schwit1 (797399) writes “As many as 227 million Americans may be compelled to disclose intimate details of their families and financial lives — including their Social Security numbers — in a new national database being assembled by two federal agencies. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau posted an April 16 Federal Register notice of an expansion of their joint National Mortgage Database Program to include personally identifiable information that reveals actual users, a reversal of previously stated policy. The FHFA will manage the database and share it with CFPB. A CFPB internal planning document for 2013-17 describes the bureau as monitoring 95 percent of all mortgage transactions. FHFA officials claim the database is essential to conducting a monthly mortgage survey required by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and to help it prepare an annual report for Congress.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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New Federal Database Will Track Americans’ Credit Ratings, Other Financial Info
Airbnb announced today that it will begin charging San Francisco’s 14 percent hotel tax on reservations in the city, starting this summer. The taxes will be paid by guests. Last week, the company announced a different partnership in Portland, Oregon, where Airbnb itself will pay some city taxes. Read more… 
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes “Business Insider reports that protesters have stopped a bus filled with Apple employees in San Francisco and a Google bus in Oakland. Tech companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook provide free buses that take their employees from San Francisco to their headquarters in the suburbs. Protesters are mad at the tech companies because the wealthy tech employees have driven up the price of housing in San Francisco, which is pricing out some people. The buses also use public transit stops, and some protesters think that’s wrong. Between 70 and 100 protesters gathered for the blockade of Apple private tech shuttle to protest evictions in the city of San Francisco. The activists in San Fransisco were from Eviction Free San Francisco, Our Mission No Eviction, Causa Justa /Just Cause. Protesters stood in front of a white shuttle bus holding banners and signs. Some peeked through cardboard signs fashioned in the shape of place markers on Google maps, with “Evicted” written across the front. Meanwhile violence occurred in Oakland, according to reports from IndyBay, as protesters unfurled two giant banners reading “TECHIES: Your World Is Not Welcome Here” and “Fuck off Google” and “a person appeared from behind the bus and quickly smashed the whole of the rear window, making glass rain down on the street. Cold air blew inside the bus and the blockaders with their banners departed.” Two weeks ago, protesters stopped a Google bus.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes “The Boston Globe reports that the pending use of GPS tracking devices, slated to be installed in Boston police cruisers, has many officers worried that commanders will monitor their every move. Boston police administrators say the system gives dispatchers the ability to see where officers are, rather than wait for a radio response and supervisors insist the system will improve their response to emergencies. Using GPS, they say, accelerates their response to a call for a shooting or an armed robbery. ‘We’ll be moving forward as quickly as possible, ‘ says former police commissioner Edward F. Davis. ‘There are an enormous amount of benefits. . . . This is clearly an important enhancement and should lead to further reductions in crime.’ But some officers said they worry that under such a system they will have to explain their every move and possibly compromise their ability to court street sources. ‘No one likes it. Who wants to be followed all over the place?’ said one officer who spoke anonymously because department rules forbid police from speaking to the media without authorization. ‘If I take my cruiser and I meet [reluctant witnesses] to talk, eventually they can follow me and say why were you in a back dark street for 45 minutes? It’s going to open up a can of worms that can’t be closed.’ Meanwhile civil libertarians are relishing the rank and file’s own backlash. ‘The irony of police objecting to GPS technology for privacy reasons is hard to miss in the aftermath of United States v. Jones, ‘ says Woodrow Hartzog. ‘But the officers’ concerns about privacy illustrate just how revealing GPS technology can be. Departments are going to have to confront the chilling effect this surveillance might have on police behavior.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
slew writes “Apparently none of the 24K+ students who sat for the 2013 Liberia University entrance exam got a passing mark, and fewer than a hundred managed to pass the either the english (pass level 70%) or math (pass level 50%) sections required to qualify to be part of the normal class of 2k-3k students admitted every year… Historically, the pass rate has been about 20-30% and in recent years, the test has been in multiple-guess format to facilitate grading. The mathematics exam generally focuses on arithmetic, geometry, algebra, analytical geometry and elementary statistic and probability; while the English exam generally focuses on grammar, sentence completion, reading comprehension and logical reasoning. However, as a testament to the over-hang of a civil war, university over-crowding, corruption, social promotion, the admission criteria was apparently temporarily dropped to 40% math and 50% English to allow the provisional admission of about 1.6K students. And people are calling foul…” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
1sockchuck writes “A big chunk of the Azure cloud will be living on the plains of Iowa. Microsoft will invest another $700 million to expand its Iowa data center campus near Des Moines, marking the third major server farm for the state this year. Facebook recently announced a new data center in Altoona. The same day, Google said it would put another $400 million into its facility in Council Bluffs. Why Iowa? Aggressive tax incentives and a central location to bridge the distance between these companies’ east and west coast server footprints.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.