is downloaded.
The weight difference is unlikely to make much difference to holidaymakers’ baggage allowances, however, because each new tome is about as heavy as a single molecule of DNA. Filling a 4GB Kindle to its storage limit would increase its weight by a billionth of a billionth of a gram
Prof John Kubiatowicz a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, explained…that storing new data involves holding electrons in a fixed place in the device’s memory.
Although the electrons were already present, keeping them still rather than allowing them to float around takes up extra energy – about a billionth of a microjoule per bit of data.
Using Einstein’s E=mc² formula, which states that energy and mass are directly related, Prof Kubiatowicz calculated that filling a 4GB Kindle to its storage limit would increase its weight by a billionth of a billionth of a gram, or 0.000000000000000001g…
E-readers could also become slightly heavier in the summer, because they would take on more energy from their exposure to sunlight, scientists explained.
Graeme Ackland, of Edinburgh University, told the Guardian: “If Prof Kubiatowicz is really struggling with the extra weight, he is welcome to come to Edinburgh where it’s cooler, and the lack of thermal energy in his Kindle will more than compensate.”
Of course, if we’re going to make comparisons based on geography we should compensate for weight differences between, say, Edinburgh – which probably could grow mildew on stainless steel – and my neck of the prairie with a current annual rainfall less than 7 or 8 inches.
Some of those water molecules may prefer to attach themselves to some plot lines rather than others. 
Coppers want Telecom/Internet firms to hand over all your info
Internet companies such as Google, Twitter and Facebook are increasingly co-opted for surveillance work as the information they gather proves irresistible to law enforcement agencies…
Although such companies try to keep their users’ information private, their business models depend on exploiting it to sell targeted advertising, and when governments demand they hand it over, they have little choice but to comply…
But the vast amount of personal information that companies like Google collect to run their businesses has become simply too valuable for police and governments to ignore, delegates to the Internet Governance Forum in Nairobi said.
“When the possibility exists for information to be obtained that wasn’t possible before, it’s entirely understandable that law enforcement is interested,” Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf told Reuters in an interview. “Then the issue would be, what’s the right policy? And that, of course, engenders a lot of debate,” said Cerf…
Demands from governments for Internet companies to hand over user information have become routine, according to online privacy researcher and activist Christopher Soghoian, who makes extensive use of freedom-of-information requests in his work.
“Every decent-sized U.S. telecom and Internet company has a team that does nothing but respond to requests for information,” Soghoian told Reuters…
Soghoian estimates that U.S. Internet and telecoms companies may receive about 300,000 such requests in connection with law enforcement each year…
“Now, one police officer from the comfort of their desk can track 20, 30, 50 people all through Web interfaces provided by mobile companies and cloud computing companies,” he said.
I realize some of my regular readers are already paranoid about what companies like Google and Facebook are doing with the information they gather about users. Anonymized or not.
Now, it’s becoming more and more clear that the cost to governments of tracking your every movement and thought – is a bargain at any price.
US wants to store your international travel data for 15 years
The personal data of millions of passengers who fly between the US and Europe, including credit card details, phone numbers and home addresses, may be stored by the US department of homeland security for 15 years, according to a draft agreement between Washington and Brussels leaked to the Guardian.
The “restricted” draft, which emerged from negotiations between the US and EU, opens the way for passenger data provided to airlines on check-in to be analysed by US automated data-mining and profiling programmes in the name of fighting terrorism, crime and illegal migration. The Americans want to require airlines to supply passenger lists as near complete as possible 96 hours before takeoff, so names can be checked against terrorist and immigration watchlists.
The agreement acknowledges that there will be occasions when people are delayed or prevented from flying because they are wrongly identified as a threat, and gives them the right to petition for judicial review in the US federal court. Well, isn’t that special?
The 15-year retention period is likely to prove highly controversial as it is three times the five years allowed for in the EU’s PNR (passenger name record) regime to cover flights into, out of and within Europe. A period of five and a half years has just been negotiated in a similar agreement with Australia. Germany and France raised concerns this week about the agreement and the unproven necessity for the measure.
