School apologizes over pro-Nazi essay assignment.
It’s safe to say that “thinking like a Nazi” is not the most sound advice when it comes to assignments in high school, or in any academic institution for that matter.

And as such, a high-school in New York has formally apologized for assigning students homework that tasked them with writing a hypothetical essay on how they were sympathetic to Adolf Hitler’s former regime and that “Jews are evil and the source of our problems.”

The Albany Times Union reports that 10th-grade students at Albany High School were given the assignment as part of a critical thinking exercise where they are challenged to make an “abhorrent argument.”

"You must argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich!" say the assignment instructions for the five-paragraph essay.

Approximately one-third of the students refused to take part in the exercise. The English teacher who assigned the project has not been identified, and the s chool district has declined to say whether the instructor will face any disciplinary action .

Contrarian thinking is at the root of strong debate skills, but the assignment arguably pushed students out acceptable logical boundaries. And it’s not the only such recent case of questionable homework. In February, another New York school tasked students with formulating a math equation using the whippings given to an African-American slave as the variable .

And in March 2012, a Washington, D.C., teacher was fired after assigning violent math problems to students.

Beyond making the abhorrent argument, students were encouraged to watch and read Nazi party propaganda materials. They were told to imagine their instructor as a Nazi government official who was demanding proof of their loyalty.

"I would apologize to our families," Albany Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard told the paper. "I don't believe there was malice or intent to cause any insensitivities to our families of Jewish faith."

Vanden attributed the assignment style to a new Common Core curriculum enacted by the state, which requires more sophisticated writing standards.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/school-apologizes-over-pro-nazi-essay-assignment-180908350.html
A teacher was placed on administrative leave in 2010 when she allowed four students to dress in Ku Klux Klan costumes for a class presentation on American history. Students complained to their parents and a national scandal ensued. A similar story unfolded last year in Las Vegas, except that the teacher wasn't punished.
What do you think? Should teachers animate members of hate groups to show students up close an ugly dimension of human behavior? Or should schools create greater distance between their students and these ideas? Are students and schools mature enough to adopt such teaching methods into a larger curriculum?

North Korea vowed on Sunday to strengthen its nuclear weapons, a day after announcing it is in a "state of war" with South Korea, and said it would never trade its atomic deterrent for aid.
South Korea A top North Korean decision-making body issued a pointed warning Sunday, saying that nuclear weapons are"the nation's life" and will not be traded even for"billions of dollars."

NORTH Korea has said its strategic rocket and long-range artillery units have been ordered to be combat ready , targeting U.S.military bases ...
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/387065/North-Korea-orders-artillery-to-be-ready-to-strike-U-S-bases

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled legislation on Monday to force shopkeepers to covercigarettes with a curtain or use some other method to keep tobacco out of view.
The bill, which needs approval in the City Council, would make New York the first US city to adopt such a measure and is the latest initiative in Bloomberg's war on smoking and other unhealthy habits.
The billionaire former smoker said keeping cigarettes hidden would help reduce smoking ratesamong youngsters who could be tempted to buy a pack along with the sweets and other goodies often arrayed nearby.
"New York City has dramatically lowered our smoking rate, but even one new smoker is one too many -- especially when it's a young person," Bloomberg said.
"Young people are targets of marketing and the availability of cigarettes, and thislegislation will help prevent another generation from the ill health and shorter life expectancy that comes with smoking."
Under the legislation,sellers would have to tuck away cigarettes except during restocking or sales tocustomers.
"Tobacco products would be required tobe kept in cabinets, drawers, under the counter, behind a curtain or in any other concealed location," the mayor's office said.
The mayor has previously banned smoking in restaurants and bars, and more recently in parks and on beaches. He has also instituted a highly visible grading system for hygiene inall city restaurants and cafes.
But Bloomberg, who is nearing the end of his third and final term in office, suffered a setback last week when a judge blocked his imposition of a ban on giant soft drink portions.
In a speech in February, Bloomberg raised the prospect of another eye-catching crusade:outlawing Styrofoamcups and plates from food outlets.
http://www.thenewage.co.za/mobi/Detail.aspx?NewsID=88096&CatID=12

Deposits below €100,000 are safe, at least in the Cypriot case, thanks to an EU-instigated guarantee. But when pushed last week, eurozone ministers showed they would have been willing to welch on this as well.
The prolonged battle over bailing out Cyprus — a battle which has run for almost a year — also consolidates the idea that the EU’s rescue fund, the ESM, whose €700bn is made up of European taxpayers’ money, will not be used to cushion the fall of failing banks.
This was underlined by Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who now heads the Eurogroup ministers, when he said the Cypriot deal was the new template for fixing eurozone banking problems, and that other countries may have to restructure their banking sectors as well.

