# data[].attributes.headline
Cons: a fictional example of things going wrong

# data[].attributes.subject
Cons: a fictional example of things going wrong

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Black Mirror - Arkangel | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Children's smart toys like Hello Barbie and Furby Connect can be easily hacked

Privacy advocates have raised alarms about the toys' insecure WiFi connections

Without any authentication, strangers can talk to your kids without you knowing

Toys are equipped with GPS devices so that people can track your kids' location

As Amazon releases an Echo Dot smart-home device aimed at children, it's entering a busy and growing marketplace.

More than one-third of U.S. homes with children have at least one 'internet of things' connected toy - like a cuddly creature who can listen to and respond to a child's inquiries.

The toys are often billed as improving children's quality of play, providing children with new experiences of collaborative play, and developing children's literacy, numeric and social skills.

But consumer advocates have raised alarms about the toys' insecure wireless internet connections - either directly over Wi-Fi or via Bluetooth to a smartphone or tablet with internet access.

Scroll down for video

Online devices raise privacy concerns for all their users, but children are particularly vulnerable and have special legal protections.

These toys wirelessly connect with online databases to recognize voices and images, identifying children's queries, commands and requests and responding to them.

As someone with both academic and practical experience in security, law enforcement and applied technology, I know these fears are not hypothetical.

Here are four examples of when internet of things toys put kids' security and privacy at risk.

1. Unsecured wireless connections

Some 'internet of things' toys can connect to smartphone apps without any form of authentication, so a user can download a free app, find an associated toy nearby, and then communicate directly with the child playing with that toy.

In 2015, security researchers discovered that Hello Barbie, an internet-enabled Barbie doll, automatically connected to unsecured Wi-Fi networks that broadcast the network name 'Barbie'.

It would be very simple for an attacker to set up a Wi-Fi network with that name and communicate directly with an unsuspecting child.

The same thing could happen with unsecured Bluetooth connections to the Toy-Fi Teddy, I-Que Intelligent Robot and Furby Connect toys, a British consumer watchdog group revealed in 2017.

The toys' ability to monitor children - even when used as intended and connected to official networks belonging to a toy's manufacturer - violates Germany's anti-surveillance laws.

In 2017, German authorities declared the My Friend Cayla doll was an 'illegal espionage apparatus,' ordering stores to pull it off the shelves and requiring parents to destroy or disable the toys.

Unsecured devices allow attackers to do more than just talk to children: A toy can talk to another internet-connected device, too.

In 2017, security researchers hijacked a CloudPets connected stuffed animal and used it to place an order through an Amazon Echo in the same room.

2. Tracking kids' movements

Some internet-connected toys have GPS like those in fitness trackers and smartphones, which can also reveal users' locations, even if those users are children.

In addition, the Bluetooth communications some toys use can be detected as far away as 30 feet.

If someone within that range looks for a Bluetooth device - even if they're only seeking to pair their own headphones with a smartphone - they'll see the toy's name, and know a child is nearby.

For instance, the Consumer Council of Norway found that smartwatches marketed to children were storing and transmitting locations without encryption, allowing strangers to track children's movements.

That group issued an alert in its country, but the discovery led authorities in Germany to ban the sale of children's smartwatches.

3. Poor data protections

Internet-connected toys have cameras that watch kids and microphones that listen to them, recording what they see and hear.

Sometimes they send that information to company servers that analyze the inputs and send back directions on how the toy should respond.

But those functions can also be hijacked to listen in on family conversations or take photographs or video of children without the kids or parents ever noticing.

Toy manufacturers don't always ensure the data is stored and transmitted securely, even when laws require it.

In 2018, toymaker VTech was fined US$650,000 for failing to fulfill its promises to encrypt private data and for violating U.S. laws protecting children's privacy.

FOUR BEST-SELLING TOYS WITH SECURITY FAILURES

4. Working with third parties

Toy companies have also shared the information they collect about kids with other companies - much as Facebook shared its users' data with Cambridge Analytica and other firms.

And they can also surreptitiously share information from third parties with kids.

One toy company came under fire, for example, in both Norway and the U.S. for a business relationship with Disney in which the My Friend Cayla doll was programmed to discuss what were described as the doll's favorite Disney movies with kids.