Britain has already announced its intention to opt in to the European PNR plan, in which the home secretary, Theresa May, played a key role, and is expected to join the US agreement this summer…
The US Senate passed a resolution last week saying it “simply could not accept” any watering down by European ministers of data-sharing, describing it as “an important part of our layered defences against terrorism”. Senators said it was an important tool in the security agencies’ “identifying possible threats before they arrive in our country”.
But the European parliament, which would have to approve it, has demanded proof that such a PNR agreement is necessary, and said it should in no circumstances be used for data-mining or profiling…
This draft agreement appears to give the Americans all they have asked for…
The data to be collected includes 19 separate items relating to each airline passenger, including their billing details, contact numbers, the names of those they are travelling with and how much baggage they have, as well their itinerary.
Well, we certainly are assured our government cares enough about our safety and security that they are willing to keep an eye on us for years and years. I feel safer, now. Don’t you?
I’m A Mac, You’re Sarah Palin
Mac users are more politically liberal, more urban, younger and more educated than their PC-using counterparts, according to a new survey by affinity aggregator Hunch.
The results of a survey of 388,315 Hunch users posted Friday in Hunch’s visually arresting style identified 52 percent of respondents as self-described PC people, 25 percent as users of Apple’s Macintosh computers and 23 percent as neither. Hunch cross-referenced those results with dozens of other questions it asks users to answer.
The details of the findings seem to fall along the lines that many people would have had a, well, hunch about in the first place. Mac users are chic, design-oriented and like hummus and San Pelligrino. PC users get around in jeans and chase down patty melts with Pepsi or Orange Crush…
Among the more provocative findings:
► 58 percent of Mac people are “liberal,” as compared to 38 percent of PC people
► 67 percent of Mac people have completed a four-year college degree or higher, as compared to just 54 percent of PC people
► 52 percent of Mac people live in a city, while PC people are 18 percent more likely than Mac people to live in the suburbs and 21 percent live in rural areas
► Mac people throw a lot more parties than PC people
► Mac people are more confident about their verbal abilities but less confident about their math abilities than PC people
► Mac people are more likely to see random people as “similar,” whereas PC people are more likely to see them as “different”.
There are dozens of articles spinning the Hunch data. I admit I chose this one just for the headline – to bust the chops of the few family members who haven’t yet left the Wonderful World of Windows.
Here’s the original study.
How to start a revolution with a washing machine
The article that brought me to this TED washing machine and Hans Rosling was in the NY TIMES the other day. Now, you would have to subscribe to their digital edition to read that article; so – as I did the last time the TIMES farted around with a paywall – I found a newspaper that pays even more than you or me to reprint their articles.
Read the article after you watch the video. It discusses many of the ways that Hans Rosling and his Gapminder website work very hard to make data very easy to understand.
If you’re reading my blog on an iPad, the video link up top may not work. Here’s a link directly to the video at TED.
With Air Force’s Gorgon Stare drone, ‘we can see everything’
This winter, the Air Force is set to deploy to Afghanistan what it says is a revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town.
The system, made up of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, can transmit live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements. It can send up to 65 different images to different users; by contrast, Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a “soda straw” area the size of a building or two.
With the new tool, analysts will no longer have to guess where to point the camera, said Maj. Gen. James O. Poss, the Air Force’s assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. “Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we’re looking at, and we can see everything.”
Questions persist, however, about whether the military has the capability to sift through huge quantities of imagery quickly enough to convey useful data to troops in the field.
Officials also acknowledge that Gorgon Stare is of limited value unless they can match it with improved human intelligence – eyewitness reports of who is doing what on the ground.
RTFA. Consider when this technology is coming to a city near you?
Can’t happen here? It is to laugh.
Nvidia contractor charged with selling data to hedge funds
U.S. prosecutors in Manhattan filed new charges as part of a national probe of insider trading, accusing a California consultant for an expert-networking firm with selling inside information to two unidentified hedge funds.
Winifred Jiau, arrested in Fremont, was accused of selling data on Nvidia Corp. and Marvell Technology Group Ltd., makers of computer components, through the networking firm, according to a filing today in Manhattan federal court. The hedge funds paid her $200,000 through the firm, prosecutors alleged…
The evidence against Jiau is “strong,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Wilson Leung told the judge, adding that there is a “cooperating witness and audio recordings.” When asked by Vadas if she understood the charges, Jiau said “I not have a chance to know until now.” Barry Portman, her assigned public defender, said the complaint is a “lengthy document.” She didn’t enter a plea to the charges.
