Disinformation » Corporation Watch

Mythbusters Banned From Discussing RFID By Visa And Mastercard

JacobSloan — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:00:05 +0000

Host Adam Savage of Mythbusters tells how Visa, Mastercard, and Discover had the Discovery Channel put the kibosh on an episode that would have revealed just how “trackable and hackable” the RFID chips found in many credit cards are. It’s a telling example of how corporate advertisers serve as the gatekeepers of mainstream media/entertainment:

Anonymous Attacks Monsanto (Video)

Good German — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:23:53 +0000

Via the Earth First! Newswire:

Anonymous, which briefly knocked the FBI and Justice Department websites offline as well as Music Industry websites in retaliation for the US shutdown of file-sharing site Megaupload, is a shadowy group of amazing international hackers.

Anonymous Message To Monsanto: We fight for farmers! – Video Transcript (Cross-Posted from Organic Common Sense:

“To the free-thinking citizens of the world: Anonymous stands with the farmers and food organizations denouncing the practices of Monsanto We applaud the bravery of the organizations and citizens who are standing up to Monsanto, and we stand united with you against this oppressive corporate abuse. Monsanto is contaminating the world with chemicals and genetically modified food crops for profit while claiming to feed the hungry and protect the environment. Anonymous is everyone, Anyone who can not stand for injustice and decides to do something about it, We are all over the Earth and here to stay.

To Monsanto, we demand you STOP the following:

Contaminating the global food chain with GMO’s [sic].

Intimidating small farmers with bullying and lawsuits.

Propagating the use of destructive pesticides and herbicides across the globe.

Using “Terminator Technology”, which renders plants sterile.

Attempting to hijack UN climate change negotiations for your own fiscal benefit.

Reducing farmland to desert through monoculture and the use of synthetic fertilizers.

Inspiring suicides of hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers.

Causing birth defects by continuing to produce the pesticide “Round-up”

Attempting to bribe foriegn officials

Infiltrating anti-GMO groups

Monsanto, these crimes will not go unpunished. Anonymous will not spare you nor anyone in support of your oppressive illegal business practices.

Read more here.

MSNBC, Please Fire Meghan McCain (Video)

ralph — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:33:30 +0000

She was hired because her father ran for president. What a mistake … NBC as a failed corporation, why not hire any commenter on this post?

Bank Of America ATMs Altered To Become ‘Truth Machines’

JacobSloan — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:00:23 +0000

San Francisco’s Rainforest Action Network altered 85 Bank of America ATMs around the city last week using sticker overlays, so that the machines would notify users of what their money is being used for. Bankrupting America has a handy map of the affected/improved ATMs.

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Bed Bath & Beyond’s Radioactive Tissue Boxes

DeepCough — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:34:51 +0000

Well, at least that colds of yours won’t stand a chance with irradiated tissues. Mike Adams reports at Natural News:

The Dual Ridge Metal Boutique tissue boxes sold at Bed, Bath & Beyond stores have been discovered to be radioactive. Made with the extremely dangerous material used to blast cancer tumors with radiation — cobalt-60 — they emit gamma rays that are known to cause both cancer and infertility. They were manufactured in India, shipped on a commercial container to New Jersey, and then distributed to Bed, Bath & Beyond stores in 20 states.

How much radiation do these tissue holders emit, exactly? Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman David McIntyre said, on the record, that standing near one of these tissue holders for 30 minutes a day would expose you to the equivalent of “a couple of chest X-Rays” each year. The Illinois Emergency Management Agency went even further, issuing a release stating that every 10 hours spent near the product would expose you to the equivalent of one chest X-Ray (http://beaconnews.suntimes.com/news/9990656-418/no-immediate-threat-of-lo…).

In case you were wondering, a chest X-Ray is not a small dose of radiation.

Ever since Fukushima, the corporate-run media has downplayed the risks of radiation exposure, and now they’re claiming that these radioactive products are “no big deal” because they “only” expose you to the equivalent of multiple chest X-Rays each year.

What if a customer has this on their nightstand, near their head, and they’re sleeping next to it for 8 hours a night? That means they’d be getting nearly the equivalent radiation of a chest X-Ray each night for 365 nights a year!…

[continues at at Natural News]

This Explains All the Fuss About SOPA (Photo)

HAL9000 — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:37:11 +0000

Thanks to Anticapitalist.Tumblr.com.

