LinkNYC Discovers the Difficulty of Bringing Free Wi-Fi to City Streets:
After spending a few hours on 8th Avenue this weekend, we clearly saw a change in dynamics around the kiosks. Disabling the built-in browser has stamped down on more “convivial” gatherings, like the two teen boys we witnessed giggling at Facebook together, or the group of middle-aged men gathered on the sidewalk watching football. We saw many more people using the free phone call functionality than before, and over half of the 20 people we saw using Links were charging their own devices.
One man who called himself “John Smith” was camped out at a Link charging a backup battery for his phone. He said he used the kiosks free charging ports “every day”, and that he had also been using the kiosk to watch YouTube videos until “some idiot got caught jacking off and ruined it for everyone.” He also noted that he had found it really useful to get information about the city, since he had been stranded away from his home in Michigan for several weeks.
Source: Vice Magazine
New York state’s top cop says this cable company misleads consumers about its Internet speeds:
Thousands of Time Warner Cable’s customers have written in to the attorney general’s office saying they aren’t getting the download speeds they paid for as part of an ongoing investigation by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman into Internet providers’ advertised speeds, according to a spokesman. And on Wednesday, Schneiderman sent letters to Charter calling for the cable company to “clean up Time Warner Cable’s act” in the wake of the acquisition.
Calling TWC’s performance “abysmal” compared with other Internet providers, the letter sent by Schneiderman’s office to Charter says TWC’s customers have been subjected to slow-loading movies and websites while online video games stutter and lag.
Source: Washington Post
If you’re in New York, you should head to The Strand for a reading of stories from Watchlist: 32 Stories by Persons of Interest - our own Deji Olukotun will be present to read his story as well!
Last week, with little fanfare, the Graduate Center at the City University of New York did something very few private companies would ever do to protect its users’ privacy: it quietly began to purge its interlibrary loan records.
“This policy change is motivated by the idea that libraries should not keep more information about their users’ requests than necessary,” wrote Beth Posner, head of library resource sharing at the school. […]
Perhaps that sounds like harmless information, but Polly Thistlethwaite, chief librarian at the Graduate Center, said that guilt by association with controversial books has a long history and that librarians have a duty to protect readers of “heretical texts”.
Source: theguardian.com
Last week, with little fanfare, the Graduate Center at the City University of New York did something very few private companies would ever do to protect its users’ privacy: it quietly began to purge its interlibrary loan records.
“This policy change is motivated by the idea that libraries should not keep more information about their users’ requests than necessary,” wrote Beth Posner, head of library resource sharing at the school. […]
Perhaps that sounds like harmless information, but Polly Thistlethwaite, chief librarian at the Graduate Center, said that guilt by association with controversial books has a long history and that librarians have a duty to protect readers of “heretical texts”.
Source: theguardian.com
Magistrate Judge James Orenstein, in the Eastern District of New York, didn’t reject the request outright, but instead asked Apple to respond this week about whether it would even be technically possible to disable the security lock on the device in question. He also asked Apple if doing so would be unduly burdensome for the company. This may be a moot point if it turns out the device in question is not, as theWashington Post reported this weekend, an iPhone running an older version of iOS, which has built-in capabilities for Apple to unlock it, as opposed to the new iOS 8, which locks even Apple out of devices.
But by burdensome, Orenstein didn’t just mean how much effort Apple would have to expend to unlock the device. He also meant how significant of a cost the company might bear in the marketplace for capitulating to government demands to unlock its customers’ devices.
Source: Wired
The [New York] State Police’s lack of records [on use of Stingrays] highlights one of the recurring problems with local law enforcement’s eager acquisition of Stingrays and other emerging surveillance technologies that are now trickling in from federal agencies, including the military: the systemic devaluing of transparency and of the privacy of people that law enforcement is sworn to protect. When police acquire new technologies, adopting policies with safeguards for privacy is a critical step for fostering public trust. These safeguards include requiring a warrant for using the technologies, mandating the deletion of records of non-suspects and ensuring adequate record-keeping. These safeguards are also critical for accountability and the integrity of the criminal justice system. Moreover, the adequacy of these policies and procedures must be evaluated under federal laws and state laws (which are often even more protective of privacy).