Her arrest follows charges earlier this month against three technology company workers who allegedly sold secrets about Apple Inc., Dell Inc. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. The men, who worked at AMD, Flextronics International Ltd. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., were arrested on securities fraud and conspiracy charges for a scheme that Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said operated from 2008 to early 2010.
Also arrested at the time was James Fleishman, a sales manager at Primary Global Research LLC, the expert-networking firm where the three worked as consultants. If convicted, all four face as long as 20 years in prison…
Santa Clara, California-based Marvell, which makes chips for the BlackBerry phone, declined to comment. Bob Sherbin, a spokesman for Nvidia, also based in Santa Clara, said Jiau was a contractor who left the company about a year ago…
It grows deeper and deeper.
If this keeps up, we may even experience a shock epidemic of honesty in business.
Are mobile phone masts linked to sharp rise in births?
Mobile phone tower disguised as a giant penis
Do mobile phone towers make people more likely to procreate? Could it be possible that mobile phone radiation somehow aids fertilisation, or maybe there’s just something romantic about a mobile phone transmitter mast protruding from the landscape?
These questions are our natural response to learning that variation in the number of mobile phone masts across the country exactly matches variation in the number of live births. For every extra mobile phone mast in an area, there are 17.6 more babies born above the national average.
This was discovered by taking the publicly available data on the number of mobile phone masts in each county across the United Kingdom and then matching it against the live birth data for the same counties. When a regression line is calculated it has a “correlation coefficient” (a measure of how good the match is) of 98.1 out of 100. To be “statistically significant” a pattern in a dataset needs to be less than 5% likely to be found in random data (known as a “p-value”), and the masts-births correlation only has a 0.00003% probability of occurring by chance.
The match between mobile phone towers and birth rates is an extremely strong correlation and it is highly statistically significant. There is no doubting the mathematical finding that more mobile phone masts mean that there will also be more births. This is about as rigorous as statistics can get.
Mobile phone masts, however, have absolutely no bearing on the number of births. There is no causal link between the masts and the births despite the strong correlation. Both the number of mobile phone transmitters and the number of live births are linked to a third, independent factor: the local population size. As the population of an area goes up, so do both the number of mobile phone users and the number people giving birth…
But would the media turn a correlation-only finding into a causation-based health scare? To find out, I have released my mobile masts and births results as a press release. We’ll see if anyone jumps to the conclusion that mobile phone radiation really can give conception a helping hand.
I love it. My kind of computational analysis – taking the time to examine factors beyond the few chosen as possible cause-and-effect determinants.
The obverse, btw, of what is done by most pantywaist skeptics who think their singular reconstruction of pop science refutes years of discussion in peer review of datasets, reports and analyses of everything from climate change to gender identification.
I don’t recall posting any of Matt Parker‘s ruminations in the past – but, he’s my kind of smartass.
Indicator for fisheries health as accurate as flipping a coin
The most widely adopted measure for assessing the state of the world’s oceans and fisheries led to inaccurate conclusions in nearly half the ecosystems where it was applied. The new analysis was performed by an international team of fisheries scientists, and is reported in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.
“Applied to individual ecosystems it’s like flipping a coin; half the time you get the right answer and half the time you get the wrong answer,” said Trevor Branch, a University of Washington aquatic and fisheries scientist…
“This study makes clear that the most common indicator, average catch trophic level, is a woefully inadequate measure of the status of marine fisheries…”
The trophic level of an organism shows where it fits in food webs, with microscopic algae at a trophic level of one and large predators such as sharks, halibut and tuna at a trophic level around four…
The authors determined that those averages were declining over time and warned we were “fishing down the food web” by overharvesting fish at the highest trophic levels and then sequentially going after fish farther down the food web.
Twelve years later newly compiled data has emerged that considers the numbers and types of fish that actually live in these ecosystems, as well as catch data…
An example of the problem with the measure is in the Gulf of Thailand where the average trophic level of what is being caught is rising, which should indicate improving ecosystem health according to proponents of that measure.
Instead, it turns out fish at all levels have declined tenfold since the 1950s because of overharvesting.
