EFF’s SSD (Surveillance Self-Defense) Project
EFF has a page covering what they call The SSD Project (Surveillance Self-Defense) which they provide, “…to educate the American public about the law and technology of government surveillance in the United States, providing the information and tools necessary to evaluate the threat of surveillance and take appropriate steps to defend against it.“ This is important stuff, and what I wish others would know, so I’m posting links to the source in the hope it will get more exposure and results in the search engines of the Internet. I will contact EFF and see if we can formulate a better method to disseminate and distribute this text, allowing for updates and annotations going forward. Also, I aggregate news that cover these kind of issues over on Left to chance, take a look, then follow @lefttochance and @eff on Twitter to stay informed, and consider joining the LinkedIn EFF Group I run to join in the conversation. In other words, get involved and …
Know your rights!
No downtime for online free speech
- EFF – Electronic Frontier Foundation
In a statement today, EFF reminds online service providers to stand firm against alleged terms of use violations that are used to bully and silience online critisims. We only need to look at EFF’s work with the MIT students at Defcon, and the fact that so many ISPs are now filterning previous unfettered access to Usenet newsgroups to know that these tactics are alive and used to push debate offline and away from the limelight. During this election season free speech must remain so as we debate and uncover facts about the people who are to lead America for the next 4 years. “As the country enters the most “wired” election season to date, EFF and the ACLU of Northern California strongly encourage online service providers (OSPs) and content owners to take special care to safeguard free speech. Copyright claims, trademark claims, and alleged terms of use violations can be misused to silence critics and stifle political dialogue online. Even temporary takedowns can harm open debate, as political speech depends on the spiritof the moment and the rapidly evolving arguments of the participants. The Internet can continue to revitalize our political lives — but only if service providers, content owners, and users all do their parts. No matter where you stand on the candidates or the issues, we should all agree on one principle: No downtime for online free speech!“
Hi, I'm fak3r and I've been online for over 15 years, blogging for 10. I work with open source software, various hardware and whatever else that I can hack on. I enjoy learning by doing, painting infrequently and listening to more music than the law allows. Feel free to follow me and comment on my thoughts and ideas; we're all in it together kid.
School spies on student, busts him for…eating candy
Prototype of the school's proposed catcam 3000
Today fak3r from fak3r.com and Matt from Obtuseview.com are working together to bring you a multi-perspective piece on internet security. Rarely are team-ups like this seen except in the pages of “Marvel Team-Ups” or “a very Special Episodes of Diff’rnt Strokes.”
So the Pennsylvania school using webcams on district provided laptops to spy on its students story just gets more and more bizarre. The parents of one of kids is (rightfully) suing the school, “…alleging the district unlawfully used its ability to access a webcam remotely on their son’s district-issued laptop computer [...] it watched him through his laptop’s webcam while he was at home and unaware he was being observed” This is apparently proven when the school “caught” the student engaging in “improper behavior” in his home, via a webcam image. Meanwhile the school claims it had the ability to observe images via the webcam, but that it would only be used if the laptop were reported to be lost stolen or missing, and even then “…the district would first have to request access from its technology and security department and receive authorization.” Additionally, the school claims this monitoring was all part of an agreement defining “acceptable-use” that the family had to sign to allow the student to take the laptop home, which also states that the family was required to buy insurance for the borrowed laptop. So far, so ridiculous, but then it starts getting sillier… (more…)
Feb 23, 2010 | Categories: commentary, geek, news, privacy | Tags: aclu, eavesdropping, eff, high school, keylogger, laptop, laptops, online privacy, privacy, students, webcam | View Comments