A recent court ruling just made it harder for police to track down your cell phone. An Illinois district court judge issued new requirements earlier this month to better protect innocent bystanders from Stingray devices deployed in their vicinity. The cell-site simulators, whose constitutionality remains murky, are used to gather suspected criminals' cell phone information and location, but often pick up innocent people’s data in the process.
Walmart’s Use of Sci-fi Tech To Spot Shoplifters Raises Privacy Questions →
But earlier this year, Walmart showed how times have changed. It tested a system that scanned the face of everyone entering several of its stores, identified suspected shoplifters, and instantly alerted store security on their mobile devices.
The potential of such facial recognition technology has been discussed for years. But now some stores are actually using it.
Walmart’s experiment, which it ended after several months, highlights the powerful high-tech tools available to retailers to reduce theft. However, it also raises questions about whether stores should have to follow rules when using the technology to protect shoppers’ privacy.
On CISA →
I have avoided writing about the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), largely because the details kept changing...
...the bill encourages companies to share personal information with the government, allows them to take some offensive measures against attackers (or innocents, if they get it wrong), waives privacy protections, and gives companies immunity from prosecution.
Information sharing is essential to good cybersecurity, and we need more of it. But CISA is a really a bad law.
The Plight of Refugees, the Shame of the World →
The world is facing the biggest refugee crisis since World War II, a staggering 60 million people displaced from their homes, four million from Syria alone. World leaders have abdicated their responsibility for this unlucky population, around half of whom are children.
The situation is sadly reminiscent of that of refugees fleeing the destruction of World War II and the Nazi onslaught. Then, too, most governments turned their backs, and millions who were trapped perished.
We are mired in a set of myopic, stingy and cruel policies. The few global institutions dedicated to supporting this population are starved of resources as governments either haven’t funded them or have reneged on their pledges of funds. Wealthy and powerful nations aren’t doing their part; the United States, for example, has taken fewer than 1,000 refugees from Syria.
Monthly food allocation to refugee families in Lebanon to $13.50 per month, down from $27 in January...
And I've seen a few people say "well, why doesn't Syria's neighbors, like Turkey, do their part?" Ahem:
Of the four million refugees from Syria, about two million are in Turkey and one million in Lebanon...
Alabama Poses a Greater Risk to Syrian Refugees Than Those Refugees Pose to Alabama →
The argument about whether to let refugees in or not would benefit from knowing what our current process is. There's already an extensive, invasive, and extremely onerous process refugees have to go through:
It takes anywhere from 18–24 months for a Syrian refugee to be cleared to live in the United States. First he or she must be registered with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. This agency interviews refugees, conducts background checks, takes their biometric data, and establishes whether they belong to one of roughly 45 “categories of concern” given their past lives and work history in Syria. Typically, the applicants are women and children. If anything looks amiss, they are pulled from consideration. Then the U.S. government begins its own vetting. The applicants are interviewed again, and their names and particulars are run through terrorism databases. They receive additional screening when they arrive in the United States and then again after their first year in the country.
This process has led to slightly more than 1,800 Syrians being admitted to the United States since 2011. None of them has landed in Alabama, but if that ever did happen, no one will ever have gone through a more painstaking and extensive vetting process where the reward was to live in Alabama.
What was behind ISIS’s attack on Paris, according to experts →
On Saturday, a theory began circulating about why the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, attacked Paris: Since the Islamic State's drive to gain and hold territory in Syria has suffered setbacks lately, perhaps the group was lashing out to kill people far beyond its borders to compensate.
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But the story is a bit more complicated, experts say...
Reign of the quiet king →
It's easy to forget how different the rest of the world can be, as well as how much of the present is an odd mix of tradition and contemporary ideology.
Nonetheless, under Sihamoni’s rule, the monarchy as a political institution has effectively ceased to exist.
After last year’s disputed elections, in what would turn out to be one of his biggest political tests, Sihamoni opened parliament despite the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party – which was boycotting the swearing-in – begging him not to do so.
But the process of de-politicising the monarchy began years earlier.
The power-sharing agreement between the royalist Funcipec party, led by Sihanouk’s second-born son, Prince Norodom Rannariddh, and the Cambodian People’s Party after the 1993 election set the stage for years of political wrangling.
By 2004, Prime Minister Hun Sen had made several threats to abolish the monarchy entirely.
“Anointing Sihamoni made the best of a bad situation,” said journalist Sebastian Strangio, author of the newly released Hun Sen’s Cambodia.
“It secured the monarchy’s survival into an uncertain future, but it also involved giving the CPP what it had always wanted – a figurehead king who would stay within the limits of the constitution."
Obamacare Not as Egalitarian as It Appears →
We can safely say that the policy is costing less than anticipated, perhaps 20 percent less, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate, and that it has reduced the number of Americans without insurance. But the numbers also suggest that by some measures, the Affordable Care Act has had only a limited impact on economic inequality. In fact, I view the policy as an object lesson in the complexity of reducing the harmful consequences of inequality in the United States.
The act has many parts, but let’s focus on the mandate, a core feature that requires those without insurance to buy it. It was intended to help millions of Americans who did not have health care coverage. Under the program, government subsidies are available for the needy, and there is clear evidence that the poorest people, who receive the largest subsidies, are better off under the health reform law.
In that sense, the program has been a success. But whether other individuals subject to the insurance mandate — those who qualify for lower subsidies or for none at all — are also better off is much harder to say, some recent research has found.