 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Produced and hosted by Jon Gordon, Future Tense brings you the latest technology topics in daily five-minute capsules. From electronic privacy and digital democracy to spam and computer worms, Future Tense keeps you up to date on the rapidly changing world of technology.
Future Tense is heard in the United States during broadcasts of the CBC's As It Happens.
Sponsors
Listen - Download MP3 - iTunes
One of our key protections against privacy invasion, the stripping of personally identifiable information from databases, is not working, according to Paul Ohm of the University of Colorado School of Law.
At a congressional hearing last week, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) wondered aloud whether a technology called deep packet inspection needs to be outlawed. Deep packet inspection allows Internet service providers to examine in great detail an individual's activity on the Internet - from email to Web surfing habits.
Guest: Nate Anderson, Ars Technica
Recent business history is replete with costly mistakes regarding the handling of customer information.
According to a new report (PDF) by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, companies fail to to take privacy and free speech issues into account when they design new products and services. Companies need to bake privacy and security into their operations early on, according to the ACLU's Nicole Ozer.
While President Obama has been widely praised for his use of the Internet to communicate with the public, not all are happy. For example privacy groups have raised a stink over President Obama's use of Google's YouTube as the primary distributor of weekly video addresses on the WhiteHouse.gov Website.
Groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation objected to YouTube's use of small files known as "cookies" that track users' movements across the Web. The White House is now using a different video provider.
A new service from Google enables mobile phone users to broadcast their whereabouts to family and friends. The software plots a user's location by relying on cell phone towers, global positioning systems or a Wi-Fi connection.
Guest: Dwight Silverman, Houston Chronicle
Internet company Yahoo says it will anonymize some user data within 90 days of its collection. That includes information on the sites users visit, and advertisements they click on.
Meanwhile the Ponemon Institute, a research group that focuses on privacy issues, hasreleased its annual Most Trusted Companies survey. Google fell from its top 20 perch, partly because consumers expressed growing unease with Google's data collection and retention practices.
Guests: Jay Cline, Minnesota Privacy Consultants; Larry Ponemon, Ponemon Institute
A few years ago doctors removed Rob Spence's right eye. He damaged it more than 20 years ago while shooting his grandfather's gun on a trip to Ireland.
Now the 36 year-old Canadian documentary film maker is working with a team of scientists to implant a camera in his prosthetic eye. Spence plans to use the eye-cam to shoot scenes for a new film, which will examine the perils of surveillance by camera.
Here is a longer version of my interview with Spence:
Adam Jackson left Florida 6 months ago on a whim - to chase the dream of working in San Francisco's tech industry. He hurriedly rented the first apartment he saw, unaware the 6th floor unit sits at the edge of the city's sketchy Tenderloin neighborhood -- known in part for its high crime rate, massage parlors and abundant liquor stores.
Wanting to show folks back home what life was like at the intersection of Ellis and Taylor streets, he decided to point a 24-hour Web cam at the corner.
Clips from Jackson's camera can be found on YouTube. Here's one:
Today we feature an interview with Jonathan Taplin of the USC Annenberg School for Communication, who recently analyzed the tech policy platforms of the presidential candidates. We talked about President-elect Barack Obama's positions on broadband, net neutrality, and electronic privacy.
Researchers at the University of Toronto have discovered a large surveillance system in China that monitors, censors, and archives text conversations exchanged by customers of Tom-Skype, a joint venture of eBay-owned Skype and a Chinese wireless company.
The university's Citizen Lab, a research group that investigates Internet censorship, discovered the operation in September, and was able to access an archive of messages from inadequately-protected computers. They discovered a list or restricted words - such as "democracy" and "Falun Gong".
UPDATE: Skype responds
