The school offered a special lanyard with the RFID tag removed, in the hopes to put a damper on the whole situation. The student’s father refused the deal, however, because it came with strings attached.

“He told me in a meeting that if my daughter would proudly wear her student ID card around her neck so everyone could see, he would be able to quietly remove her chip from her student ID card,” Steve Hernandez told WND. “He went on to say as part of the accommodation my daughter and I would have to agree to stop criticizing the program and publicly support … it. I told him that was unacceptable because it would imply an endorsement of the district’s policy and my daughter and I should not have to give up our constitutional rights to speak out against a program that we feel is wrong.”

The Hernandez family decided to take action against the school with the help of the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties and human rights group which immediately took the view that the school district is looking for more public funding, which it can only receive if there is proof of positive student attendance rates. Rutherford attorneys filed a petition for the aforementioned TRO, as well as immediate injunctive and declaratory relief alleging that the school’s actions violate Hernandez’s rights under Texas’ Religious Freedom Act, the First Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment.

“The court’s willingness to grant a temporary restraining order is a good first step, but there is still a long way to go—not just in this case, but dealing with the mindset, in general, that everyone needs to be monitored and controlled,” John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, said in a statement. While the TRO has been granted, a hearing on the preliminary injunction will take place next week.

I was very concerned to read recent reports suggesting that state and local law enforcement agencies may be working around the protections of Jones by requesting the location records of individuals directly from their wireless carriers instead of tracking the individuals through stand-alone GPS devices installed on their vehicles. I was further concerned to learn that in many cases, these agencies appear to be obtaining precise records of individuals' past and current movements from carriers without first obtaining a warrant for this information. I think that these actions may violate the spirit if not the letter of the Jones decision.

I am writing to ask you about the Department of Justice's own practices in requesting location information from wireless carriers. I am eager to learn about how frequently the Department requests location information and what legal standard the Department believes it must meet to obtain it. I would also like to know how the Department may have changed these practices since the Jones decision.

• Keeping track of nearly every aspect of a pig's life and "afterlife" seems like a huge project, but the pork industry is starting to collect data on where your sausage and pork chops grew up. Who needs to play Farmville when there'll be real-time systems keeping track of actual farm animals that you can eat in real life...? [url]
• Chicken trackers have been available for a few years now, allowing people to easily see where their poultry came from. Stalking your chicken could make it more appetizing. [url]
• The US Department of Agriculture has an online mapping tool for finding "food deserts" -- not desserts -- where there is limited availability of healthy foods. This online map doesn't show where there isn't any pizza delivery service, but maybe it should so it gets more traffic. [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

What grates on me is that for all the spying these companies do on my online behavior, they can't seem to serve me an ad for something I'd actually want to buy. Worse, they're terrible at delivering anything close to approximating a deal on the things I'd like to buy, even when I tell Google exactly what I want.

What gives?

For example, I ski a lot. And I spend a reasonable amount of time on Backcountry.com, Rossignol.com and other ski-related sites. Even the most rudimentary tracking technology should know that I'm interested in Rossignol skis (perhaps it would even know I bought two pairs of Rossignol skis this past year), yet when I type in "skis" into Google or even "Rossignol" into Google, the ads served up are for ... something completely different. Even the store that sold me my last pair of Rossignol skis – EVO – keeps trying to show me every kind of ski except Rossignol skis.

... Come on, people: if you're going to track my online behavior, at least use it to get me to buy something I want!

Asay feels that, based on his purchasing habits, advertisers should be able to figure out that he's loyal to Rossignol skis—but he could be encouraged to spend more money on them if he was targeted with ads for sale prices and other promotions. Instead, he's shown full-price retail listings for brands he's not interested in, pointing him to retailers he already knows about.

Now, in some ways this example is a little unfair, since it's only natural that companies are going to want to advertise to their competitors' customers, and not letting them do so would remove one of their biggest incentives for spending money on ads. But Asay still hits an important point: most targeted ads are not that effective. Online advertising as a whole already faces a public perception crisis in the form of privacy concerns, and they are never going to solve it if they don't put more emphasis on giving customers something in return for their privacy sacrifices.

When the government requests records from cellular services, data disclosing the location of the telephone at the time of particular calls may be acquired only by a warrant issued on probable cause. U.S. Const., amend. 4. The records show the date, time, called number, and location of the telephone when the call was made. These data are constitutionally protected from this intrusion. The standard under the Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2703(d), is below that required by the Constitution.

Your service has been recommended to me multiple times, but before I start using your service, I have two questions.

1. Do you keep ANY logs which would allow you or a 3rd party to match an IP address and a time stamp to a user of your service? If so, exactly what information do you hold?

2. Under what jurisdictions does your company operate and under what exact circumstances will you share the information you hold with a 3rd party?

 1) Yes, any serious company would. I would be concerned about the quality of a company who did not. If no logs are kept it'd be impossible to respond to a DMCA complaint which puts the company liable for a 100,000$ fine. I highly doubt you're going to find any company willing to risk that sort of liability on a 5$/month vpn account. Good luck!

2) USA - Also, it's the jurisdiction of the server endpoint -- Not the company itself.

"Sounds bogus to me. 17 USC 512(m) says the safe harbor is not conditioned on "monitoring the service." However, the service provider will be asked for evidence of its takedown practices, but the service provider only has to give what it's got. The $100k fine is made up too."

In a February hearing, according to a transcript, Judge Campbell asked the prosecutor, "Were there warrants obtained in connection with the use of this device?"