Parents weren't told about this arrangement, which critics said amounted to 'product placement'-style advertising in a toy.

In my view, and according to consumer advice from the FBI, parents should carefully research internet-connected toys before buying them, and evaluate their capabilities, functioning, and security and privacy settings before bringing these devices into their homes.

Without proper safeguards - by parents, if not toy companies - children are at risk, both individually and through collection of aggregate data about kids' activities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Best-selling children's smart toys can be easily hacked

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Children's smart toys like Hello Barbie and Furby Connect can be easily hacked Privacy advocates have raised alarms about the toys' insecure WiFi connections Without any authentication, strangers can talk to your kids without you knowing Toys are equipped with GPS devices so that people can track your kids' location As Amazon releases an Echo Dot smart-home device aimed at children, it's entering a busy and growing marketplace.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This Christmas the toys are getting smarter - but is the law smart enough to keep up?

We've been investigating the potential dangers from new digital toys that could potentially be hacked.

A cyber security consultant demonstrated how easy it is can be to take control of some of the latest generation of gadgets.

Ken Munro told ITV News, "I certainly didn't have toys like this when I was growing up and we are suddenly asking parents to understand privacy and security in a new generation of toys.

"We need standards, and we need codes of practice, but if manufacturers don't improve we also need regulation to follow it up".

The expert acted as an "ethical hacker" and demonstrated how some toys can be vulnerable.

He showed a doll that connects through Bluetooth, but is without password protection meaning a hack was simple.

It was a similar story with a talking toucan, which could be made to say whatever Mr Munro wanted once he had taken control.

The government minister in charge, Margot James MP, said that new laws are likely.

"In all likelihood it will become statutory regulation but in the first instance I think its important to get it right," she said.

"We will quickly learn what it is we have to regulate and how we need to work with industry and what companies need to do," the Digital Minister added.

A spokesperson for The British Toy and Hobby Association, Natasha Crookes said: "Responsible manufacturers have taken a very cautious approach which is why less than 2% of toys connect to the internet. I think there has been a lack of legislation in this area which is why the trade association has had its own security guidelines for about a year."

Children are growing up in a digital world, and many parents see "smart" toys as a great way to help prepare them.

There is no simple way for consumers to evaluate how secure these devices are, no specific security kitemark for toys or mandatory standards.

It seems that will soon change.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
new rules to prevent children's 'smart' toys from being hacked. technology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
New rules to prevent children's 'smart' toys from being hacked

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This Christmas the toys are getting smarter - but is the law smart enough to keep up? We've been investigating the potential dangers from new digital toys that could potentially be hacked. A cyber security consultant demonstrated how easy it is can be to take control of some of the latest generation of gadgets.

# data[].attributes.headline
Pro: an ad for a teddy bear with hidden cam

# data[].attributes.subject
Pro: an ad for a teddy bear with hidden cam

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Nanny Cam Teddy Bear With XtremeLife DVR Built-In

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The nanny cam teddy bear with built-in DVR has a standby time of 30 days with a recording time of 8 hours. Capture motion activated video that is stored to a internal memory card. No wires or cumbersome battery packs. Everything is concealed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Putting your child in the hands of someone else is a nerve-racking experience. As a parent, your top priority is the safety and wellbeing of your children. You want to know that they're being cared for properly when you're busy at work or simply need to get out of the house from time-to-time, as we all do.

It is actually possible to relax during a well deserved night out without having to worry about what's happening at home. It's not a crime to be protective of your little child and a babysitting cam is a must-have item for mums, dads and carers.

Sadly, there have been many cases of the physical and mental abuse of children that have been revealed by hidden cameras. In this article, you will discover why your child should be monitored, how to decide if you need a home surveillance cam and what to do if you've witnessed untoward behaviour from your babysitter.

From this graph, you can see that the interest in nanny cameras is increasing and continues to rise into 2016 months.

It's better to be safe than sorry, so be the parent that sees everything and don't take any risks....

Why should you monitor your child?

⅕ of all kidnappings recorded by police involve a child victim...

Ever suspect that your babysitter is having friends over without your permission or watching TV the entire time instead of watching your children?

