Posted on February 26th, 2010 by Administration
Yelp, the online review site, is being accused of extortion in a class-action lawsuit filed in Los Angeles this week.
The suit alleges that the site tried to get a Long Beach veterinary hospital named Cats and Dogs Animal Hospital to pay $300 a month — for a minimum 12-month commitment — to suppress or delete [...]
Filed under: news, ugh | No Comments »
Posted on February 18th, 2010 by Administration
According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools’ administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to [...]
Filed under: .edu, privacy, security, ugh, wtf | No Comments »
Posted on February 15th, 2010 by Administration
Embattled Tea Party Nation, Inc. owner Judson Phillips has been making the media rounds to defend his up-coming, February 4-6 conference at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee.
Disillusioned Tea Party volunteers are angry at Phillips for turning the grass-roots group into a for-profit venture without their consent and for charging more than $500 per person [...]
Filed under: politics, ugh | 1 Comment »
Posted on February 4th, 2010 by Administration
Taxpayers might want to pay close attention to this Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast or they’ll miss Uncle Sam’s 30-second, $2.5-million reminder to stand up and be counted.
That’s what the Census Bureau paid CBS to get their message notched somewhere between a National Lampoon reprisal, a weird dude with big glasses, a beer-can house and men [...]
Filed under: politics, ugh | No Comments »
Posted on January 26th, 2010 by Administration
Craig Cunningham has made $20,000 from 18 lawsuits he’s filed against debt collectors for violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). In fact, it’s something a part-time job/hobby for him. To ensnare his first FDCPA-violating collector, with voice recorder running, he called back the number they left on his answering machine, and asked:
“Can you [...]
Filed under: b3st pract1c3s, offtopic, ugh, wtf | No Comments »
Posted on January 26th, 2010 by Administration
“Buying You: The Government’s Use of Fourth-Parties to Launder Data about ‘The People’,” a paper by Columbia Law School’s Joshua L. Simmons in the Columbia Business Law Review, describes the way that US government agencies circumvent the fourth amendment and privacy statutes by outsourcing their surveillance to private credit reporting bureaus and other mega-databases. He [...]
Filed under: politics, privacy, security, ugh | No Comments »
Posted on January 20th, 2010 by Administration
New Orleans cops are busting hookers under a nineteenth century felony law against “unnatural copulation” (NOLA PD says that oral or anal sex count), which means that they have to register as sex offenders. And life as a sex offender is terrible…
Of the 861 sex offenders currently registered in New Orleans, 483 were convicted of [...]
Filed under: freeish, ugh | No Comments »
Posted on January 11th, 2010 by Administration
A privacy group says the Transportation Security Administration is misleading the public with claims that full-body scanners at airports cannot store or send their graphic images.
The TSA specified in 2008 documents that the machines must have image storage and sending abilities, the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said.
In the documents, obtained by the privacy [...]
Filed under: privacy, tsa sucks, ugh | No Comments »
Posted on January 6th, 2010 by Administration
Yep, just like they promised, youtube is now being flooded with adult videos disguised as disney pop-stars and cartoons. Some of the major news media, like BBC, have already reported this. Google was apparently aware of this and has been getting ready to remove videos asap, but I guess nothing can stop the power of [...]
Filed under: 4chan, lulz, photo/pics, ugh, youtube | 3 Comments »
Posted on January 1st, 2010 by Administration
TSA special agents served subpoenas to travel bloggers Steve Frischling and Chris Elliott, demanding that they reveal who leaked the security directive to them. The government says the directive was not supposed to be disclosed to the public.
Frischling said he met with two TSA special agents Tuesday night at his Connecticut home for about three [...]
Filed under: privacy, tsa sucks, ugh | No Comments »
Posted on December 30th, 2009 by Administration
ReflectionOf.Me posted a graph that shows how much HP printer ink costs compared to human blood, vodka, crude oil and other precious liquids.
Lets skip the obvious intentions and instead curry the most outlandish counterarguments possible. As a FORMER inkjet user, I CLEARLY understood the point of this graph: Print 40-80 pages, spend $45 on a [...]
Filed under: offtopic, ugh, wtf | 1 Comment »
Posted on December 22nd, 2009 by Administration
Posted on December 6th, 2009 by Administration
Anyone who’s a regular Google search user will know that the only way to avoid the company tracking your online activities is to log out of Gmail or whatever Google account you use. Not any more.
As of last Friday, even searchers who aren’t logged into Google in any way have their data tracked in the [...]
Filed under: google, privacy, ugh | No Comments »
Posted on November 21st, 2009 by Administration
It won’t affect your PS3, Wii, TiVo, or other licensed YouTube partners, but Google’s streaming video service will start blocking API access to TV-connected devices as of Dec. 2. The COO of set-top box maker Popcorn Hour writes that the firm tried to negotiate with YouTube to retain the service, but YouTube/Google seems to be [...]
Filed under: ugh, youtube | 1 Comment »
Posted on November 17th, 2009 by Administration
A few years back, I remember seeing a fascinating study that showed that how a company responds to a problem or a mistake is more important to customer loyalty than not making any mistakes at all. That is, customers felt more loyal to companies that screwed up, but handled it well, than companies that never [...]
Filed under: offtopic, politics, ugh, wtf | No Comments »
Posted on November 10th, 2009 by Administration
Deirdre Walker, the 24-year police veteran and former Assistant Chief of the Montgomery County, Maryland, Department of Police who wrote up a sharp, professional critique of the TSA’s checkpoint procedures, has written a follow-up, showing a huge flaw in the “random” screening process used at the BWI airport…
I asked, “How are people selected for [...]
Filed under: privacy, tsa sucks, ugh | No Comments »
Posted on November 7th, 2009 by Administration
Congress recognizes no limits on its power. It doesn’t care about the Constitution, it doesn’t care about your inalienable rights. If this health care bill becomes law, America, life as you have known it, freedom as you have exercised it and privacy as you have enjoyed it will cease to be.
Tomorrow, the House of Representatives [...]
Filed under: freeish, obama, politics, privacy, ugh | No Comments »
Posted on November 1st, 2009 by Administration
The White House, key senators and media representatives have reached a compromise on legislation to protect reporters from being forced to disclose their confidential sources in federal court.
Senate supporters of the so-called media shield bill said Friday that the deal gives the government authority to override those rights in certain national security cases.
Sen. Charles Schumer, [...]
Filed under: obama, politics, privacy, ugh | No Comments »
Posted on October 30th, 2009 by Administration
More than 500 officers smashed their way into thousands of safety-deposit boxes to retrieve guns, drugs and millions of pounds of criminal assets. At least, that’s what was supposed to happen. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark investigate.
Filed under: privacy, pwned, ugh | No Comments »
Posted on October 16th, 2009 by Administration
As if Vegas casinos don’t already rake in enough money from suckers, now they are developing technology to automatically detect people who count cards.
The anti-card-counter system uses cameras to watch players and keep track of the actual “count” of the cards, the same way a player would. It also measures how much each player is [...]
Filed under: con, pwned, ugh | No Comments »
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