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Destroying the Sacred Dyad: Cameras in the Classroom as Shadows on the Cave Wall

I currently teach in an old Midtown building in the center of New York City that used to house a secretarial typing school.  Legend has it that because there were lots of nefarious “students” in and around the “school” in the past, video cameras were placed in every corridor and cranny to record any crimes for the police that might take place.

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Turning to the Public for Detective Investigative Help

If you look at a weekly lineup of television shows at any given time you will notice that there are always plenty of shows that involve criminal investigation. Thinking back to my own childhood I remember that one of my favorite book series to read was the Encyclopedia Brown series in which at the end of every story, the reader is given the opportunity to solve the crime having read all of the facts and details of the crime. It is possibly in this spirit — that many people like to believe that they could solve a crime if given the opportunity — that the police in Sarasota County released all of the information they have regarding a puzzling unsolved crime.


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The 1.8 Gigapixel Flying Panopticon

A couple of years ago I wrote an article explaining how you, average person in life, are most likely being photographed numerous times without your knowledge. You are being caught as people take photos of the street with their camera phone, and perhaps even intentionally if you happen to be wearing something amusing or do something that attracts attention — or maybe you are the object of someone’s crush on your shared daily commute.

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Of Skanks and Agent Provocateurs

Two purely bizarre stories made news this week and in a strange and discomforting way — they’re both about the same, clinging, issue that razzle us every day:  Do we own our identity in public?  The first case concerns Hal Turner, a vile-spewing blogger from New Jersey, who claimed he was paid by the FBI to spread his ugly messages of hate. 

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The Google Embedded Eye

We know Google knows more about our neighbors than we know about ourselves — but when hard numbers are presented against Google — we begin to fill its pricking chill with no escape hatch available:

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Obama Protects Telco Surveilling

In a massive, but not unexpected, recantation of his campaign promises of reform, Barack Obama has betrayed the national good by continuing the Bush policy of giving the telephone companies that spied on us ongoing immunity from prosecution of our privacy rights violations.

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LaLa Breaks Users Privacy

LaLa is on online music service.  LaLa allows you to be invisible — and unbothered — on their system except, it seems, when they decide to violate your privacy to ask you in email why you want to remain private on their service.

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