You may have heard the about 'bad' babysitters being caught. Although your child's caregiver may seem like complete delight, unfortunately, you cannot trust everybody. If you're looking for a quick way to discover if a nanny is right for your family, a hidden camera could be the best way to figure this out.

When could your child NOT be safe?

One thousand parents in the US were interviewed and 26% have caught their babysitters distracted by texting on the job.

There are a number of situations that could take place if your babysitter was to abuse their job role by doing the following without your permission:

Drinking

Inviting friends over

Texting

Social media

Making personal phone calls

Watching television

These activities could allow the caregiver's attention to wander or decline, meaning that your child is not being shown full attention.

Child kidnappings could be four times higher as of 2015. You can never be too careful when it comes to your children. If you're a busy parent and require outside help with caregiving, you want to know that your child is receiving the best possible care.

Leaving your baby at home is a tough decision to make, but you can eliminate any possible worries by installing surveillance in your home to ensure that things are running as they should while you're away to keep tabs on your children at all times.
In 2015, 49,000 children in England needed protection from abuse...
Can you trust your babysitter?

No matter how long you use it for, the camera can either confirm the trust you have for your au-pair or it can support any doubts so that you can efficiently find a replacement babysitter. If any ambiguity whatsoever is creeping into your mind, you should act appropriately.

Behaviour to potentially be wary of:

Has your child acted disturbingly since hiring the babysitter?

Is the babysitter secretive about her daily routine?

Has your child been in many accidents since the arrival of the babysitter?

Is the babysitter ignoring your requests? Does your child appear withdrawn?

Is the care-provider critical of your parenting?

Has your babysitter ever lied to you?

It can be hard to know whether to fully trust somebody from a simple recommendation or resume - but now it is easier than ever to monitor your home activity with a simple hidden camera that will not likely be discovered. A caregiver can never replace the nurture received from yourself as a parent, but it's good to know that your child has a positive connection with the person that they are spending a fair amount of time with.

By understanding the communication that goes on in your home, you are getting to know your babysitter and the way they work without having to conduct a string of interviews or having to be around for the first few weeks. Often, children are afraid to speak up through fear or uncomfortable feelings - it's up to you as a parent to understand what's going on in your home.

Kateryna G Tue, March 10th
"Want to warn all the moms here. I had a very bad experience with a babysitter (who was actually a niece of a friend). She seemed very sweet but I have a camera in my house so I can watch what's going on on my phone. She spent the entire time texting and left my son strapped in his high chair crying bloody murder. PUT CAMERAS IN YOUR HOUSE if you have a babysitter." Source

How do babysitter cameras work?

A babysitting camera is a simple and easy way to keep an eye on your kids (and your home) when you're not there. Covert cameras capture video recordings in a hidden manner and can be placed in common living areas such as the kitchen, front room and children's bedrooms.

Once they are installed, you can view or listen to all activities on your personal mobile devices on your computer in real-time or as a recording. You can also record specific activity for later viewing. Although you may feel somewhat sneaky doing this, it's simply 'insurance' - nothing more, nothing less.

Don't worry, as this is no longer the 1990s and you don't necessarily need to install a muffled camera into the eyes of a teddy bear. Technology is increasing its uses and high definition spy cameras hidden in everyday items are so discreet that nobody need ever know. Today's technology can be used to your advantage and it doesn't have to be a bad thing.

Should I tell my babysitter about the camera?

If you want to tell your babysitter about the home surveillance, you don't want to appear creepy or untrustworthy of their services, so wording is crucial if you want to share your plans.

Deciding whether to tell your caregiver that you're monitoring activity is a difficult decision to make, it's possible that a nanny will object to the monitoring. On the other hand, the nanny cam could work as a deterrent for abuse and as an incentive for providing excellent care because the caregiver realises that you are monitoring activities.

Ethical and legal issues

You can install a camera in common areas of your home however it is illegal to install surveillance in private areas of your home including the bathroom or a live-in-nanny's bedroom. There are particular laws around recording voice activity, you can read more about that here.

What kind of nanny cam is best?