The prosecutor, Frederick A. Battista, said the government obtained a "court order that satisfied [the] language" in the federal law on warrants. The judge then asked how an order or warrant could have been obtained without telling the judge what technology was being used. Mr. Battista said: "It was a standard practice, your honor."

Judge Campbell responded that it "can be litigated whether those orders were appropriate."

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

“What’s changed [is that if] you want to cancel your OnStar service, we are going to maintain a two-way connection to your vehicle unless the customer says otherwise.”

According to court documents, in June 2008 Magnus began recording Clements-Jeffrey’s keystrokes and monitoring her web surfing. At one point, while snooping on Clements-Jeffrey’s webcam communications with her boyfriend, Magnus also captured three screenshots from her laptop monitor, which showed Clements-Jeffrey naked in the webcam images. In one picture, her legs were spread apart.

Magnus subsequently sent the pictures and recorded communications, along with Clements-Jeffrey’s name and contact information, to a police detective. When the police showed up at the plaintiff’s apartment to collect the laptop, they were brandishing the explicit images Magnus had sent them. They then arrested and charged her for receiving stolen property. The charges, however, were dismissed about a week later.

“There is no direct evidence in this record to establish that during the approximately 40 days the GPS was in the ... glove compartment the device captured a movement of plaintiff into a secluded location that was not in public view, and, if so, that such information was passed along by Mrs. Villanova to (Leonard),”

There was an interesting fact that didn't receive as much as attention as I thought it should: the car was jointly owned. I'm surprised the court did not discuss the fact that since the wife owned the car, she could have argued that she had the right to track its movements. (On a related note, the plaintiff, who was a police office, tried to argue that he used the car for law enforcement purposes once in awhile, but the court is extremely skeptical of this argument.) Another fact that the court did not focus on directly is whether the result would have been different if the investigative firm (rather than the wife) was the one who did the GPS tracking....

It was also interesting that despite using a "reasonable expectation of privacy" standard, the court does not discuss the diminished expectation of privacy for the husband vis a vis his wife . . . who is trying to investigate him for having an affair. I'm not suggesting that spouses waive their privacy rights with respect to one another, but if you're having an affair, is it not reasonable to expect that your spouse may be checking up on you?

Smugglers were the first to note something strange about the devices. A source told Apple Daily that after the cards were installed mainland authorities had no trouble picking off the cars carrying illicit goods.

“For every ten cars we ran we only had [smuggled goods] in three or four to reduce the risk, but the border agents caught all of them. The accuracy was unreal!” Apple Daily quoted the smuggler saying.

Weinstein said, "when this information is not stored, it may be impossible for law enforcement to collect essential evidence.... Many wireless providers do not retain records that would enable law enforcement to identify a suspect's smartphone based on the IP addresses collected by Web sites that the suspect visited."

AT&T noted it “plays no role” in what kind of information smartphone apps collect, while T-Mobile pointed out the ways in which that data can be used.

Sprint lamented “consumers no longer can look to their trusted carrier with whom they have a trusted relationship to answer all of their questions,” particularly on privacy.

And Verizon Wireless called out smartphone app makers directly on the issue, stressing “location-based applications and services (whether provided by us or third parties such as Google) should give customers clear and transparent notice” and control.

"We don't like that because our customers don't like it... We will prevent that type of usage of our data in the future."

1. Apple (not researchers, or tons of other people who have noted this "bug" for a year or so) "discovered" a bug with location data on the phone:

   The reason the iPhone stores so much data is a bug we uncovered and plan to fix shortly

2. There's no tracking going on. There's nothing to see here.

   Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so.

3. Even though there's no tracking and nothing to see here, it's still a bug which will be fixed.
4. The reason people are concerned about this is because people are confused.

Afifi retrieved the device from his apartment and handed it over, at which point the agents asked a series of questions -- did he know anyone who traveled to Yemen or was affiliated with overseas training? One of the agents produced a printout of a blog post that Afifi's friend Khaled allegedly wrote a couple of months ago. It had "something to do with a mall or a bomb," Afifi said. He hadn't seen it before and doesn't know the details of what it said. He found it hard to believe Khaled meant anything threatening by the post.

"He's a smart kid and is not affiliated with anything extreme and never says anything stupid like that," Afifi said. "I've known that guy my whole life."

bombing a mall seems so easy to do. i mean all you really need is a bomb, a regular outfit so you arent the crazy guy in a trench coat trying to blow up a mall and a shopping bag. i mean if terrorism were actually a legitimate threat, think about how many fucking malls would have blown up already.. you can put a bag in a million different places, there would be no way to foresee the next target, and really no way to prevent it unless CTU gets some intel at the last minute in which case every city but LA is fucked...so...yea...now i'm surely bugged : /

If they're doing this to someone so tangentially connected to a vaguely bothersome post on an obscure blog, just how many of us have tracking devices on our cars right now -- perhaps because of this blog?

Afifi considered selling the device on Craigslist before the FBI showed up. He was in his apartment Tuesday afternoon when a roommate told him "two sneaky-looking people" were near his car. Afifi, already heading out for an appointment, encountered a man and woman looking his vehicle outside. The man asked if Afifi knew his registration tag was expired. When Afifi asked if it bothered him, the man just smiled. Afifi got into his car and headed for the parking lot exit when two SUVs pulled up with flashing lights carrying four police officers in bullet-proof vests.

The agent who initially spoke with Afifi identified himself then as Vincent and told Afifi, "We're here to recover the device you found on your vehicle. It's federal property. It's an expensive piece, and we need it right now."

Afifi asked, "Are you the guys that put it there?" and the agent replied, "Yeah, I put it there." He told Afifi, "We're going to make this much more difficult for you if you don't cooperate."