epic

A zealous band of pro-regulation privacy groups made a valiant effort a few days ago to convince the Feds to forcibly pull the plug on a new feature on the Ask.com search engine.

The groups, which include the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy, told the Federal Trade Commission on Saturday that a formal injunction was necessary to halt some supposedly pernicious practices on the part of Ask.com.

The only problem? Those supposedly pernicious practices don't actually exist.

Ask.com already had voluntarily changed the way it handled its new privacy feature weeks … Read more

The Internet has enabled the emergence of a collective consciousness that is unprecedented in human history. We are coming together as a hive, and the intelligence of the swarm is being mined and utilized like never before.

Knowledge is power, information is a cash commodity, and who decides how these resources and benefits are distributed? The latest controversy about Facebook's Beacon advertisements is one of many examples that suggests that the issue of user control over his or her own information is reaching a tipping point. We, the online masses, are developing a new sense that our own information is sacred and worth protecting, and not to be indiscriminately broadcast, or blindly exploited for someone else's commercial gain.

Beyond a "right to privacy" that might have meant "secrecy" in the past, we need to think about the right to control our information when it comes to:

I see these issues coming up time and time again in a thread that runs through everything from Internet safety, to social networking, creative artists' rights, consumer/patient rights, all the way up to government wiretapping and surveillance.… Read more

Once again, the U.S. Marine Corps--that bastion of compassion--is leading the way to a kinder, gentler battlefield by commissioning a non-lethal "ray gun" that uses radio-frequency energy to drop the enemy without causing permanent damage.

The Electromagnetic Personnel Interdiction Control (EPIC) "vomit ray" would disrupt the victim's vestibular system, interfering with the "normal process of human hearing and equilibrium." The effect is disorientation, confusion and ultimately extreme motion sickness, rendering the victim "ineffective."

USMC specifications call for the device to work through walls, a convenient way to keep your boots … Read more