The kind of nanny cam you'd like depends on the room you wish to place it in. We hold a range of hidden cameras in common devices to avoid discovery. From air conditioners to table lamp cameras, you can select the most suitable device for your home. It is completely up to you if you'd like to purchase more than one.

The top 5 surveillance products for babysitters: The Air Freshener
The Air Freshener Camera
Camera's live feed can be viewed from your phone, iPad or laptop. Perfect for the living room or kitchen, can be placed anywhere and includes motion detection so that you don't have to browse through hours of footage.
Smoke Alarm WiFi Spy Camera
Produces a central birds eye view of your home, the wifi aspect allows you to view a live feed from your phone or computer no matter where you are.
HD Spy Clock Camera
Produces clear HD video and audio footage to watch back via the micro SD card, compatible with Mac and Windows.

Supplied with a remote control, the table lamp is fitted with a discreet camera that enables you to view recorded footage. Radio WiFi Spy Camera Fitted with wifi, this camera allows you to view live, remote footage. This device also produces motion activated recordings of events for later viewings.

Fitted with wifi, this camera allows you to view live, remote footage. This device also produces motion activated recordings of events for later viewings.

What should I do if I catch my babysitter acting badly?

The worst nightmare for any parent is to discover that the person they trusted with their children has turned out to be a questionable character.

If you have been using a babysitter camera and have noticed behaviours that you feel to be wrong, it is important that you take action immediately. Whatever you have discovered, whether this is mental or physical - you must terminate the nanny's services straight away.

Terminate employment of the babysitter

Talk to your child and ensure that you know how they feel

Gather all evidence and make copies to ensure that the nanny will not destroy the content

If you have employed the nanny through an agency, contact and inform them

Remember, you don't need to use the nanny cam forever. It could be useful for the first month or so of hiring somebody just to ensure that things are running smoothly.

How to choose the right babysitter
1.Consider the references
It may take a little bit of extra time, however it could benefit you in the long run if you're wary of the babysitters you've hired in the past. Narrowing down the right candidates is a tough job, your chosen caregiver should provide exactly what you and your child needs.

Contact previous families that the babysitter has listed and review previous responsibilities that they've had. This way you can decide if she has the right experience for your job.
2.Prepare the right interview questions
Consider the questions that are most important to you and your family and think of unique requirements that you are looking for someone, this could include finding out about the candidates hobbies and cooking skills.
3.Do a child test
An important factor will be how well the caregiver interacts with your child/children. Once you have interviewed the person alone, it's a good idea to see how well the child connects with them and how comfortable their interaction is.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to know that your children are being safely cared for. Some misinterpret the use of a nanny cam by linking it with the fact that you do not trust your babysitter, however it's

Hidden cameras aren't just for nanny's, they can be used for pet sitters, housekeepers and general surveillance within your home. We hold a selection of quality devices that can be used to monitor home activity - whether you want to hide in plain sight or make the cameras known.natural for a parent to need reassurance that a childminder is doing a good job.

View our range of surveillance cameras, or get in touch if you require further information.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How To Keep A (Legal) Eye On Your Babysitter | News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Putting your child in the hands of someone else is a nerve-racking experience. As a parent, your top priority is the safety and wellbeing of your children. You want to know that they're being cared for properly when you're busy at work or simply need to get out of the house from time-to-time, as we all do.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Yes, It's OK to Spy on Babysitters: Do's and Don'ts of the Nannycam

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Interest in nannycams is rising, but there is a right way and a wrong way to use them. The wrong way: Wait until you become suspicious of your caregiver, then secretly install hidden cameras to catch any abuse.

# data[].attributes.headline
Pro: Whoopi Goldberg defending child tracking

# data[].attributes.subject
Pro: Whoopi Goldberg defending child tracking

# data[].attributes.body
watch the video and read the text.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
On The View Today: Whoopi Goldberg Argues In Favor Of Micro-Chipping Children

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The decades-old missing persons case of Etan Patz, who went missing in SoHo in 1979, has been reopened after authorities discovered hair and a possible blood stain in a basement near the location where Patz is thought to have disappeared.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
So, like every other one of the world's 1.28 billion monthly active Facebook users, you blindly agreed to Facebook's Terms and Conditions without reading the fine print.

