The Twitter document leak fiasco started with a simple story that personal accounts of Twitter employees were hacked. Twitter CEO Evan Williams commented on that story, saying that Twitter itself was mostly unaffected. No personal accounts were compromised, and “most of the sensitive information was personal rather than company-related,” he said. The individual behind the…
Web-based mail exempt from data retention
Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail users will be exempt from the (Irish) government’s new telecoms surveillance bill, according to industry experts. The Retention of Data Bill, published by the Minister for Justice to combat serious criminal offences, compels internet and telephone operators to retain customer data on calls, texts and e-mails for up to two…
Tiburon wants to photograph every car
Visitors should be prepared to have their pictures taken as they enter and leave this picturesque town of million-dollar views and homes along the San Francisco Bay. Officials want to photograph every car and use the license plate information to solve crimes in the town of 9,000. Critics see the plan as an intrusion into…
Amazon Kindles a debate
On Friday, The New York Times reported that Amazon had remotely deleted some digital editions of books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them. Ironically, the books were George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm. Amazon’s explanation was that the company that had provided the books didn’t have the rights to the books:…