Surveillance in Everyday Life

“Surveillance is not inherently good or bad.” Here are five issues about surveillance posed by Eugene Volokh, Professor of Law at UCLA, and author of “The First Amendment”

In any given surveillance situation, one has first has to determine:
* What concrete security benefits will the proposal likely provide?
* Exactly how might it be abused?
* Might it decrease the risk of policed abuse rather than increase it?
* What control mechanisms can be set up to help diminish the risk of abuse?
* What other surveillance is this proposal likely to lead to?

“Such analysis suggests that traffic cameras are a good idea at least as an experiment. Cameras at public places from ATM machines to convenience stores are probably worth trying.” Each situation needs to be evaluated
independently to determine whether Breathing Space is curtailed or enhanced.

Documenting Transgressions

Jennifer Saranow, writing in the Wall Street Journal, discusses how “bad parking, loud talking -- no transgression is too trivial to document online.” In some respects this can be socially beneficial, but too quickly, I fear, such postings represent the kind of over-information in which too many people are immersed. Moreover, where is the Breathing Space if everyone is a snoop?

Old Email Never Dies

AP business writer Christopher Rugaber, in a recent article, observes that “U.S. companies will need to know more about where they store e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents generated by their employees in the event they are sued, thanks to changes in federal rules that took effect Friday,” according to legal experts.

In other words: anything you ever email at work will be stored for evermore and may one day be used against you. “The changes, approved by the Supreme Court's administrative arm in April after a five-year review, require companies and other parties involved in federal litigation to produce ‘electronically stored information’ as part of discovery, the process by which both sides share evidence before a trial.”

A word to Breathing Space enthusiasts: if you write it and send it, your message will live on. So think twice before you hit “send.”

Stuffing Our in Bins

All that spam you’re getting? You are not alone. A Reuters report out of London says that “criminal gangs using hijacked computers are behind a surge in unwanted e-mails peddling sex, drugs and stock tips.”

According to Postini, a U.S. email security company spam messages have tripled since June and now account for nearly 90% of the e-mails sent worldwide. "E-mail systems are overloaded or melting down trying to keep up with all the spam," said Dan Druker, a vice president at Postini.

The Reuters report observes that “as Christmas approaches, the daily trawl through in-boxes clogged with offers of fake Viagra, loans and sex aids is tipped to take even longer.” Postini has detected a staggering 7 billion spam e-mails worldwide in November compared to 2.5 billion in June.

According to Spamhaus, an agency that tracks the problem, “About 200 illegal gangs are behind 80 percent of unwanted e-mails.

Reuters: Experts blame the rise in spam on computer programs that hijack millions of home computers to send e-mails. These "zombie networks", also called "botnets", can link 100,000 home computers without their owners' knowledge. They are leased to gangs who use their huge "free" computing power to send millions of e-mails with relative anonymity.

Snooping Bosses

If you think your employer is checking your e-mail, Web searches and voice mail, You're probably right.

An Assault on Breathing Space

A study conducted by Commtouch indicates that most spam originates from websites hosted in countries outside the U.S. Pharmaceutical drugs are most advertised, with Viagra the leading the way.

The recipients of these largely unwanted messages are nearly all in the U.S. Meanwhile, despite filters and spaminators, the pace of spam is accelerating . The aggregate number of unique spam outbreaks per day has been rising for for more than five years.

Too Much Email of the Wrong Kind

50 billion e-mail messages worldwide are sent each day, equal to seven messages for everyone on the planet, although the vast majority of people are not online. In 2001, e-mail traffic was less than 12 billion.

Of the 50 billion messages sent daily, more than 88% cent of e-mails are spam including about 1 per cent which are virus-infected. So that means at least 44 billion spam messages are sent each day, 365 days a year, and each day 4.4 billion e-mail messages contain viruses. Has junk email become an issue for you? It’s time to arm yourself to the teeth with with spam protection, virus protection, and a private email account.

For Bloggers Everywhere

Reid Goldsborough, a syndicated columnist of the book Straight Talk About the Information Superhighway offers the following suggestions for bloggers everywhere. He can be reached at reidgold@netaxs.com

You may quote short bits of what someone else has written, particularly if you’re providing commentary, without violating the person’s copyright.

You may report facts or ideas of others (though it’s considered plagiarism to couch them as your own).

You may use the trademarked name of a company (without the trademark symbol) unless you’re using it as the name of your own competing product or service or implying that the trademark holder endorses your content.

In criticizing another party, truth is an absolute defense against libel, but truth can be expensive to prove legally.

You can’t just stick an “In my opinion” in front of a verifiable statement for it to become opinion and protected against a libel charge.

If you don’t name a person you’re criticizing but the person is still identifiable through the context of what you say, you can still be exposed to a libel charge.

If you make up something about a company, such as finding a severed finger in the company’s chili, you can be liable for trade libel.

You may be liable for invasion of privacy if you publish private facts about another person if they’re offensive and not a matter of public concern.

If you get an unjustified cease-and-desist letter or e-mail message, consider exposing the party trying to squash your freedom of expression at the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse.

If you criticize your boss or company in your personal blog, even if you do so off-hours using your own computer and Internet service provider, you could be fired, legally, if you’re an “at will” employee.