The end of privacy?

Forget Street View, there is a far more subtle - and pervasive - invasion of your private life being carried out - this time through your mobile phone

When the furore about Google Street View washed across the UK last month, Google must have been pleased. For a much more sinister invasion of privacy had gone unnoticed. A week before, Google had, without any fanfare, released 11 software applications for mobile phones that spell a fundamental change in our lives.

Among the applications were functions such as text messaging, web browsing, a diary, Orkut - the company's social networking offering - and a program for Google Maps. Innocent enough, perhaps. But combined they would allow Google to know what you are doing all of the time. A truly Orwellian development that has been described by privacy campaigners as "a catastrophic corruption of consent".

Far-fetched? Not at all.

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Big Brother now more like a nanny

Laws are targeting everything from grease to cell phones

Monday, March 26, 2007

By MICHAEL HILL

of The Associated Press
You're not eating that! Put the phone down! Pull those earbuds out! And put down that bat; you'll hurt someone!

Lawmakers around the country are passing or proposing laws to regulate the grease your doughnuts are fried in, the calls you make from the road, what you listen to when you cross the street, even the bat your kid hits a baseball with.

The ideas are offered with the best intentions - usually to minimize a newly recognized danger or to encourage healthy behavior. Lawmakers worry, for example, that text-messaging while driving can be deadly and that foods fried in trans fats promote heart disease.

Critics counter that regulating french fries and Blackberries infringes on personal liberties. "Nanny government" some critics call it, and they point to a playpen full of behavior-related bills before city councils and state legislatures.

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The Nanny State

Politicians are especially busy these days passing laws which ban fatty donuts, talking on your phone while driving and other activities which the government has no business dabbling in.

You’re not eating that! Put the phone down! Pull those earbuds out! And put down that bat; you’ll hurt someone!

Lawmakers around the country are passing or proposing laws to regulate the grease your doughnuts are fried in, the calls you make from the road, what you listen to when you cross the street, even the bat your kid hits a baseball with.

The ideas are offered with the best intentions — usually to minimize a newly recognized danger or to encourage healthy behavior. Lawmakers worry, for example, that text-messaging while driving can be deadly, and that foods fried in trans fats promote heart disease.

Critics counter that regulating french fries and Blackberries infringes on personal liberties. “Nanny government” some critics call it, and they point to a playpen full of behavior-related bills before city councils and state legislatures.

More...

Look, officer – no hands

EDITORIAL BOARD
Austin American-Statesman

Saturday, March 17, 2007

We've all seen it. Women applying eye shadow and lipstick while driving; men reading, eating a sandwich or drinking a soda while behind the wheel. But modern technology has brought new versions of an old problem — Driving While Distracted — to America's highways.

Some states are debating laws to make certain forms of DWD illegal. Washington's state legislature is considering a bill making it a crime to drive while "reading, writing or sending electronic messages," according to The Wall Street Journal. Oregon has a bill pending that would fine drivers up to $720 for text messaging or holding a phone to the ear. In Arizona, the Journal continued, drivers sending text messages by cell phone or BlackBerry would be ticketed if caught.

Texas is not anyone's idea of a nanny state, but it hasn't been left out of the trend altogether. Lawmakers have filed bills that would make it illegal to use a cell phone or other wireless communication device without a hands-free attachment. Neither the Senate bill filed by state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, nor the House bill filed by state Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, has gone anywhere yet, however.

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