From banksters to gangsters.

Chardon High School shooter TJ Lane worea white T-shirt with the word "Killer" on it during his sentencing hearing in Ohio.
TJ Lane was sentenced today to life in prison without parole for last year's deadly Chardon High School shooting in Ohio.
Lane, 18, came to his sentencing in a whiteT-shirt with the word"Killer" on it and smirked as family members of the victims read their statements
He also swore and flipped off the victims' families during his statement to the court.
"This hand that pulled the trigger that killed your sons now masturbates thememory. F*** all of you," Lane said.
Family members of his victims described his disregard for them and the law as"repulsive" and hoped for him to be locked up in a cage"like an animal" for the rest of his life, ABC News reported.
"You don't deserve tobe called human. You're a monster," the mother of shooting victim Daniel Parmertor toldhim.
Prosecutor .. expressed shock also when he gave the families of the 3 people who murdered the finger.
"This is confirming what we have knownall along, that this was a cold, calculated, premeditated killing," the prosecutor said.
Lane pleaded guilty in February to three counts of aggravatedmurder, attempted aggravated murder and felonious assault in the attack last February.
He originally entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, The Plain Dealer reported .
Prosecutors say Lane took a .22-caliber pistol and a knife to the school and sprayed bullets at a group of students in the cafeteria.
According to investigators, Lane has admitted to the shooting and believed he had"killed a bunch of people," but doesn't know why he did it.
Parmertor, Russell King Jr. and Demetrius Hewlin died as a result of theshooting. Three morestudents, Nick Walczak, Nate Mueller and Joy Rickers, were injured.
Dina Parmertor, mother of victim Daniel, said Lane was"a pathetic excuse fora human being" and hoped he suffered"an extremely, slow torturous death," AP reported.
She said she lived with the pain and torment every day, suffering nightmares and being physically sick over the shooting.
"From now on, he will only be a killer," she said, as Lane's smile widened. "I want him to feel my anger toward him."

With Cyprus facing a Monday deadline to avoid a banking collapse, the government and its international negotiators devised a plan late Saturday to seize a portion of savers’ deposits above 100,000 euros at all banks in the country, in a bid to raise money for an urgently needed bailout.
A one-time levy of 20percent would be placed on uninsured deposits at one of the nation’s biggest banks, the Bank of Cyprus, to help raise 5.8 billion euros demanded by the lenders to secure a 10 billion euro, or$12.9 billion, lifeline.A separate tax of 4 percent would be assessed on uninsured deposits at all other banks, including the 26 foreign banks that operate in Cyprus.
An agreement was still far off, though, as Cyprus’s lenders left for the night without reaching an accord. The proposal still requires approval by the Cypriot Parliament and by the European Central Bank , International Monetary Fund and European Union leaders. Finance ministers from the 17 euro zone countries have scheduled an emergency meeting at 6 p.m. Sunday in Brussels.
Under the plan, savings under 100,000 euros wouldnot be touched — a rollback after a controversial plan last week to tax insured deposits wasrejected by Cyprus’s Parliament, amid outrage among ordinary savers and widespread concern that a precedent hadbeen set for governments anywhere to tap insured bank savingsin times of a national emergency.

FEMEN have been up to their tricks again, with 2 topless activists protesting at Saint Peter's Square in Rome on Tuesday and 8 at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, crying "Pope no more!" and protesting for gay marriage, as the cardinals' conclave continues.
Rome - Protesting against the Vatican's opposition to gay marriage, the two FEMEN activists threw off their clothing at the edge of Saint Peter's Square in the center of Rome, Italy, setting off red flares.
Chanting "Pope nomore!", they were finally dragged away by police to a police station late on Tuesday.
On their Facebook page , FEMEN say,"While believers expected black and white smoke from a pipe, activists of FEMEN activated the torch with caustic blood-red smoke. The color of smoke is a symbolof the bloody violent history of Christianity and expresses FEMEN's determination to combat sexism of religion."
http://m.digitaljournal.com/article/345560
Their targets have included Silvio Berlusconi, Vladimir Putin, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, IKEA, the G-8, and the pope. The predominantly blond-haired, bare-breasted youngwomen have struck in 17 countries across the world andare reported to have 150,000 supporters worldwide. They call themselves the new Amazons, boldly evoking the mythicalnation of all-female warriors.

