Google uncloaked a new service dubbed Google Maps Coordinate that lets businesses track the activities of remote workers — such as traveling sales staff and field technicians — by tapping into GPS devices on their cell phones. For instance, says Google, a cable TV company could follow the progress of their field techs as they move from home to home repairing cable connections.
Tell Congress: Keep the Internet WEIRD — and SAVE NET NEUTRALITY
Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and other journalists are being punished for covering the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Local authorities recently issued an arrest warrant for Goodman and arrested at least two independent reporters — and this crackdown on press freedom will continue if we don’t speak up now.
“Disrupting Facebook would be like trying to disrupt telephone calls, it’s so ubiquitous,” says Paul Adams, former Facebook staffer.
If live video is Facebook’s phase four, then artificial intelligence and virtual reality look like being big parts of phase five. Both of these fit its strategy of monetizing as many of our social interactions as possible.
Lawyers Speak Out About Massive Hack of Prisoners’ Phone Records:
The mass recording of inmate calls is itself a fairly recent practice, sold by private telecommunications companies, like Securus, to jails and prisons as a security measure — a way to thwart violent uprisings, for example, or curb the introduction of contraband into a facility. This bulk surveillance — the recording and long-term storage of millions and millions of routine communications — raises serious concerns about the privacy rights of incarcerated persons and their loved ones, says David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project.
Verizon just launched FreeBee, its plan for ‘sponsored data’:
It’s a growing trend in the wireless space as companies look for ever more ways to hook data-hungry mobile users. But the practice has drawn scrutiny from net neutrality advocates who argue that sponsored data or “zero rating” lets rich, powerful companies pay to win, tilting the playing field against entrepreneurs and start-ups who can’t afford to pay the new fees.
For Internet Users 2015 Was a Year of Many Wins … and One Loss
On Thursday, settlements were reached for two civil rights lawsuits between Muslim Americans and the New York Police Department. The cases were brought against the NYPD by after officers secretly infiltrated mosques and Muslim organizations to gather information. What they NYPD will now have to do.
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