Mountain Dew Will Dissolve Rats On Contact

ralph — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:14:13 +0000

If you like soft drinks the way I do, that is, looking like my conception of nuclear waste, this is really good news. From the Smoking Gun:

Defending itself from a lawsuit claiming that an Illinois man found a dead mouse inside a can of Mountain Dew, PepsiCo contends that a rodent would have disintegrated and been transformed into a “jelly-like” substance between the time of the soft drink’s bottling and the day the plaintiff reportedly purchased the soda from a vending machine at his office.

In a court response to a motion filed by Ronald Ball–who claims to have found the dead mouse in a Mountain Dew can about three years ago–PepsiCo filed a fascinating/revolting affidavit from Lawrence McGill, a veterinarian who noted that he was “familiar with the effects an acidic fluid, such as common soda drinks including Mountain Dew, will have on mice and other animals.”

According to McGill, if a mouse is submerged in Mountain Dew between four and seven days, the rodent “will have no calcium in its bones and bony structures.” During those days of soft drink immersion, “the mouse’s abdominal structure will rupture.” Additionally, “its cranial cavity (head) is also likely to rupture within that time period,” McGill noted.

Marvel Comics Lawyers Argue That Mutants Are Not Human

ralph — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:14:18 +0000

Bullpen Bulletin! A “real world” conflict based on the bottom line has infringed on the civil liberties of our uncanny “fictional” heroes, who have lately made a ton of dough for their corporate creator. Grant Morrison has tread this ground in Animal Man to explore the dynamic between the creator and the creation, but sans the grand mega-corporate, economic drama. (Probably need to see Seaguy for that: I wonder if Mickey Eye is behind the actions of Marvel’s Law Defense Team!)

The folks at io9.com do a great job of explaining how the map is not the territory in this collision of “realities.” As Meredith Woerner explains (and check out the Radiolab Podcast):

Mark this up as one more blow to human-mutant equality. Marvel lawyers are putting up a fight to prove the mutants aren’t the same as humans after all. Unleash the Sentinels!

This strange piece of news comes via the Radiolab Podcast, which uncovered a weird saga of legal wrangling and tariff shenanigans.

Toys manufactured in various countries and later imported to the US have to be taxed. And the taxes for each kind of toy vary, depending on the description. Specifically, “dolls” are toys that represent some sort of human, and “toys” are representations that are non-human, such as robots or animals. And it turns out, the non-human toys are taxed at a much lower rate than the human ones, 6.8 percent versus 12 percent. Hence, two Marvel lawyers are arguing that Mutant action figures are not actually human — and therefor shouldn’t be taxed as much. And thus unknowingly unleashing the age-old Mutant debate that has long been a part of the X-Men’s world.

Breaking Apart An iPhone’s Cost

JacobSloan — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:00:12 +0000

It’s still shocking to see just how little of the profits from an item go towards those who made it. From a piece on the power of transnational corporations, via Reports from the Economic Front:

The production of the iPhone offers one of the best examples of the logic and operation of these transnational corporate controlled cross border production networks.

Not surprisingly, the division of profits, as shown below, reflects the overall hierarchy that structures this and other cross border production networks.

Mystery Kidney Disease Epidemic in Central America

Good German — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 01:55:08 +0000

Kate Sheehy reports for PRI’s The World:

In the western lowlands of Nicaragua, in a region of vast sugarcane fields, sits the tiny community of La Isla.The small houses are a patchwork of concrete and wood. Pieces of cloth serve as doors.

Maudiel Martinez emerges from his house to greet me. He’s pale, and his cheekbones protrude from his face. He hunches over like an old man — but he is only 19-years-old.

“The way this sickness is — you see me now, but in a month I could be gone. It can take you down all of a sudden,” he says. Maudiel’s kidneys are failing. They do not perform the essential function of filtering waste from his body. He’s being poisoned from the inside. When he got ill two years ago, he was already familiar with this disease and how it might end. “I thought about my father and grandfather,” he says. Both died of the same condition. Three of his brothers have it too.

All of them worked in the sugarcane fields.

Read more here.