President Obama metwith more than a dozen corporate chief executives to seek their support forstalled cyber-security legislation amid increasing evidence that government agencies, businesses and individuals are vulnerable to computer network break-ins.
The closed-door session Wednesday at the White House came a day after the nation's top intelligence officials warned in a Senate hearing that cyber attacks and digital spying have eclipsed terrorism as the top threat to national security. They said the chance of a majorattack is remote in the near term, but digital thefts of intellectual property are putting U.S. competitiveness at risk.
As if on cue, authorities reported numerous new cyber attacks Wednesday, and hackers believed to be operating from servers in Russia posted online what appeared to be personal financial information about former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney , golfer Tiger Woods and others.
The FBI is investigating whether credit reports, banking information and other financial information from Vice President JosephBiden and First Lady Michelle Obama were illegally obtained andpublished online Tuesday. Also that day, hackers posted financial data that appears to be from former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton , Atty. Gen. Eric Holder, FBI Director Robert Mueller III and Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck.
"What is absolutely true is that we have seen a steady ramping up of cyber-security threats," Obama said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "Some are state-sponsored. Some are just sponsored by criminals."
A wave of computer attacks also targeted New York's JPMorgan Chase & Co., the nation's biggest bank. Hackers bombarded the Chase website with phony requests, blocking legitimate customers from Internet access to their bank accounts Tuesday and early Wednesday.
No customer data was compromised, and the bank's mobile, telephone and ATM networks continued to function, spokesman Michael Fusco said.
A group identifying itself as Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters has mounted denial-of-service attacks against American banks off and on since September. Thegroup, based in the Middle East, says the attacks are retaliation for an online video, produced last year byamateur U.S. filmmakers, that mocks the prophet Muhammad.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-obama-hacking-20130314,0,2583428.

LAPD joining in inquiry into suspected Russian hackers who allegedly stole informationfrom Joe Biden, Beyoncé and others
The site posted Michelle Obama's purported credit report, social security number, phone number, banking details and store cards. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP
Rory Carroll in LosAngeles
The FBI and Los Angeles police are investigating suspected Russian hackers who allegedly stole and posted online sensitive financial information about Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, senior law enforcers and about a dozen Hollywood celebrities.
A website using the suffix of the former Soviet Union, .su, postedthe information on Monday. It included social security numbers,credit reports, addresses and personal bankingdetails.
Titled "the secret files", the site features a girl with heavy black eye makeup and a warning: "If you believe that God makes miracles, you have to wonder ifSatan has a few up his sleeve."
The FBI, whose director Robert Mueller is among the 17 high-profile figures listed as hacked, confirmed it was investigating. The LA police department, whose chief Charlie Beck was also targeted, was also investigating.
Forbes reported that credit agencies were making their own inquiries ."We learned about this late this afternoon [and] immediately launched an investigation," a TransUnion spokesperson said by email.
Beck said: "We'll take steps to findout who did this, and if they're within the boundaries of theUnited States, we'll prosecute them."
The site featured credit card payments and mortgage details in a mass dump of sensitive information known as being"doxxed".
Celebrity victims included Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Kim Kardashian, Mel Gibson, Ashton Kutcher, Paris Hilton, Hulk Hogan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Donald Trump.
The stars' representatives did not immediately respond to mediarequests seeking confirmation the information was real, leaving open the possibility the site was a hoax, or partial hoax.
The celebrity news site TMZ, which broke the story, cited law enforcement officers on Tuesday saying that in addition to posting the information the hackers had been"using" it, suggesting theft or fraud. The FBI has reportedly told victims to apply additional safeguards on their bank accounts.
The site posted the first lady's purported credit report, social security number, phone number, banking details and store cards."Blame your husband. We still love you, Michelle," it taunted.
Some of Biden's information was also hacked, but when ABC phoned a telephone number for him it turned out to be a business in Delaware .
Other political figures who weretargeted includedSarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, Eric Holder, the attorney general,and Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state.
Beck speculated he was included because of his force's involvement in last month's huntfor Christopher Dorner, a rogue, former LAPD officer who murdered four people before being killed in a dramatic shootout. "You can't corner the Dorner," said the site. Last month the hacker group Anonymous had threatened cyber retaliation for Dorner's death.
The site linked toa Twitter accountthat since Monday had posted two tweets in Russian. "Hello world, we are revealed. Our aimis to show you allthat this is just one of a few tricks up our sleeves," said one.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/mar/12/lapd-fbi-hacking-michelle-obama