You entrusted your photo albums, private messages and relationships to a website without reading its policies. And you do the same with every other site ... sound about right?

In your defense, Carnegie Mellon researchers determined that it would take the average American 76 work days to read all the privacy policies they agreed to each year. So you're not avoiding the reading out of laziness; it's literally an act of job preservation.

So here are the Cliffs Notes of what you agreed to when you and Facebook entered into this contract. Which, by the way, began as soon as you signed up:

Note the rather vague use of the word "infer," which Oxford Dictionary defines as "Deduce or conclude (information) from evidence and reasoning rather than from explicit statements."

Facebook has even begun studying messages that you type but end up deciding not to post. A recent study by a Facebook data analyst looked at habits of 3.9 million English-speaking Facebook users to analyze how different users "self-censor" on Facebook. They measured the frequency of "aborted" messages or status posts, i.e., posts that were deleted before they ever were published. They studied this because "[Facebook] loses value from the lack of content generation," and they hoped to determine how to limit this kind of self-censorship in the future. While a Facebook spokesman told Slate that the network is not monitoring the actual substance of these messages, Facebook was able to determine when characters were typed, and whether they were posted within ten minutes of being typed.

Your Facebook footprint doesn't necessarily disappear if you deactivate your account. According to the site's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, if your videos or photos have been shared by other users, they will remain visible on the site after you deactivate your account, and are subject to that user's privacy settings.

This means that Facebook is being paid for supplying your endorsement (which you indicate by liking a page) to brands or companies. You can even find out how much your data is worth to Facebook by using the FBME application from Disconnect, Inc. And a report from The Center For Digital Democracy shows marketing companies are taking note, creating algorithms for determining key social media "influencers." The report found that many marketers have identified multicultural youth users as key influencers, and have targeted those demographics with heavier social media marketing.

This announcement came in a recent post from Facebook.

Facebook notes that other websites do the same thing. But that accounts for an insane amount of potential data, especially given the growth of Facebook mobile use. On average, Facebook mobile users check the site 14 times a day on their devices.

Last year, Facebook started partnering with data broker firms. Data brokers earn their money by selling the power of your consumer habits and monitoring your online and offline spending. Facebook's partnership allows them to measure the correlation between the ads you see on Facebook and the purchases you make in-store -- and determine whether you're actually buying in real life the things you're seeing digitally while using Facebook. Two of Facebook's partners, Datalogix and Acxiom -- one of the oldest data brokers and a partner of Huffington Post's parent company AOL, Inc., -- were among the nine data brokers the Federal Trade Commission analyzed in a recent in-depth study. The study found that data brokers "collect consumer data from numerous sources, largely without consumers' knowledge" and "store billions of data elements." Acxiom has a database of about 3,000 data segments for nearly every U.S. consumer.

Brokers share this information among "multiple layers of data brokers providing data to each other," and then analyze the date to make "potentially sensitive inferences" about the consumer. These sensitive data points could range from health specifics, like high cholesterol, to broader demographic categories -- like the so-called "Urban Scramble," which includes a "high concentration of Latinos and African Americans with low incomes" or the so-called "Rural Everlasting," which includes single men and women over the age of 66 with "low educational attainment and low net worths."

Some other examples of data points the FTC noted:

The data collection is difficult to skirt. One Time Magazine reporter went to great lengths to hide her pregnancy from big data; she said her husband ended up looking like a criminal when he went to a drugstore and tried to purchase enough Amazon gift cards to buy a stroller on the website. This kind of ultra-specific marketing also can become eerie. Take the case of Mike Seay, who the LA Times reported received an OfficeMax marketing letter addressed to "Mike Seay, Daughter Killed in Car Crash." OfficeMax said that the information came from a third-party broker, but did not specify which one.

This past June, Facebook announced that it would start using data from users' web browsing history to serve targeted advertisements as such:

Of course, targeting ads is hardly a new phenomenon; Nielsen started gathering information about radio audiences back in the '30s. But because Facebook has so much information on every user, the kinds of demographics they make available to advertisers are more comprehensive.

These are some of the ad target categories that Facebook allows:

For example, a company could specify its audience, said Facebook, "to target people who recently moved and are engaged or in a relationship and in the industries of Accounting and Finance."