How Private Warmongers and the U.S. Military Infiltrated American Universities

DrLechter — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 01:19:31 +0000

Steve Horn and Allen Ruff recently reported in Truthout:

A matrix of closely tied university-based strategic studies ventures, the so-called Grand Strategy Programs (GSP), have cropped up on a number of elite campuses around the country, where they function to serve the national security warfare state.

In tandem with allied institutes and think tanks across the country, these programs, centered at Yale University, Duke University, the University of Texas at Austin, Columbia University, Temple University and, until recently, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, illustrate the increasingly influential role of a new breed of warrior academics in the post-9/11 United States. The network marks the ascent and influence of what might be called the “Long War University.”

Ostensibly created to train an up-and-coming elite to see a global “big picture,” this grand strategy network has brought together scores of foreign policy wonks heavily invested — literally and figuratively — in an unending quest to maintain US global supremacy, a campaign which they increasingly refer to as the Long War.

eBook Readers Live in a Different Universe of Books

moezilla — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 22:30:05 +0000

Amazon’s released their list of 2011’s best-selling books, revealing that 40% of the best-selling ebooks didn’t even make it onto their list of the best-selling print books!

The #1 and #2 best-selling ebooks of the year weren’t even available in print editions, while four of the top 10 best-selling print books didn’t make it into the top 100 best-selling ebooks. “It couldn’t be more clear that Kindle owners are choosing their material from an entirely different universe of books,” notes one Kindle site, which points out that five of the best-selling ebooks came from two million-selling ebook authors — Amanda Hocking and John Locke — who are still awaiting the release of their books in print. And five of Amazon’s best-selling ebooks were Kindle-only “Singles,” including a Stephen King short story which actually outsold another King novel that he’d released in both ebook and print formats. And Neal Stephenson’s “Reamde” was Amazon’s #99 best-selling print book of 2011, though it didn’t even make it onto their list of the 100 best-selling ebooks of the year.

“People who own Kindles are just reading different books than the people who buy printed books,” reports the Kindle site, which adds “2011 may be remembered as the year that hundreds of new voices finally found their audiences.”

Bernie Sanders’ Saving American Democracy Amendment

majestic — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:15:08 +0000

Warning that “American democracy in endangered,” Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday, December 8, 2011 proposed a constitutional amendment to overturn a Supreme Court ruling that allowed unrestricted and secret campaign spending by corporations on U.S. elections. The first constitutional amendment ever proposed by Sanders during his two decades in Congress would reverse the narrow 5-to-4 ruling in Citizens United vs. the Federal Elections Commission.

Show your support – sign the petition. Thanks Miles Jaffe for sending us the link.

WikiLeaks Releases Spyware Firm Videos That Show How to Hack Email, Skype, WiFi

HAL9000 — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 20:54:45 +0000

Kim Zetter writes on WIRED’s Threat Level:

What better way to sell your wares than to produce a marketing video showing exactly how your product works? Even if that product is spyware, marketed to oppressive regimes.

WikiLeaks, as part of its Spy Files trove of documents, released on Thursday a series of videos from Gamma International, a UK-based firm that markets the Finfisher spyware.

The video shows how the company’s product can be used to sniff WiFi networks from a hotel lobby, hack computers and cell phones, or intercept Skype communications and siphon encryption passwords.

BP Accuses Halliburton of Destroying Evidence in Gulf Oil Spill Case

Good German — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 21:23:32 +0000

Laurel Brubaker Calkins reports in the Washington Post:

BP Plc accused a unit of Halliburton Co. of intentionally destroying evidence that could be used to prove the oilfield services firm shares blame for the blowout that caused the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Halliburton Energy Services Inc. destroyed test results that showed samples of the cement used to seal London-based BP’s Macondo well, which exploded off the Louisiana coast last year, were unstable, BP said in a filing in federal court in New Orleans.

The oilfield services provider also suppressed computer models that might prove Halliburton was at fault “because it wanted to eliminate any risk that this evidence would be used against it at trial,” BP said in the filing. BP asked the court to find that Halliburton destroyed evidence on purpose and to compel the company to turn over for third-party examination the computer used for the modeling.

“Halliburton is reviewing the details of the motion filed today,’’ Beverly Stafford, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. “However, we believe that the conclusion that BP is asking the court to draw is without merit, and we look forward to contesting their motion in court.’’