The Bradford 'Batman' who handed over a burglary suspect to cops before disappearing into thenight has been 'unmasked' as a Chinese takeaway driver.
The mystery man was the talk of Twitter after his 'heroics'.
Now Batman has been revealed as Stan Worby.
Stan, dressed in Batman's trademark cape, mask, gloves and boots, told cops, “I’ve caught this one for you” before vanishing into the dark night.
He revealed today that the suspect was in fact his friend, Danny Frayne, who officers had been trying to get to attend the police station.
He drove 27-year-old Danny to the police station after returning from Bradford City's cup final game against Swansea at Wembleywhere he had been supporting his team wearing fancy dress.
Mr Worby, from Bradford, told the Daily Telegraph: "I got a call from Dannywhilst I was at Wembley and he said, 'can you run me to the cop station?' But as I was in London I couldn't.
"I told him as soon asI was home I would run him to Bradford central police station.We got back about 1am, and I picked Danny up in a minibus at 1.30am.
"I'd had a lot to drinkand it was a great day out - I got some strange looks when I got to the cop stationthough. One policeman looked at me and just laughed.
"I said to the policeman, ‘I deserve a medal, I'm a caped crusader’.”
He added: "It was a joke at the end of theday and Danny wanted to go to the police station. I had spoken to Danny during the week and tried to knock some sense into him. It was getting on my nerves having police round all the time asking for him or his whereabouts.
"Danny's a good friend of mine and I've known him for 15 years or so. Who knows if I'll be doing some more crime-fighting in the future?"
Danny Frayne, 27, was charged with handling stolen goods and fraud offences and will appear in court on Friday.
A tweeter claiming tobe the vigilante, under the name @RealBradfordBat, later had a message for crooks.
He wrote: “I’m the Bradford Batman. And I’m here to cleanup Bradford.”
A West Yorkshire Police spokesman said: “Last week we had a very strange occurrence at the police station when amale wanted in relation to an offenceon our area was ‘escorted’ into our helpdesk at TrafalgarHouse by Batman.
“Batman came into the helpdesk, stated to the staff, ‘I’ve caught this one for you’, and then promptly vanished into the night. The whole bizarre incident was captured on CCTV.”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bradford-batman-unmasked-footage-caped-1742470

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lamenting intense uncertainty throughout the Middle East, Vice President Joe Biden told a powerful pro-Israel lobby Monday that it’s in the United States’ interest to protect Israel against threats to its existence.
In a prelude to President Barack Obama’s upcoming trip to Israel — his first as president — Biden vowed a nimble and resolute U.S. response to a fluctuating array of threats in Iran, Syria and Egypt and said only through engagement would the U.S. navigate the challenges presented by the Arab Spring.
He told the more than 13,000 Israel supporters at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference that efforts to delegitimize Israel represent the “most dangerous, pernicious” change he’s witnessed in relation to Israel’s security, and said Obama would continue to be a bulwark against attempts to undermine the Jewish state.
“It is not a matter of debate. Don’t raise it with us. Do not raise it with us,” Biden said. “It is not negotiable.”
Arguing the U.S. and Israel have a shared interest in preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, which Israelviews as an existential threat, Biden said the U.S. still prefers a diplomatic solution, but said the window for such opportunities is closing. He said the Obama administration would not back down from its pledgeto intervene militarily should all other options fail.
“President Barack Obama is not bluffing,” Biden said.
But Biden cautioned that if Israel or the U.S. acts too hastily, it could risk losing the backing of the international community.
“It is critically important for the whole world to knowwe did everything in our power, we did everything that reasonably could have been expected, to avoid any confrontation,” Bidensaid to muted applause. “That matters because God forbid we have to act, it’s important that the rest of the world is with us.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,speaking to the conference by video link from Jerusalem, pushed back against such hesitations, reflecting the degree of tension still present between the U.S. and its closest Mideast ally in their joint efforts to stave off a nuclear Iran.
“From the bottom of my heart and from the clarity of my brain, words alone will not stop Iran. Sanctions alone will not stop Iran,” Netanyahu said.
The U.S. and world nations have imposed a crippling set sanctions on Iran’s oil and financial industries inhopes of forcing Tehran back to the negotiating table and persuading it to give up nuclear ambitions. Israel and Netanyahu have repeatedly hinted its readiness to use military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, an endeavor the United States likely would be dragged into.
Iran insists that program is intended for peaceful purposessuch as power generation and medical uses.
http://www.dnj.com/viewart/20130304/NEWS/303040037/Biden-Iran-threat-Obama-not-bluffing

