In 2000, this 15-year-old hacker brought down some of the most heavily visited websites on the net: Amazon, eBay, CNN, Yahoo!. At the time, reports claimed the hack caused a billion dollars’ worth of damage to these companies.
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On October 11, In 22 cities across Europe, citizens demonstrated to express their concerns over what they see as the increasing growth in government-created surveillance societies. October 11 was Freedom Not Fear Day, organized by the German Working Group on Data Retention.
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Canadians often face the argument that increased public video surveillance is necessary to guarantee their personal safety, or to make sure that their neighbourhood, community or city remains free of vandalism, poor driving or violent crime. Once a new surveillance technique or technology is put into operation, it becomes difficult to reverse the decision – and, consequently, we, as individual members of society, lose one more private moment in time.
Read moreThe rising cost of air travel might be the least of your worries when flying in the future.
Read moreThe author of a new article on surveillance in The Walrus thinks you do. Hal Niedzviecki says that while the thought of being monitored used to disturb us (think George Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four), cameras and other surveillance techniques are so prevalent today that we’ve stopped noticing them. And, he says, when we do notice we don’t really care (case in point: when it was announced that 10,000 cameras would be installed in Toronto’s subways, streetcars and buses, he asserts that citizens “shrugged and went about their business”).
Read moreSeveral Canadian universities, including Queen’s and the University of Victoria, recently launched a multi-disciplinary study on the sociological and cultural impacts of surveillance. “The New Transparency: Surveillance and Social Sorting” received $2.5 million from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Read moreThey are, according to one of London’s top police officers. In an interview with The Guardian, Mick Neville, head of New Scotland Yard’s Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office, says that even though Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe, CCTV cameras have, so far, helped solve just three per cent of street robberies in London.
Read moreLast week, Al Kamen of the Washington Post published an ironic article lightly criticizing his Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff about his statement that fingerprints aren’t personal information.
Read moreLast week, the Seattle Times reported on an experiment the University of Washington is conducting with radio frequency identification, or RFID. The university, responsible for one of the largest experiments using wireless tags in a social setting, has effectively created a futuristic atmosphere where RFID is everywhere. With this in place, they hope to uncover problems before the technology becomes widely adopted.
Read moreLast month, a correspondent with Popular Science conducted his own privacy experiment — to be as anonymous as possible while still living a normal life. His conclusion? That it’s nearly impossible.
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