In a report released by Privacy International, a human rights group formed in 1990 as a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations, the United States has dropped from an “extensive surveillance society” to an “endemic surveillance society,” joining the ranks of Singapore, China, Russia, the UK, Malaysia, Thailand, and Taiwan. The report runs over 1,100 pages and includes 6,000 footnotes, with more than 200 experts from around the world providing materials and commentary. Among its findings, Privacy International notes that, in terms of statutory protections and privacy enforcement, the US is the worst ranking country in the democratic world. In terms of overall privacy protection the United States has performed very poorly, being out-ranked by both India and the Philippines. The highest-ranking countries in 2007 are Greece, Romania and Canada, though all three have only middle of the line rankings; on a scale of 1-5, no countries have a score above a 3.

View: Privacy International Report

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To some music lovers, the fact that Josh Groban's Noel was the highest-selling album of 2007 is all the proof they need that major-label music is dying. To shareholders and label execs, though, the numbers are more important, and the numbers are grim: music sales are down 21 percent this Christmas season. Variety has the latest music numbers from Nielsen Soundscan on music sales from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve. In 2007, 83.9 million albums were sold, down 21.4 million from last year. A 20 percent drop in sales is more than a blip; it's serious trouble.

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Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy says new measures are being put in place to provide greater protection to children from online pornography and violent websites. Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material. Online civil libertarians have warned the freedom of the internet is at stake, but Senator Conroy says that is nonsense. He says the scheme will better protect children from pornography and violent websites.

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Despite more than 20,000 lawsuits filed against music fans in the years since they started finding free tunes online rather than buying CDs from record companies, the recording industry has utterly failed to halt the decline of the record album or the rise of digital music sharing. But in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: in legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

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ratzmilk writes “The Australian government is mandating the creation of ‘clean’ internet feeds. To be optionally made available to schools and homes that request it, the feed would offer built-in filters of ‘pornography and inappropriate content’. Said Senator Controy: ‘Labor makes no apologies to those that argue that any regulation of the internet is like going down the Chinese road … If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.’”

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Googling Yourself writes “Lifehacker has an interesting blog post on the “Top 10 Google Products You Forgot All About” that includes stalwarts like Google Trends and Google Alerts and a few others that may not be quite so familiar like Google Personals, Google’s WYSIWYG web site creation tool, and Flight Simulator for Google Earth.”

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theodp writes “Ready for one-automobile-per-child (OAPC)? India’s giant Tata Group is on the verge of launching the world’s cheapest car. The People’s Car, slated to be unveiled January 10th at a New Delhi auto show, will carry a sticker price of 100,000 rupees ($2,500), which some analysts say could revolutionize automobile costs worldwide. The Tata is a pet project of Cornell-trained architect Ratan Tata, which he helped design. The vehicle is aimed at improving driving safety by getting India’s masses off their motorbikes and into cars.”

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The New York Times has up an article discussing the trend of employers tracking the ‘free time’ activities of their employees via their web presence. “When they do go off the clock and off the corporate network, how they spend their private time should be of no concern to their employer, even if the Internet, by its nature, makes some off-the-job activities more visible to more people than was previously possible. In the absence of strong protections for employees, poorly chosen words or even a single photograph posted online in one’s off-hours can have career-altering consequences.” The piece likens this activity to the ‘Sociological Department’ that the Ford Company ran to monitor the home lives of their workers. Overstatement, or the corp as Big Brother?

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A Wired article reports on data loss in 2007, and the numbers aren’t good. Credit card and social security theft was at an all-time high, with even more losses expected in 2008. Information thieves, it seems, are just one step ahead of IT security. “While companies, government agencies, schools and other institutions are spending more to protect ever-increasing volumes of data with more sophisticated firewalls and encryption, the investment often is too little too late. ‘More of them are experiencing data breaches, and they’re responding to them in a reactive way, rather than proactively looking at the company’s security and seeing where the holes might be,’ said Linda Foley, who founded the San Diego-based Identity Theft Resource Center after becoming an identity theft victim herself.”

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NTT DoCoMo Kansa, Inc will be removing a tower that it installed in a local bus station December 2005. About 40 residents of Kawanishi, Hyogo formed a group to eliminate pollution triggered by electromagnetic waves. They claimed that after the tower was installed many people had problems with headaches, insomnia, high blood pressure and also ear ringing.

They filed a request for arbitration with the Osaka Summary Court and on Monday reached a settlement with NTT DoCoMo. NTT DoCoMo claims that these symptoms were not a cause of their tower and is pulling out because the bus station has decided not to renew their lease for the tower.

What do you think about the radiation omitting from Cell towers? Do you think they will find links between the radiation from the towers and illnesses with the general population?

News Source: Textually.org

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