MISSISSIPPI: A baby girl in the United States (US)born with HIV appears to have been cured after very early treatment with standard drug therapy, researchers say.
The Mississippi child is now two-and-a-half years old and has been off medication for about a year with nosigns of infection.More testing needs to be done to see if the treatment - given within hours of birth- would work for others.If the girl stays healthy, it would be the world'ssecond reported 'cure'.Dr Deborah Persaud, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, presentedthe findings at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta."This is a proof of concept thatHIV can be potentially curable in infants," she said.
In 2007, Timothy RayBrown became the first person in the world believed to have recovered fromHIV.His infection waseradicated through an elaborate treatment for leukaemia that involved the destruction of his immune system and a stem cell transplant from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that resists HIV infection. In contrast, the case of the Mississippi baby involved a cocktail ofwidely available drugs already used to treat HIV infectionin infants.It suggeststhe swift treatment wiped out HIV before it could form hideouts in the body. These so-called reservoirs of dormant cells usually rapidly re-infect anyone who stops medication, said Dr Persaud.
Dr Deborah Persaud, Johns Hopkins Children's Center:"This sets the stage for paediatric care agenda" The baby was born in a rural hospital where the mother had only justtested positive for HIV infection.Because the mother had not been given any prenatal HIV treatment, doctors knew the baby was at high risk of being infected.Researchers said the baby was then transferred to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.Once there, paediatric HIV specialist Dr Hannah Gay put the infant on a cocktail of threestandard HIV-fighting drugs atjust 30 hours old, even before laboratory tests came back confirming the infection."I just felt like this baby was at higher-than-normal risk and deserved our best shot," Dr Gay said.
http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=11&aid=1514&dir=2013/March/Tuesday5

