Well, there’s a surprise: airport full body scanners not only get peeked at by their collegues and turn into full colour pictures when you put a negative filter on them in photoshop, but they’ve been storing the images for ages.

For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they’re viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that “scanned images cannot be stored or recorded.”

Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all. The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.

This follows an earlier disclosure by the TSA that it requires all airport body scanners it purchases to be able to store and transmit images for “testing, training, and evaluation purposes.” The agency says, however, that those capabilities are not normally activated when the devices are installed at airports.

via Feds admit storing checkpoint body scan images | Privacy Inc. – CNET News.

Which basically means that the arm of the law becomes the arbiter of the law, instead of just carrying out the aims of the law. As this concerns freedom of speech and expression, these decisions need to be made by judges.

Hosters furieus over ‘censuurplan’ Justitie | Webwereld.

Why don’t people get it? Centralised databases are dreadfull things! The CIOT (Centraal Informatiepunt Onderzoek Telecommunicatie) database, which contains IP addresses, email addresses and name and address data, is accessed around 3m times a year. Apparently only 1% of these accesses is legal. Not only that, but users freely trade logins to the database, meaning that there are loads of people accessing the database who shouldn’t have any access to it at all!

Ophef over gebrekkige controle telecomdatabase CIOT | Webwereld.

So anyone with a friend in the Greek police force (and by friend I mean name and bank account number) can find out allll kinds of stuff about anyone in the database – which will soon be everyone. Sounds secure. Not.

Vingerafdruk Nederlanders in 2011 Europees gedeeld | Webwereld.

Apple claims that allthough it the new privacy policy enables them to gather and share this information, the information is anonymised and is currently not being shared with anyone. The information is sent in batches every 12 hours and the collection can be turned off by changing the setting on locational services to off.

So… does anyone have a firewall that can block these packets then?

Reactie Apple op vragen congresleden VS.