He knows when you are sleeping...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Attention holiday shoppers: your cell phone may be tracked this year.
Starting on Black Friday and running through New Year's Day, two U.S. malls -- Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. -- will track guests' movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones.

While the data that's collected is anonymous, it can follow shoppers' paths from store to store.
The goal is for stores to answer questions like: How many Nordstrom shoppers also stop at Starbucks? How long do most customers linger in Victoria's Secret? Are there unpopular spots in the mall that aren't being visited?

While U.S. malls have long tracked how crowds move throughout their stores, this is the first time they've used cell phones.

But obtaining that information comes with privacy concerns.

The management company of both malls, Forest City Commercial Management, says personal data is not being tracked.

"We won't be looking at singular shoppers," said Stephanie Shriver-Engdahl, vice president of digital strategy for Forest City. "The system monitors patterns of movement. We can see, like migrating birds, where people are going to."

Still, the company is preemptively notifying customers by hanging small signs around the shopping centers. Consumers can opt out by turning off their phones.

Via http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/22/technology/malls_track_cell_phones_black_friday/

I would not believe this, had I not witnessed it with my own eyes. Of course, the caricatures have been changed to protect the confessed. In reality, no cartoon could do the actual characters justice. (Pardon the pun.) What it proves is that the right to remain silent is, perhaps, the greatest legal tool in the entire box.

Props to ToonDoo.com for building an online tool that even a right-brain can use.

It looks like, for some, the stimulus package wasn't enough. In an ironic twist, the man often criticized for moving Trillions from the Federal Reserve Bank into the hands of failing corporations has had a far lesser sum removed from his personal bank account.

"Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has been a victim of identity theft. His credit card company became suspicious when they noticed repeated purchases of large, failing American car companies."

- Conan O'Brien (Aired August 27, 2009)

Just days after President Obama announced Bernanke's renomination to the Federal Reserve, officials revealed that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was a victim of a wide-spread identity theft ring that used, "stolen personal identifying information, bank and bank record information, personal checks, and other access devices belonging to individual victims, to impersonate those victims at various bank branches throughout the country," according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

"Identity theft is a serious crime that affects millions of Americans each year," Mr. Bernanke said through a Fed spokesman. "Our family was but one of 500 separate instances traced to one crime ring."

Though there's really nothing funny about identity theft, it just goes to prove that the problem is so pervasive that anyone can fall victim.

According to BBC News, "Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year", leading some to wonder whether the £500 million (over $800 million in U.S. Dollars) the nation has spent on CCTV cameras to fight crime--over one-third of that in London alone--really pays.

While a spokesperson from the "Home Office", the United Kingdom's boarder agency, said, CCTVs "help communities feel safer", their ubiquitous presence undoubtedly make others uneasy.

A former member of the British Parliament, David Davis, told the BBC, "It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security."

Read more @ BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/8219022.stm)

In what is believed to be the largest hacking and identity theft case ever prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice, three men were charged today with stealing over 130 million credit and debit card account numbers. According to the USDOJ, the three hacked into Heartland Payment Systems, 7-Eleven, the Hannaford Brothers supermarket chain, and two unnamed corporations.

Note that this is only believed to be the largest case of its kind ever prosecuted by the USDOJ. There are still hundreds of millions of similar thefts that have not been prosecuted.

You may recall one of the men, 28-year-old Albert Gonzalez of Miami, was previously charged with stealing data related to 40 million credit cards from eight major retailers, including TJ Maxx, and possibly BJ's Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, Forever 21, and DSW.

Read more @ CNet News (http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10311336-245.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20)

In a decision that has far-reaching implications for individuals implicated based on an IP address subpoenaed from an Internet Service Provider (ISP), Seattle, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Jones ruled, "In order for 'personally identifiable information' to be personally identifiable, it must identify a person. But an IP address identifies a computer."

Read the full article @ Online Media Daily.

Via Slashdot.

Wired
Group Suing AT&T for Spying Will Sue Government, Too

A civil liberties group suing AT&T for allegedly spying on Americans on behalf of the government is not giving up, despite Congress' vote to give amnesty to the tlelecoms that helped. Instead, the group says it will now sue the government, too.

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http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/topheadlines/~3/372335895/rights-group-su.html
Posted by email from secondwave's posterous

"WASHINGTON — A Justice Department plan would loosen restrictions on the Federal Bureau of Investigation
to allow agents to open a national security or criminal investigation
against someone without any clear basis for suspicion, Democratic
lawmakers briefed on the details said Wednesday."

Via New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/washington/21fbi.html

Posted by email from secondwave's posterous

Posted by email from secondwave's posterous