When Facebook introduced its ad targeting, it said, "When we ask people about our ads, one of the top things they tell us is that they want to see ads that are more relevant to their interests."

But that explanation doesn't really tell the whole story. While some users may not mind being shown targeted ads to help them pick out a new TV, this example brushes over the full scope of items being marketed to you based on your data. For instance, according to a report from the Center for Digital Democracy, financial service companies have taken to Facebook for "data mining, targeting, and influencing consumers and their networks of friends," and some companies are developing "new leads for their loan and refinance offers" based on users' Facebook behavior.

And the finance world is not a small amount of Facebook's advertising platform: According to a Business Insider investigation, Visa, American Express, Capitol One and CitiBank are among the top 35 biggest advertisers on Facebook. When Facebook describes its newly implemented changes, it doesn't seem as eager to discuss the financial plans it might be helping the companies sell you.

So who really benefits from these highly targeted ads? For one, Facebook itself. Facebook's ad revenue grew 82 percent from 2013 to the first quarter of 2014, totaling $2.27 billion. Joseph Turow, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, told the New York Times that this new user tracking is making Facebook one of the fastest-growing advertising companies on the Internet. "It's more likely to help Facebook than you," he said.

If you're not very keen on helping Facebook generate more profitable ads at the price of your privacy, Facebook suggests you choose the "x" out option on individual ads. This won't change the data being gathered about your interests, but it should help prevent an influx of credit card ads from popping up on your Facebook.

If you want your targeted ads to stop completely, Facebook recommends you use the industry-standard opt-out program from Digital Advertising Alliance.

However, those two recommendations have been dismissed by privacy advocates like Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, who called them "a political smokescreen to enable Facebook to engage in more data gathering." FTC chairwoman Edith Ramirez has also urged the wider digital advertising community to create a "more persistent method" of opting out that would give consumers more control.

According to a Consumer Reports poll, 85 percent of online consumers oppose Internet ad tracking.

What's next when it come to information gathering by Facebook? TechCrunch spotlighted Facebook's new tracking feature, " Nearby Friends," which is being pitched as an opt-in way to find out which of your friends is located within a mile of you. While you don't receive the exact location of your friends, Facebook receives your exact location. The feature uses "Location Tracking" to create your "Location History." While you can clear your history and turn off the app at will, Facebook noted that it "may still receive your most recent precise location so that you can, for example, post content that's tagged with your location or find nearby places." So some amount of tracking is happening, no matter what.

Back when Facebook unveiled "Nearby Friends" in April, a company spokesman conceded to TechCrunch that "at this time [Nearby Friends] is not being used for advertising or marketing, but in the future it will be."

It wouldn't be surprising if Facebook did, indeed, begin selling location-based data to marketers. After all, studies confirm that this advertising is very successful at convincing you to buy things. A recent U.K. study conducted by media strategy company Vizeum and direct marketing agency iProspect found that location-based advertising created an "11 percent increase in store visits among more than 172,000 people that were served adverts." This technology is only going to become more sophisticated with the rise of more location-tracking apps that can follow your movements in-store.

They say so right...

Despite that "research clause," you may have been surprised to learn that Facebook experimented on nearly 700,000 Facebook users for one week in the summer of 2012. The site manipulated their News Feeds to prioritize positive or negative content, attempting to determine if emotions spread contagiously through social networks. There was no age restriction on the data, meaning it may have involved users under 18. Cornell researchers then analyzed Facebook's data. The resulting study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that emotional states can be transferred via social networks. Company executive Sheryl Sandberg has since apologized for the study, calling it "poorly communicated."

Andrew Ledvina, a former data scientist at Facebook from early 2012 to the summer of 2013, told the Wall Street Journal that Facebook did not have an internal review board monitoring research studies conducted by the data science team. He said that the team had freedom to try nearly any test it desired, so long as it didn't interfere with the user experience. He added that the sheer mass of the experiment's subjects was at times difficult to really comprehend, numbering in the hundreds of thousands of users. As he put it, "You get a little desensitized to it."

Forbes points out that the "research" part of the User Data policy was not added until May 2012, while the research was conducted in January of 2012.

