Big Brother is Watching

Efforts to control people are being made on a world-wide basis. Some efforts are intended for use in particular countries, while others are intended for world-wide use.

‘Surveillance society’ warning on data sharing

Confidential personal data – gleaned from sources as diverse as driving licences, medical records and store loyalty cards – is now often shared without people’s knowledge, the information commission will warn on Tuesday, in its latest salvo against what it calls the “surveillance society”.

Source: Financial Times, August 6, 2007

Parents track kids from cradle to car

But as GPS, webcams and home-monitoring equipment have come down in price, today's parents are employing a high-tech arsenal to keep tabs on their kids.

Source: Orlando Sentinel (online), June 24, 2007

Google's Breakneck Changes Stoke Privacy Fears

With Google search a fact of life, some suggest our notions of privacy need to move with the times.

"We are in transition in our idea of privacy and we are still discovering ways to make sense of the implicit traces people leave behind," writes David Weinberger in a new book, "Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder."

Source: PC Magazine (online), June 18, 2007

British law threatening U.S. freedom of speech

The author of a U.S.-published book that accused a former Saudi banking executive of funding terrorism is battling a precedent that experts say could give any foreign libel law priority over U.S. free press and speech guarantees.

Source: WorldNetDaily, June 16, 2007

Censoring of internet is 'spreading like virus'

Dozens of countries are copying China's methods of censoring the internet, Amnesty International said yesterday.

Source: Telegraph (online), June 7, 2007

Google's street views have privacy advocates crying "Don't be Evil"

Street-scene photographs added to Google Maps and Earth last week capture passers-by in delicate situations and have privacy advocates accusing the world's most popular Internet search firm of breaking its own "Don't be Evil" code.

Source: Breitbart, June 7, 2007

Air passengers face more delay as US plans fingerprinting

Passengers traveling from the US will have to present their fingers as well as their passports at check-in from the end of next year, according to a senior security official. Virgin Atlantic, whose customers may be forced to endure longer waits in terminals, has vowed to oppose the move.

Source: Guardian Unlimited, June 7, 2007

EU probes Google grip on data

European data protection officials have raised concerns that Google could be contravening European privacy laws by keeping data on internet searches for too long.

Source: Financial Times, May 24, 2007

Facial recognition makes finding Web photos easier

Swedish start-up Polar Rose AB aims to make it easy to find photos of familiar faces online, the company said on Tuesday, solving difficult Web search issues while potentially raising new privacy concerns.

Source: Reuters, December 19, 2006

Snubbing Smokers At Work

Is it the boss's business if you have a cigarette after dinner? After an Irish job ad stipulated that "smokers need not apply," that was put to the European Commission, which decided that employers refusing to hire smokers do not breach European antidiscrimination laws.
Source: Time Europe Edition (online), August 13, 2006

Robot spyplanes to guard Europe's borders

Fleets of unmanned "drone" aircraft fitted with powerful cameras are to be used to patrol Europe's borders in a dramatic move to combat people-smuggling, illegal immigration and terrorism.

Source: Independent (online), June 4, 2006

Gates Speaks Out Against Net Censorship

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates said Wednesday that attempts by governments to censor Web site contents were doomed, because banned information can seep out despite official injunctions.

Source: My Way (online), February 1, 2006

Prof: Right to assisted suicide 'irresistible'

During the next 35 years, the traditional view of the sanctity of human life will collapse under pressure from scientific, technological, and demographic developments, says controversial bio-ethics professor Peter Singer.

Source: WorldNetDaily, December 3, 2005

Technology to drive revolution in road safety

Motorists who already regard speed cameras as evidence of the encroachment of the Big Brother state should brace themselves for devices that will not only tell police how they drive, but make legal retribution swifter.

From a black box in the boot to "alcolocks" on the dashboard, the car of the future is likely to be crammed with equipment designed to keep drunken drivers away from the wheel and slow down speeders.

