NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Saudi Arabian Women Tracked With Text Alerts

When it comes to the repression of women, you'd be hard pressed to find a more misogynistic place than Saudi Arabia. Women there are, among other things, prohibited from voting (until 2015), driving a car and working in most places.

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To leave the country, Saudi women must present written permission from their male guardians, even if they're traveling together. Now, to add insult to injury, male guardians will also receive a text message whenever "their" women leave the country.

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The kingdom's interior ministry introduced the electronic tracking system back in April in an effort to create a modern e-government plan that would eliminate the infamous permission slip. Texts were originally sent to male guardians who opted into the system, but now are being sent to all and sundry.

"Apparently, as a Saudi woman, I don't even deserve the simplest of rights like the right to privacy," Safa Alahmad, a freelance journalist and filmmaker protested to the Guardian. "The core issue remains the same. Saudi women are viewed and treated as minors by the Saudi government."

Yet the new system doesn't only apply to women. Male guardians are also alerted when their "dependents," such as foreign workers and children of both sexes, leave the country.

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How long before the Saudi government implants microchips in women remains to be seen. But considering the government's penchant for treating women like dogs and that this most recent e-initiative was done in the name of streamlined modernity, a mircrochipped tracking system doesn't seem too far off.

via the Guardian

Credit: David Turnley/CORBIS

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Twitter Blocks Neo-Nazi Group: DNews Nugget

Twitter Blocks Neo-Nazi Group: In Germany, Twitter has banned its users from accessing an account belonging to the neo-Nazi group Besseres Hannover, which means "better Hannover." It's the first time that Twitter has acted on a policy it established back in January known as “country withheld content.” The policy is meant to uphold local laws by blocking users in specific countries from seeing unlawful tweets, while maintaining the ability of people beyond the border to see the offending messages. In the case of the Neo-Nazi Twitter account, the German government had already banned the group. Unlike in the United States, the use of Nazi symbols and slogans in Germany is against the law.

Jillian C. York, director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, told the NY Times, “It’s not a great thing, but it’s a way of minimizing censorship. It’s better for Twitter if they can keep countries happy without having to take the whole thing down.” via NY Times

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Seattle Eyes High-Tech Gunshot Detectors

The city of Seattle might turn to high-tech acoustic sensors to locate gunshots, in an effort to deal with gun violence.

The system is called ShotSpotter. Designed by Mountain View, Calif.-based SST Inc. It consists of sensors that hear the sound of a gunshot and pinpoint where it is by triangulating from the intensity of the sound at different points. After the shot is picked up, the data is sent to an "Incident Review Center" that calculates more accurately where the shot was fired, before passing on the information to 911 dispatchers. The company claims a range of up to 2,000 yards for the sensors.

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Besides just noting the location of a gunshot, SST says it can gather data about the volume and frequency of gunshots, allowing law enforcement agencies to target their efforts to certain neighborhoods. In addition it can help provide evidence for use in prosecutions.

The company made a presentation to city officials Thursday; there's no word yet on whether it will be adopted there. The company says in its presentation slides that it would cost some $40,000 to $60,000 per square mile. SST says ShotSpotter is in 58 cities around the country.

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Not every location has been a success; in New Haven, Conn., the ShotSpotter system has been criticized for false positives and failing to pick up shots in the first place. To address that, the company said it would have the system reroute data so that it would go to SST for analysis first before being sent to the 911 center; unlike the one proposed in Seattle the system in New Haven was sending data to the 911 center first.

Via Geekwire

Image: SST Inc.

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Facebook Law IDs Sex Offenders: DNews Nuggets

Louisiana Legislates Sex Offenders' Facebook Walls

Facebooking in Louisiana just got more complicated for some. Under the new law, taking affect August 1, child predators and sex offenders must identify themselves on their social media.

This represents an expansion of existing laws to the digital realm. While the law is supported by Facebook, they already bar offenders from using the site as outlined in their terms of service.

As far as how the law will be implemented we shall have to see, there's no box on Facebook to indicate one is a sex offender or child predator; so looking into people's "About Me" section may have just become more important. via CNN

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