Read more here.

Pro And Anti-Christmas Retailers List

JacobSloan — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:39:58 +0000

Keepers of morality the American Family Association have released their annual list of companies that are “Christmas friendly” or “anti-Christmas” (the latter using the term “Christmas” sparingly and instead referring to “the holidays”). Lesson learned: Jesus loves Wal-Mart, and when you shop at Staples, you’re shopping with Satan.

Malls Track Shoppers’ Cell Phones on Black Friday

Good German — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 22:26:32 +0000

Annayln Censky reports for CNN:

Attention holiday shoppers: your cell phone may be tracked this year.

Starting on Black Friday and running through New Year’s Day, two U.S. malls — Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. — will track guests’ movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones.

While the data that’s collected is anonymous, it can follow shoppers’ paths from store to store.

The goal is for stores to answer questions like: How many Nordstrom shoppers also stop at Starbucks? How long do most customers linger in Victoria’s Secret? Are there unpopular spots in the mall that aren’t being visited?

While U.S. malls have long tracked how crowds move throughout their stores, this is the first time they’ve used cell phones.

Read more here.

Yet One More Way That Money Corrupts Politics…

Haystack — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 22:59:04 +0000

For some reason, insider trading laws do not apply to members of Congress, whose back-rooms dealings give them special knowledge of how upcoming votes will effect the market. Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes reports:

How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich

Haystack — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 17:41:56 +0000

An incisive new article by Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone looks back to the ’80s, and describes how Republican Party came to abandon fiscal responsibility in favor of endless tax subsidies for the rich:

The nation is still recovering from a crushing recession that sent unemployment hovering above nine percent for two straight years. The president, mindful of soaring deficits, is pushing bold action to shore up the nation’s balance sheet. Cloaking himself in the language of class warfare, he calls on a hostile Congress to end wasteful tax breaks for the rich. “We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share,” he thunders to a crowd in Georgia. Such tax loopholes, he adds, “sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary — and that’s crazy.”

Preacherlike, the president draws the crowd into a call-and-response. “Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver,” he demands, “or less?”

The crowd, sounding every bit like the protesters from Occupy Wall Street, roars back: “MORE!”

The year was 1985. The president was Ronald Wilson Reagan …

[Full Article at Rolling Stone]

The Conspiracy to Rule The World

disinfogreg — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 03:52:25 +0000

Via Yimmy Yayo’s Visual Crack for the Ocular Fiend:

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Pepsi Getting Heat for Use of Aborted Fetal Cells in Flavor Research

Aaron Dames — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 21:31:56 +0000

David Bohon writes in the New American:

Shareholders of PepsiCo have filed a resolution with the Securities and Exchange Commission in an effort to force the company to stop contracting with a research firm that uses cells from aborted babies in its process of producing artificial flavor enhancers. According to LifeNews.com, Pepsi has “ignored concerns and criticism from dozens of pro-life groups and tens of thousands of pro-life people who voiced their opposition to PepsiCo contracting with biotech company Senomyx even after it was found to be testing their food additives using fetal cells from abortions.”

On its website Senomyx explains that its flavor research programs “focus on the discovery and development of savory, sweet and salt flavor ingredients that are intended to allow for the reduction of MSG, sugar and salt in food and beverage products. Using isolated human taste receptors, we created proprietary taste receptor-based assay systems that provide a biochemical or electronic readout when a flavor ingredient interacts with the receptor.”

But Debi Vinnedge of Children of God for Life, a pro-life group that has focused its attention on Pepsi’s relationship with Senomyx, pointed out that what the company does not reveal is that it is “using HEK293 — human embryonic kidney cells taken from an electively aborted baby to produce those receptors. They could have easily chosen animal, insect, or other morally obtained human cells expressing the G protein for taste receptors.”

When asked about her company’s use of HEK293, Senomyx vice president Gwen Rosenberg assured a reporter for the Miami New Times that “you won’t find anything on our website about HEK293.” Queried about the company’s position on stem-cell research, Rosenberg boasted, “We don’t have a position on anything. We’re dedicated to finding new flavors to reduce sugars and reduce salt. Our focus is to help consumers with diabetes or high blood pressure have a better quality of life.”