Source: Telegraph, October 10, 2005

Experts Suggest Euthanasia for Severely Disabled Newborns

Two Dutch doctors have published guidelines under which babies born to a certain life of extreme physical suffering should have their lives ended by physicians, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Eduard Verhagen and Pieter Sauer of the University Medical Center in Groningen, are "convinced that life-ending measures can be acceptable in these cases under very strict conditions," they wrote in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. They said they composed their essay to address "blood-chilling accounts and misunderstandings."

Source: WFIE Channel 14 (online), March 11, 2005

Study Suggests Newborn Euthanasia Often Goes Unreported

At least five mercy killings of newborns occur for every one reported to authorities in the Netherlands, doctors there reported just months after the first startling news of the controversial practice.

While still very rare, euthanizing terminally ill newborns is more common than first believed, according to Dutch doctors, and other experts say it also occurs, quietly, in other countries.

Source: Boston Channel 5 (online), March 10, 2005

Biometric ID may snare travelers

Biometric passports, described by some as a global identification card, are just around the corner -- and it could mean easier travel for business travelers or a hassle for others.

Viewed as an important tool for tracking potential terrorists and illegal immigrants, your personal data could soon be made available to authorities, of whom you are unaware.

Source: CNN, March 4, 2005

U.S. foreign travelers to be fingerprinted

Some 25 foreign nations are planning to require visiting Americans to be fingerprinted, according to a prominent biometrics expert and president of the company that produces the computerized desktop booking stations used by many law enforcement authorities.

Source: WorldNetDaily, November 13, 2003

Passengers secretly filmed in anti-terror trial

Authorities are trialling concealed high-tech, computer-linked video cameras that can film the face of every passenger arriving in Australia at Sydney Airport to help identify terrorists and other undesirable travellers.

Customs is also testing a world-first computerised face-recognition system that scans the faces of all passengers as they present their passports.

Source: The Sidney Morning Herald (online), January 5, 2003

Ruling could close sites

A High Court decision allowing a US online publisher to be sued under Australian law could force the closure of some websites, an industry expert said today....

The landmark judgment means material on the internet is deemed to have been published in the place it is viewed, not the country of origin.

Source: news.com.au, December 10, 2002

Internet extends long arm of the law

Police in Italy didn't care that five Web sites they deemed blasphemous and thus illegal were located in the United States, where First Amendment protections apply.

The police shut them down anyway in early July, simply by sitting down at the alleged offender's Rome computer.

Talk about the long arm of the law.

Under pressure from their citizens, governments around the world are increasingly abandoning the hands-off attitude they initially had toward the Internet. They are now applying their laws far beyond their borders -- thanks to the borderless medium.

Put another way, foreign citizens and businesses are now being subjected to copyright, speech, consumer protection and other laws enacted by governments in countries where they've had no voice.

Source: CNN, Sci-Tech, July22, 2002

Sustainable development

I remember, when I heard the high schools in Montgomery County, Md., were advocating abortion and condom distribution to teens in the sex-education classes, how shocked I was. For five years prior to covering my first U.N. conference, I lobbied at the county and state level against these radical and immoral ideas. As I analyzed what our children were being taught, I was puzzled. I could see that these ideas came from the federal level to the state level and then down to the local level, but why? Where was our government getting these ideas?

It was not until I went to Cairo, Egypt, to cover the U.N. Conference on Population and Development that I realized the abortion/condom/sex-education agenda as well as the pro-homosexual agenda came from the international level – the United Nations.

Source: WorldNetDaily, March 30, 2002

US targets Somalia in hunt for al-Qaeda

American forces have already flown surveillance flights over Somalia looking for al-Qaeda forces to target in the next stage of the global war on terror, The Observer has learnt.
Source: observer.co.uk, December 9, 2001

Big Brother Watches Your Weight

Global Positioning System satellites, originally used by the U.S. military to spy on the movement of troops, are being used in Switzerland to find new ways for overweight people to burn off excess fat.

A small device about the size of a cell phone is clipped to the patient's belt. It allows monitoring of his movements. The doctors and nutritionists can then determine the amount of energy expended by the person.

Source: Wired, Wired News, Dec. 8, 2000