Loss of Privacy

New York’s MTA is claiming that they own the copyright over their schedule and are attempting to block an iphone application that shows their schedules.  The blog, StationStops, is now in a fight with the MTA over the use of the iphone app.

While the MTA dropped the lawsuit against the website, they are pressing forward with one against the iphone.  They are also making some large demands from StationStops.

Earlier this month, MTA marketers and then lawyers contacted him to demand he sign a license agreement or take down his iPhone app. At one point, the lawyers also claimed that his site appeared to be an official MTA site. Perhaps realizing the enormous fallout that would come from headlines like “MTA tries to silence blogger critical of its operations,” they quickly backed off that particular claim. However, they continued to demand a share of his revenue, retroactive payment for prior sales, and a $5,000 license fee on top.

The problem is that this really isn’t a copyright issue.  Copyright is limited to artistic works.  An MTA schedule is not artistic.  You can’t copyright facts, which is what the MTA schedule is.

The TSA has updated their site with new photos of the Millimeter Wave/Backscatter scans.  They are in more detail than I had thought and bother me a lot more than they originally did.

I do not want to be subjected to such scans, ever.  I don’t even want the TSA encouraging others to use the scanners until it becomes normal to go through these scans.  It is a huge invasion of privacy.

If the United Kingdom was serious about stopping the swine flu, they should have installed screening measures three months ago when it was first detected in Mexico.  Instead, they’ve let everyone come and go, allowing the swing flu to spread across the country.

health workers and immigration officials at Heathrow and other port authorities have been told to look out for passengers with possible signs of swine flu infection;

Exactly how will this help the situation?  On the off chance that you find someone coming off a plane with swine flu, they’ve already infected the rest of the plane!

Now, however, they also believe that the NHS will, somehow, become overwhelmed with swine flu and the system won’t be able to handle it.  The regular flu causes nearly four times the number of infections per year, yet the NHS never complains then and, the WHO has confirmed that the mortality rate for swine flu is the same as that for other types of flu.  So, why are we all up in a frenzy about this?

If the UK really wants to be taken seriously, they will screen people leaving the country as well in addition to quarantining the entire island until no one has swine flu.

How would you like pay-as-you-go insurance?  While places such as California are pushing it, the idea doesn’t seem to be taking off elsewhere.

Such insurance plans first became available in 2004, and are now available as a limited option in 30 US states from insurance companies like Progressive and Liberty Mutual. Uptake has been slow. Abroad, things are similar; the option for PAYD insurance is available in Australia, the UK, Ontario, Japan, and South Africa, but one UK insurer has dropped its PAYD program, citing extremely limited demand.

California isn’t pleased to let such programs live and die by consumer demand. The state’s Department of Insurance has announced it plans to mandate 100% adoption of PAYD insurance beginning next year. The program requires all insurers to utilize mileage driven in determining insurance rates for all their customers, with at least eight brackets of division by mileage. Lower-mileage customers would pay reduced rates.

Let’s just force everyone to be tracked no matter where they go.  Fortunately, organizations, such as the EFF, are fighting against this.

The EFF’s complaint centers on the fine details of these provisions. Under the new plan, while insurance companies offering both EM and AMD plans may offer discounts for AMD users, they are required to accept odometer readings for milage estimates. AMD-exclusive companies, however, may mandate installation of monitoring equipment in automobiles covered under their policies.

This monitoring equipment need not restrict itself to the recording of miles driven, the EFF interprets, but may additionally record and store other information including location, speed, acceleration, usage patterns, and driving habits. Moreover, insurance companies are authorized to use information collected from such a device to calculate insurance rates, without restriction on what such information is collected. This would allow insurance companies to change rates based on an incredible variety of driver behaviors.

Get off your butts, Californians, and fight this crap before it’s completely forced upon you.

Several states across the nation have enacted laws against talking on a cell phone while driving, but New Jersey has done a step further and finally gotten the law right. New Jersey has added a ban on text messaging as well. Now, both offenses are primary offenses, meaning you can be pulled over for each offense.

New Jersey joins four other states, including neighboring New York, where talking on a hand-held cell phone is reason enough to get pulled over. The Garden State is the first where text-messaging on the road is a primary offense, meaning police need no other reason to pull a driver over, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

While I usually side with the “let them do what they want” crowd, this is a matter of safety. We have seen far too many people that are distracted just talking on a phone. If you attempt to drive while text messaging, it is impossible to be paying attention to the road. That makes you an unsafe driver and a danger to other people on the road.

Drivers can still use their cell phones to contact police or emergency services, and can talk at any time with a hands-free device. But crash statistics suggest that those headsets and earpieces may not make conversations in the car any safer.

In 2006, nearly half of the 3,580 phone-related crashes in New Jersey involved a hands-free device, according to transportation officials. Five of 11 fatal accidents involving a cell phone that year also involved a hands-free device.

While using hands free devices may appear safer, they are still a distraction. It is also not that difficult to pull over to the side of the road to answer a call.

But Cataldo questioned how police would spot drivers typing out a message.

“If you’re doing 75 miles per hour,” he said, “the cop has to be right alongside to see you.”

Uh, no. Anyone who has been in a car has seen people texting by their erratic behavior. Rare is the person that can text on one hand, drive with the other, while not look at the keypad.

Twenty-One other state legislatures are also considering a ban on driving and texting. Hopefully, they will pass similar laws and help make the nation’s roads a little bit safer.