Congress Starts Pushing an Online Sales Tax

moezilla — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 06:09:35 +0000

Ten U.S. Senators are now proposing a “Marketplace Fairness Act,” which creates a new system letting states collect sales taxes from purchases made online. “It’s about closing a tax loophole,” said Senator Lamar Alexander, part of a bipartisan coalition which has already introduced similar legislation in the House of Representatives.

Strangely, Amazon has just issued a press release saying they support the bill, calling it “a win-win resolution,” according to one Kindle blog, though they may just be hoping to lobby for exemptions from each individual state.

“Instead of a national sales tax, these new taxes will only be imposed at the individual discretion of each separate state legislature, and that’s an area where multi-billion dollar companies like Amazon can still exert a lot of pressure.

Did Coca-Cola Trash The Grand Canyon’s Plastic Bottle Ban?

majestic — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:46:25 +0000

It’s good to see the mainstream media calling foul on some corporate dirty work. Karin Kline writes in the LA Times:

Grand Canyon National Park was just about to impose a ban on single-use plastic water bottles — the most common form of trash found along its trails — when the plan was suddenly put on hold, the New York Times reported. The paper raises the possibility that Coca-Cola Co. was able to get a sympathetic ear at the National Parks Foundation because the company, which bottles Dasani water, is a major donor.

This isn’t a radical new idea. Zion National Park already has a ban. The park provides “hydration stations” for people to refill their reusable bottles, as the Grand Canyon park would have.

The story included a strange comment from a Coca-Cola spokeswoman, who said that bans on single-use plastic bottles are never the answer, and that recycling would resolve the problem. What does Coca-Cola propose to do, place recycling stations every 50 feet in the wilderness? Those bottles aren’t being tossed because people refuse to recycle. They’re littering the trails because too many people find it too hard to pack out an empty bottle that weighs in at a few grams…

[continues in the LA Times]

Smile! Get Ready for Tiny Police Uniform Cameras

Join Or DIE — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 06:39:40 +0000

Via NPR:

The next time you talk to a police officer, you might find yourself staring into a lens. Companies such as Taser and Vievu are making small, durable cameras designed to be worn on police officer’s uniforms. The idea is to capture video from the officer’s point of view, for use as evidence against suspects, as well as to help monitor officers’ behavior toward the public.

The concept is catching on. The cameras have been adopted by big city police departments, such as Cincinnati and Oakland, Calif., as well as dozens of smaller cities, such as Bainbridge Island, Wash., where the Vievu camera was initially tested by Officer Ben Sias.

“The only thing that really was different about doing business is that I’d tell the person that we’re being recorded,” Sias says. He sees the camera as a kind of insurance policy.

“In this job, we’re frequently accused of things we haven’t done, or things were kind of embellished, as far as contact,” he says. “And the cameras show a pretty unbiased opinion of what actually did happen.” That makes the cameras particularly appealing in cities where the police have been accused of misconduct.

More: NPR

Is Your Carrier Storing Information On Your Phone Usage?

JacobSloan — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 21:36:47 +0000

Curious how long your cell phone company holds onto to data regarding what you’ve been doing with your phone? AT&T/Cingular will preserve your text and call detail records for 5-7 years. The ACLU uncovered the below document, created by the Department of Justice for use by law enforcement:

Large US Corporations Have Tax Rates As Low As -58%

majestic — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:35:39 +0000

And the media wonders why the 99% are angry? From MarketWatch:

The official federal corporate income tax rate in the U.S. is 35%, but plenty of the nation’s largest publicly traded companies are paying no taxes — even getting money back from the government in some cases — in years when they reap big profits, according to a new report.

Thirty of the 280 Fortune 500 companies studied paid zero in federal income taxes or enjoyed tax rebates in 2008, 2009 and 2010, according to the study by the left-leaning Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington-based nonprofit research and advocacy group, and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group.