Surveillance cameras at airports, subways, banks and other public venues are notthe only devices tracking you. Inexpensive, ever-watchful digital sensors are now ubiquitous.
They are in laptop webcams, video-game motion sensors, smartphone cameras, utility meters, passports and employee ID cards. Step out your front door and you could be captured in a high-resolution photograph taken from the air or street by Google or Microsoft , as they update their respective mapping services. Drive down a city thoroughfare, cross a toll bridge, or park at certain shopping malls and your license plate willbe recorded and time-stamped.
Several developments have converged to push the monitoring of human activity far beyond what George Orwell imagined. Low-cost digital cameras, motion sensors and biometric readers areproliferating just as the cost of storing digital data is decreasing. The result: the explosion of sensor data collection and storage.
Over the next couple of years, the volume of data generated by digital sensors will surpass the flow of e-mails and social-network entries combined, predicts Stephen Brobst, chieftechnical officer at data analytics firm Teradata . "Sensors will touch nearly every aspect of our lives," he says.
Meanwhile, technology is rapidly being developed to efficiently mine this mushrooming trove of sensor data in novel ways. Affectiva,a Waltham, Mass., start-up, for instance,recently introduced biometric wristbandscapable of monitoring tiny changes in sweat-gland activity to gauge emotional reactions. Therapists are using the wristbands with autistic children to better understand emotional outbreaks.Marketing consultants use the bands to pinpoint what pleases or frustrates shoppers.
At the recent International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Intel and Microsoft introduced a prototype of an in-store digital billboard that can memorize your face. The technology soon could be used in billboards capable of keeping track of the products you're interested in, much as depicted in the Tom Cruise sci-fi movie Minority Report .
"Computing and connectivity are going to transform retail," boasted Intel CEO Paul Otellini , as he unveiled the billboard during a speech at CES. "Your experience in every store will soon be customized to you."
Privacy worries
But before the blessings of pervasive monitoringcan be fully realized, privacy concerns need to be addressed, says Chris Wolf, director of privacy and information management at Chicago law firm Hogan Lovells.
"What's new is the capacity for databases to share data and therefore toput together the pieces of a puzzle that can identify us in surprising ways — ways that really could be an invasion of privacy," Wolf says.
Some enterprising attorneys already have begun to use bridge tollbooth records to establish travel patterns of wayward spouses in divorce cases. And police looking to issue traffic citations now correlate photos, taken by cameras perched above busy intersections, with vehicle ownership records.
Ryan Calo, director of the Consumer PrivacyProject at the Stanford (University) Center for Internet and Society, can imagine an escalation of troubling scenarios. Advertisers could customize pitches in sneakier ways. Or worse, data correlated from multiple sensors could be used to deny you a job, cut you off from insurance coverage or lower your credit status.
"You will constantly feel under observation," Calo says. "You'll never have those crucial moments of freedom from the feeling of scrutiny."
Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation advocacy group, believes government agenciesand corporations willfind it difficult to resist tapping deeperinto sensor data. "If there's money to be made or a mission to be accomplished by correlating this data, it's the height of skepticism to argue that it's never going to happen," he says.
Anthony Valenti, managing director ofcyberforensics firm Stroz Friedberg, is one of those skeptics.Valenti, a former federal prosecutor, says government agencies are too fractured and corporations too timid to systematically profile individuals. "You can photograph me all you want," Valenti says. "The only people who should be really concerned are the bad guys."
Maybe so. But technologists and privacy advocates arewatching closely for potential flash points, in particular apractice advocated by Google and Facebook called photo tagging.
Google and Facebookare using cutting-edge facial-recognition software to juice up their popular online photo-editing and sharing services, Google Picasa and Facebook Photo Albums.
Both technology giants encourage users to assign names to people in photos, referred to astagging. Facial-recognition software then goes to work indexing facial features much the way a fingerprint expert takes note of swirls in a thumbprint.
Once an individual in a photo is tagged, the software then looks for similar facial features in untagged photos. This allows the user to quickly group photos in which the tagged person appears.
Google and Facebooksay privacy is protected because photo tagging is designed strictly for use by individual consumers within their personal accounts.
Chilling effect
Still, by promoting photo tagging, the tech rivals are in something of an arms race to amass the largest possible caches of tagged photos, says Stephen Russell, founder and chairman of 3VR, maker of video facial-recognition software for security and commercial uses.
Once you are tagged in a photo, that photo could be used to search for matchesacross the entire Internet, or in privatedatabases, including those fed by surveillance cameras."They almost certainly have the technical capability to do it," Russell says.
Stanford privacy expert Calo worries that photo tagging could easily be extended to other uses, besides just grouping one's personal photos. The technology conceivably could enable a car dealer totake a photo of you as you step onto his car lot. The dealer could then quickly profile you on the Web, to gain an edgein making a sale.
Or a stranger in a mall or restaurant could photograph you, then go online to profile you."People will be able to instantaneously find out about you," Calo says.
Wolf, the privacy attorney, says the right to move through public placesanonymously could be at risk. "We don't have to tell everybody we pass on the street our name, phone numberand address," Wolf says.
Losing the right to anonymity, he says, could "really have a chilling effect on where we go, with whom we meet and how we live our lives."
Google is well aware of rising privacy concerns. It has stepped carefully in introducing Goggles, a free online service that allows you to use a very mobile sensor — a smartphone camera — to photograph a landmark or a book jacket, then instantly navigate to Web pages carrying information about the object.
Notably, the search giant drew the line at letting Goggles users do something similar with snapshots of people."There are some important transparency and consumer control issues we still need to think through before including this functionality," says Google spokesman Brian Richardson.
Still, in a world of pervasive sensors, troubling data correlations are cropping up in unanticipated ways. For instance, most consumers are ignorant about how smartphones equipped with GPS location finders routinely "geotag" photos and videos, embedding images with the longitude and latitude of the location shown in theimage.
Last summer, industrial designer Adam Savage , co-host of the TV show MythBusters , used his iPhone to snap a photo of his Toyota Land Cruiser parked in front of his house, then posted iton Twitter . In doing so, Savage, in effect, publicly disclosed where he lives.
You could be supplying bad guys with useful intelligence by posting on social networks or photo-sharing sites smartphone images showing children playing on the lawn or expensive vehicles or valuable household items, says Jonathan Mayer, a research fellow at the Stanford Center."There's so little transparency in what's going on," Mayer says. "We should be concerned about things like accidental social oversharing, purposeful but unwanted social sharing, government overreaching and security breaches."
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-01-26-digitalsensors26_CV_N.htm

