Professor Jones [NB the guy who sent all the wierd emails that were uncovered revealing that data was spurious and that he’d hammer into the ground all global warming sceptic scientists] also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.
Yet another problem in a string of RFID related problems. Yes, your privacy is at risk.
Defects in e-passports allow real-time tracking • The Register.
Well, they have tested the full body scanner on TV and the guy carrying bomb parts wasn’t stopped. And it’s not like he tried really hard to hide them either – they weren’t particularly small bomb parts and the only cavity he used was his mouth.
Basically they’re just a huge invasion of privacy, an excuse to see you naked. They don’t work.
Schneier on Security: German TV on the Failure of Full-Body Scanners.
It turns out that not only can they store and send the images they make, if you invert the colours of the scan in photoshop, you get a proper colour image of the body scanned.
US airport body scanners can store and export images • The Register.
They have applied for a patent to change billboards in Street View to whatever Google advertisers want, instead of the real content of the billboard.
Google Plans to Upgrade Old Billboards in Street View.
Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.
The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.
The HadCRUT database includes specific stations providing incomplete data and highlighting the global-warming process, rather than stations facilitating uninterrupted observations.
On the whole, climatologists use the incomplete findings of meteorological stations far more often than those providing complete observations.
If your family is kidnapped and tied up in your own home and you manage to escape, would you beat the living shit out of the guy who did it?
This guy did and he’s just been sentenced to 30 months jail time, whilst the kidnapper gets off completely free!
The UK is going to pot quickly, but these kind of rulings are ridiculous, even by their standards.
Not only do they indicate that as a government you think the punitive system you have in place (prison) doesn’t work as a reformation aid, it also says the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. Worst of all, there are allways borderline cases, such as this one, where a 17 year old got put on the registry for having admitted consensual sex with his 15 year old girlfriend due to a spiteful mother. Now even the mother doesn’t agree with the amount of hassle and persecution this guy has to put up with due to the stigma of being on this list.
Young Pittsfield Township man struggles with sex offender label – AnnArbor.com.
You’d have thought that Isreal of all countries would have learned of the problems involved in having too much useless information in a centralised database from the Dutch in WWII – which had ethnic information such as: “are you jewish?” in there, enabling the Germans to export the most jews per capita from the Netherlands. But no – they want a compulsory database of every citizen in Israel containing two fingerprints and a picture. Idiots.
Israel tests biometric database • The Register.
After taping a birthday party, a woman managed to get 3 whole minutes of Twiligh New Moon footage on her tape, was arrested and is now facing up to 3 years of jail time!
Copyright cops going nuts…
If you have a cellphone, it turns out that Sprint keeps 24 months of your location data and turns it over to law enforcement regularly. 8 million requests were made over the last year. Requests can be made every 3 minutes for up to 60 days.
Sprint isn’t the only one who tracks this data: Yahoo and Verizon are also culprits but they’re not disclosing the amount of times they’ve given away this kind of data to the government.
Yup, they know where you are and where you’ve been. It’s a brave new world indeed!
Sprint Makes Goverment Tracking of GPS Data Easy – PC World.
All your banking details will be given to the Americans, who can then also pass it on to third parties as they so wish. The EU will not be able to sift through US banking data. Why the EU gave away our private data is a totaly mystery. Privacy rights? Whatever.
EU to approve more banking data for US spooks • The Register.
The Dutch have a crazy plan to charge people per km they drive. How will they monitor this? By placing little black GPS boxes in every car. If you don’t have a working box in your car, you will face up to four (!) years in jail – more than most other forms of crime.
Now the economics minister is saying that the ideas of an invasion of privacy are indian stories and nonsense. I ask, how much more can you invade someone’s privacy than following someone’s car everywhere (s)he goes and putting all that information in a huge database?!
EZ: privacybezwaar km-heffing is indianenverhaal (video) | Webwereld.
Basically it’s all about the movie and music industry being able to kick you off the net and subject you to huge fines without any proof – just an accusation of filesharing is enough. It’s also about giving the business secretary the power to make up penalties and enforcements at whim.
It’s not about stimulating creativity, new business, ensuring that everyone has broadband, etc.
Looks like labour has it’s pockets filled with copyright holders hands!
And allthough the authenticity of the 1079 emails and 72 documents hasn’t been verified, it shows that the researchers have manipulated the data to fit their models, can’t explain the lack of global warming and have plans set up to destroy the credibility of any scientist doubting their stance.
Michelle Malkin » The global warming scandal of the century.
[edit]You can find the full archives here
The head of Gazprom is building a most luxurious palace in the style of the XVIII century worth $ 50 million
Design documentation for anticipated future residence of the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, who looks like a huge palace in the style of the XVIII century.