And 78 of the 280 companies paid nothing in federal income taxes or enjoyed a tax rebate in at least one of those years. Those 78 companies, including General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE) and Pepco Holdings Inc. (NYSE:POM) , earned a total of $156 billion in pretax U.S. profits in the years they paid no income tax, yet received so many tax breaks that they reported negative taxes — a total of negative $22 billion, the study said…

For the three-year period, the average effective tax rate for all 280 companies was about 19%, but rates varied widely by company, from a low of negative 58% for Pepco Holdings to a high of 41% for Coventry Health Care Inc. (NYSE:CVH) , the study said. GE’s effective tax rate for that period was negative 45.%. Read the full report here

For the 30 companies that paid no taxes or got rebates, their effective tax rate averaged negative 7% in that period. At the other end of the spectrum, 71 companies paid an average effective rate of 32%. Another 67 companies paid an average effective tax rate of zero, the study said…

[continues at MarketWatch]

President Obama Issues Executive Order To Ease Shortages in Vital Medicines

Join Or DIE — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:47:54 +0000

Whatever Obama does, the Republicans will say it’s the wrong thing to do … but wouldn’t it be something if he dealt with the root of the problem (Big Pharma)? Lara Salahi reports for ABC News:

While many advocates say President Obama’s executive order to reduce a dire shortage of life-saving hospital medications is an essential step, others say the order is not enough to stop price gouging by some pharmaceutical companies.

Essential cancer drugs have arguably taken the hardest hit. Hospitals have reported the worst shortage in nearly a decade of chemotherapy agents like doxorubicin.

The new order instructs the Food and Drug Administration to broaden reporting of potential drug shortages, expedite regulatory reviews that can help prevent shortages, and examine whether potential shortages have led to price gouging. The drug shortage has compromised or delayed care for some patients and may have led to otherwise preventable deaths.

Christopher W. Hansen, president of the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network, applauded today’s order, saying in a statement that it would “allow government, industry, providers and the public to more systematically analyze and understand the causes of specific drug shortages as they occur, and to develop real-time solutions that are also needed to address the acute problems that cancer patients live with daily.”

147 Companies ‘Own Everything’

majestic — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:22:41 +0000

Source: New Scientist

New Scientist reveals the capitalist network that runs the world:

As protests against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters’ worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study’s assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York’s Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world’s transnational corporations (TNCs).

“Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it’s conspiracy theories or free-market,” says James Glattfelder. “Our analysis is reality-based.”…

[continues at New Scientist]

Will Librarians Revolt Over Amazon’s Kindle Lending Program?

moezilla — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 00:00:14 +0000

A California librarian is urging librarians to complain to Amazon over issues with privacy and advertising in Amazon’s new Kindle ebook lending program for libraries. “In our greedy attempt to get content into our users’ hands, we have failed to uphold the highest principle of our profession, which is intellectual freedom,” she argues in a 10-minute video. (Read the transcript here):

Kindle has allowed Amazon to harvest all of this borrowing data, so it’s an instant violation of all of our privacy policies … [I]f they’re using a Kindle, Amazon’s keeping friggin’ everything. And we haven’t told people that, and we need to tell people that.

She argues Amazon’s retention of your reading history may violate, for example, California’s Reader Privacy Act, and she also complains that the check-out and renewal process include unacceptable promotional content about Amazon’s for-sale ebooks. Though she owns a Kindle and loves ebooks, she’s urging librarians to speak up.

“How do you tell people, ‘Well this great device that works really well, and it’s the smoothest check-out process of any device or format that we offer here in the library – but it violates your privacy, it jeopardizes your intellectual freedom, and, you know, it might kinda be against state law, but I’m not really sure.’ How do you say that to people? But I think it’s important for us as library staff to figure out a way to say it to people, because it’s our job to stand up for their privacy and their reading rights, even when they don’t know when that they’re in jeopardy.”

DARPA Tech Invades iPhones Now with Siri

HAL9000 — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 05:19:56 +0000

Tim Stevens on Endgadget said this was happening back in ‘09. For all those who rushed out to get the new iPhone, if you are using Siri, you are giving a hell lot of personal info to Apple:

Microsoft’s little Clippy, the uppity paperclip who just wanted to help, never got a lick of respect in the ten years he graced the Office suite.

He’s long-since gone, but his legacy lives on through a DARPA project called CALO: the Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes. It’s intended for use to streamline tedious activities by military personnel, like scheduling meetings and prioritizing e-mails, but there are a few non-com spin-offs intended as well, like an iPhone app called Siri due to hit the App Store sometime this year. Siri will have more of a consumer angle, helping to find product reviews and make reservations, but we’re hoping a taste of its military upbringing shines through.