Posting their personal photos withvarious comments online, most users do not give a thought tothe fact that they willingly place themselves under thecontrol of a large number of interestedindividuals and organisations. Several companies specializing in software are developing programmes for monitoring people’s activities with the help

Big Brother is watching us all.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a drone!
That, at least, is whata pilot for Italian airline Alitalia swears he saw hovering near his plane during a landing at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport on Monday afternoon.
The pilot told investigators the apparent unmanned aircraft looked like a “black drone” and was "about a meter square, with helicopter rotors on the corners,” according to the NewYork Post.
The unusual sighting four to five miles southeast of the airport has sparked an investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Joint Terrorism Task Force, ABC News reported.
The FBI is also “taking a preliminarylook into this incident,” ABC said.
“In all the years I’ve been with the airport, I can’t remember a similar incident,” one unnamed investigator told the Post. “Whether this isa hobbyist or not, it raises serious concerns.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki warned that if the Syrian rebels win the civil war it could create a haven for extremists and destabilize the region, in an interview with the Associated Press .
The AP noted that while al-Maliki stopped short of voicing support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, his comments were the strongest warnings to date of the turmoil a collapse in the government could cause.
Al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, voiced a fear common among other Shiites that Sunni Muslims would take over in Syria once Assad was ousted.
"Neither the opposition nor the regime can finish each other off," he told the AP. "The most dangerous thing in this process is that if the opposition is victorious, there will be a civil war in Lebanon, divisions in Jordan and a sectarian war in Iraq."
Al-Maliki's comments come as the United States has hinted at expanding support for the Syrian rebels. US Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States is seeking ways "to accelerate the transition" from Assad's regime.
Anti-government protests in Iraq that began in earnest in 2011, inspired by the Arab Spring, soon lost momentum. But in recent months they have flared again among the country's Sunni minority.
Protesters accuse Al-Maliki of bias toward the Shiite majority, at the expense of the Sunnis and other minority groups.
Austin Long, assistantprofessor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University , spent many years in Iraq as a military analyst and adviser.
Long told GlobalPost that there were legitimate concerns that a post-Assad Syria could destabilize the region. He said if the rebels win, it would likely resemble the current situation in Libya, where a variety of armed militias dominate certain areas with noreal central government control.
“Libya had knock-on effects to Mali that no one anticipated,” he said during a Skype interview on Monday. “Syria touches on so many more places that are already unstable, likeIraq, Lebanon and even Jordan.”
Long said there is also the possibility that a Sunni extremist state with ties to Al Qaeda coulddevelop in Syria, which would have devastating effects for the region.
The US government believes that one of the Syrian opposition's strongest forces, the Islamic group Jabhat al-Nusra , is an extension of Al Qaedain Iraq (AQI). The United States officially designated al-Nusra a terrorist organization in December.
“We have strong reason to believe Jabhat al-Nusra contains a lot of people affiliated withAQI,” Long said. “Thismeans they already have a lot of Iraqi blood on their hands."
The rebel group's possible affiliation with Al Qaeda also complicates US efforts to support theSyrian opposition. So far the United States has refrained from outright arming the rebels, fearing the weapons could fall into the hands of terrorist groups.
But Long warned of the danger of lumping all Islamic rebel groups in Syria under the same terrorist banner.
“Jihadist or extremistdoes not automatically make you a terrorist,” he said. The targeting ofcivilians is the real mark of a terrorist, he said. “You need tolook at the tactics.”