Impressive, very similar to the mansion in Peterhof, suddenly brought up on the shore of the Istra reservoir palace initially caused a lot of noise in the blogs.
But officially the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, who recorded in the real owners of the palace, that he has the attitude toward him, not admitted.
“Our company has no relation to the” Istra Manor “- the spokesman said Gazprom” Sergei Kupriyanov. But at the same time, membership
mansion Miller refused to comment, that is neither confirmed nor denied.
English fail via Google Translate, but you get the idea. Check out the Google Maps images at the bottom of the fishki link.
http://fishki.net/comment.php?id=60416
Translated via Google Translate
An interesting article – if you have bank customer information, which you’ve stolen from a bank, governments will pay you for that information.
If you’re a spy you’d be shot for it. It’s not right that the Dutch government is using tax payers money on criminally attained information to find people who have foreign cash assets. In a court of law, evidence obtained this way is also not allowed and for good reason.
Booming business, steal and sell to governments « Frederik Van Lierde.
“The law in the Netherlands says that intercepted phone calls between attorneys and their clients must be destroyed. But the Dutch government has been keeping under wraps for years that no one has the foggiest clue how to delete them Google translation. Now, an email PDF from the National Police Services Agency KLPD has surfaced, revealing that the working of the technology in question is a NetApp trade secret. The Dutch police are now trying to get their Israeli supplier Verint to tell them how to delete tapped calls and comply with the law. Meanwhile, attorneys in the Netherlands remain afraid to use their phones.
via Slashdot Your Rights Online Story | Dutch Gov’t Has No Idea How To Delete Tapped Calls.
So, son, you defended your woman by throwing some ketchup? That’s you on file – fingerprinted and DNA’d at the copshop. I’m sure it’s making the UK safer, this kind of discipline.
Cops DNA boy for throwing tiny ketchup pot at McDonald’s | The Sun |News.
The Dutch RIAA: Buma / Stemra has decided it wants all users that link in a Youtube video into their page, to pat EUR. 150,- for up to 6 videos or songs. Fucking arseholes.
So – people are putting out plugins to block Buma / Stemra IPs.
Weblogs houden spider Buma/Stemra buiten | Webwereld.
We should all know by now that the fingerprint biometric is a bad one: not only can you duplicate it fairly easily using just gummy bears, or increase the risk of having your finger cut off for you, they also give too many false negatives; some people will never be able to use fingerprint scanners.
The problem here is that because they have to automate the fingerprinting process, you get a lower level of accuracy in the scans. No two prints by the same finger are ever exactly the same. This is corrected for by error correction codes, which adds information to the prints to allow the computer to correct for these disparities. If you can get to these codes, you can find out information about the original fingerprint and the amount of data loss that is expected. So searching through the error correction code database allows you to find a fingerprint that is similar to yours and has a large correction. This means you can become this other person fairly easily.
Vingerafdrukparanoia is terecht (opinie) | Webwereld.
Lovely. If you’re an asylum seeker, the UK border patrols will want to take you DNA through your hair and nails to determine your nationality. Not only is this an insane breach of your person, there is also no scientific methodology being given out to show how exactly anything will be accomplished by the investigating company (whoever that is).
Slashdot Science Story | Scientists Decry “Horrifying” UK Border Test Plan.
What the fuck is going on in the UK?! It turns out that under new legislation if you leave your kids at another person’s house to mind the child, that other person will have to be vetted by the government. If you want to take care of other people’s children (either as a babysitter or as a reciprocal favour) then you will need to be vetted by government. If you drive kids to sports activities… you guessed it… you need to be vetted!
Vetting not only entails an intrusion to your privacy, but you will receive training and need to make modifications to the area the child(ren) will be staying in.
Which basically means you have no right to decide how to bring up your own child!
Nation’s parents prepare to be vetted • The Register.
Another reason to not trust gmail: a court orderd an account deactivated and the users personal information turned over after the Rocky Mountain Bank fucked up and sent personal information on 1300 customers to that account.
It beggars belief that your email can be destroyed that easily!
MediaPost Publications Judge Orders Google To Deactivate User’s Gmail Account 09/25/2009.
This is one of the problems with DRM – because different parties are using different DRM systems (ePub and MobiPocket), e-book readers are forced to handle them with 2 different firmwares. IREX, builder of the iLiad e-book reader, only support MobiPocket if you have a Dutch iLiad e-book reader. There will be a firmware update to handle ePub, but not for the Dutch.
ILiad-bezitters door drm-vete in de kou | Webwereld.