For the last 10 years, if you wanted to understand a complex legal issue in the news, your first stop was Groklaw. A free, open source exchange of theories and ideas, Groklaw has been an invaluable resource for lawyers and laymen alike. Last night, its owner pulled the plug. It was a matter of privacy. Read more…
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Legal Site Groklaw Shuts Down Rather Than Face NSA in Heartrending Post
To be slightly more transparent and/or spew numbers to confuse the common citizen, the Obama administration released two documents to show the scope of the NSA’s data collection program. Those documents reveal that the NSA monitors 1.6% of the world’s Internet traffic and reviews .00004% of all traffic. Read more…
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The NSA Monitors 1.6% of the World’s Internet Traffic
At CNET, Declan McCullagh reports that the U.S. government has demanded that large Internet companies provide them with users’ stored passwords, which are typically encrypted.
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Feds tell major internet companies to decrypt and hand over users’ account passwords
First time accepted submitter Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes “Reuters reports that under a cost-saving plan by the US Postal Service, millions of Americans accustomed to getting their mail delivered to their doors will have to trek to the curb and residents of new homes will use neighborhood mailbox clusters. ‘Converting delivery away from door delivery to either curb line or centralized delivery would enable the Postal Service to provide service to more customers in less time, ‘ says Postal Service spokeswoman Sue Brennan. More than 30 million American homes get door-to-door delivery and another 50 million get their mail dropped at their curbside mailboxes. But the Post Service, which is buckling under massive financial losses, sees savings in centralized mail delivery. Door-to-door delivery costs the Postal Service about $353 per address each year while curbside delivery costs $224, and cluster boxes cost $160 per address. But unions say it’s a bad idea to end delivery to doorsteps and will be disruptive for the elderly and disabled. ‘It’s madness, ‘ says Jim Sauber, chief of staff for the National Association of Letter Carriers. ‘The idea that somebody is going to walk down to their mailbox in Buffalo, New York, in the winter snow to get their mail is just crazy.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader writes “The U.S. Dept. of Justice has announced that Panasonic and its subsidiary Sanyo have been fined $56.5 million for their roles in price fixing conspiracies involving battery cells and car parts. The fines are part of a larger investigation into the prices of auto parts. Interestingly, 12 people at various companies have been sentenced to jail time, and three more are going to prison. Since the charges are felonies, none of the sentences are shorter than a year and a day. Criminal fines targeting these companies has totaled over $874 million. ‘The conduct of Panasonic, SANYO, and LG Chem resulted in inflated production costs for notebook computers and cars purchased by U.S. consumers. These investigations illustrate our efforts to ensure market fairness for U.S. businesses by bringing corporations to justice when their commercial activity violates antitrust laws.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Jail Time For Price-Fixing Car Parts
snydeq writes “Andrew Oliver offers further proof that drunk driving and on-site servers don’t mix. Oliver, who had earlier announced a New Year’s resolution to go all-in on cloud services, had that business strategy expedited when a drunk driver, fleeing a hit-and-run, drove his SUV directly into the beauty shop next door to his company’s main offices. ‘Our servers were down for eight hours, and various services were intermittent for at least 12 hours. Had things been worse, we could have lost everything. Like our customers, we needed HA and DR. Moreover, we thought, maybe our critical services like email, our website, and Jira should be in a real data center. This made going all-cloud a top priority for us rather than “when we get to it.”‘ Oliver writes, detailing his company’s resultant hurry-up migration plan to 100 percent cloud services.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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How One Drunk Driver Sent My Company To the Cloud
theshowmecanuck writes “According to the Montreal Gazette, ‘The owner and operator of a well-known ‘real gore’ website is charged with corrupting morals for posting a video allegedly depicting the murder of student Jun Lin by Luka Magnotta. Magnotta, 30, is currently in custody charged with first-degree murder in the death of the 33-year-old Chinese international student, who was killed in Montreal in May 2012. The victim’s severed limbs were then mailed to political parties and elementary schools, and his torso found inside a discarded suitcase.’ A news interview with the detective in charge of the case, airing on CTV as I type this, says he believes the web site hosts a lot of racist content and unimaginable violence. You should note that Canada has less free speech than in America (we have ‘hate crime laws’), but there will likely be some arguments in this vein. The charge against the operator is quite rare and no-one so far remembers it ever being used before.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Gore Site Operator Arrested For Posting Video of Murder
Although they probably didn’t maintain any pretense of security, Verizon customers will be bummed to know that a duo of security experts have discovered how to hack into the carrier’s network extending base stations and turn them into little spy centers. Read more…
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It’s a Cinch for Hackers to Break Into Your Verizon Network
Looking to develop a way to block the government and private companies from monitoring people’s messages, Peter Sunde is working on an app called Hemlis “where no one can spy on you, not even us.” [Read more]
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Pirate Bay founder creating surveillance-free messaging app
cold fjord writes “From the Examiner: ‘…the second-largest employer in America is Kelly Services, a temporary work provider. … part-time jobs are at an all-time high, with 28 million Americans now working part-time. … There are now a record number of Americans with temporary jobs. Approximately 2.7 million, in fact. And the trend has been growing. … Temp jobs made up about 10 percent of the jobs lost during the Great Recession, but now make up a tenth of the jobs in the United States. In fact, nearly one-fifth of all jobs gained since the recession ended have been temporary.’ The NYT has a chart detailing the problem.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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America’s Second-largest Employer Is a Temp Agency