Published by daryl September 25th, 2007
in Database State and Police State.
Cellphone makers have proven adept at cramming their devices with unlikely new features — and also at ignoring the social mayhem that can follow.
Some lawmakers are working to limit mobile phone use in cars, while others have voiced concerns about surreptitious photos taken with handset cameras and posted online.
Meanwhile, privacy advocates have raised alarms about plans to incorporate so-called geotracking technology in mobile devices that can transmit the physical location of users.
Now, in the latest example of the mobile phone industry’s “anything goes” attitude, Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and chipmaker Texas Instruments are planning to produce a device with the built-in ability to record phone calls.
The recording capability gives further proof of handset developers’ ingenuity. But its development also serves as an illustration of the industry’s approach when it comes to the legal and social effects of what experts call the most widely adopted and disruptive technologies ever created.
Continue reading ‘Mobiles set to record conversations’
Published by daryl September 24th, 2007
in Police State.
The government should look into why black people are over-represented on the UK’s DNA database, says a black police officers’ group. It did not necessarily mean more black criminality, said National Black Police Association spokesman Keith Jarrett.
He said an inquiry should examine if officers used the “same robustness” in taking samples from different groups.
The Guardian has reported 37% of black men are in the database, compared with fewer than one in 10 white men.
Continue reading ‘Call for inquiry into DNA samples’
Published by daryl September 20th, 2007
in Linux.
Chris Sharp, director for platform strategy for Microsoft in Asia-Pacific, said governments that standardise on open-source software are hurting their local software vendors as they can’t make the money needed to invest in their own software products.
Sharp, who used to work for Red Hat before joining Microsoft, said building open-source software is a “waste of money” and that a company was in effect giving away its intellectual property, preventing it from getting future benefits. “If you are compelled to give back to the community, then you don’t have the opportunity to benefit from that knowledge,” he stressed. Sharp added that there are several myths surrounding open source. People tend to believe it is free, he said, but even companies that support open source are just as motivated by commercial interests as any other commercial software vendor.
Continue reading ‘Linux a ‘waste of money’, says top M$ exec’