Facebook has spoken out about U.S. government information requests it considers unconstitutional. Facebook's Deputy General Counsel Chris Sonderby published a statement last month about the site's legal fight regarding one such search warrant, in which the government requested nearly all data on 381 Facebook users. Only 62 of those searched were charged, in a disability fraud case.

He noted that, "We regularly push back on requests that are vague or overly broad."

But Facebook's second Global Government Requests Report showed that when the U.S. government asks, Facebook hands over at least some user data in more than 80 percent of cases:

Basically, if you're still using Facebook, you're agreeing.

After the site unveiled its new, more aggressive approach to targeted advertising in June, a Facebook spokesman told the Wall Street Journal, "We routinely discuss product and policy updates with our regulators -- the FTC and the Irish DPC -- and this time is no different. While we are not required to notify nor seek approval from regulators before we make changes, we do keep them informed and answer any questions they may have."

It's clear that the meaning of privacy is changing drastically in the digital age. While Facebook may be one of the agents of change in drafting a new definition, it's certainly not the only one. As standards of privacy continue to morph, knowledge remains your best weapon in protecting yourself and your information. We recommend checking out the documentary "Terms And Conditions May Apply" for an in-depth look at privacy in the digital age. Common Sense Media also offers helpful guidelines for protecting your and your children's privacy online.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Didn't Read Facebook's Fine Print? Here's Exactly What It Says

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
So, like every other one of the world's 1.28 billion monthly active Facebook users, you blindly agreed to Facebook's Terms and Conditions without reading the fine print. You entrusted your photo albums, private messages and relationships to a website without reading its policies. And you do the same with every other site ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In February, Facebook said it would step up enforcement of its prohibition against discrimination in advertising for housing, employment or credit.

But our tests showed a significant lapse in the company's monitoring of the rental market.

Last week, ProPublica bought dozens of rental housing ads on Facebook, but asked that they not be shown to certain categories of users, such as African Americans, mothers of high school kids, people interested in wheelchair ramps, Jews, expats from Argentina and Spanish speakers.

All of these groups are protected under the federal Fair Housing Act, which makes it illegal to publish any advertisement "with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin." Violators can face tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

Every single ad was approved within minutes.

The only ad that took longer than three minutes to be approved by Facebook sought to exclude potential renters "interested in Islam, Sunni Islam and Shia Islam." It was approved after 22 minutes.

Under its own policies, Facebook should have flagged these ads, and prevented the posting of some of them. Its failure to do so revives questions about whether the company is in compliance with federal fair housing rules, as well as about its ability and commitment to police discriminatory advertising on the world's largest social network.

Facebook's advertising portal lets users choose their audiences based on specific traits, demographics and behavior profiles. Our ad for an apartment rental excluded African Americans, Asian Americans and Spanish-speaking Hispanic audiences. It was approved in under a minute.

Housing, employment and credit are the three areas in which federal law prohibits discriminatory ads. However, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development - the agency responsible for enforcing fair housing laws - told us that it has closed an inquiry into Facebook's advertising policies, reducing pressure on the company to address the issue. In a 2015 newspaper column, Ben Carson, now HUD secretary, criticized "government-engineered attempts to legislate racial equality" in housing.

Facebook's failure to police discriminatory rental ads flies in the face of its promises in February that it would no longer approve ads for housing, employment or credit that targeted racial categories. For advertising aimed at audiences not selected by race, Facebook said it would require housing, employment and credit advertisers to "self-certify" that their ads were compliant with anti-discrimination laws.

Based on Facebook's announcement, the ads purchased by ProPublica that were aimed at racial categories should have been rejected. The others should have prompted a screen to pop up asking for self-certification. We never encountered a self-certification screen, and none of our ads were rejected by Facebook.

"This was a failure in our enforcement and we're disappointed that we fell short of our commitments," Ami Vora, vice president of product management at Facebook, said in an emailed statement. "The rental housing ads purchased by ProPublica should have but did not trigger the extra review and certifications we put in place due to a technical failure."

Vora added that Facebook's anti-discrimination system had "successfully flagged millions of ads" in the credit, employment and housing categories and that Facebook will now begin requiring self-certification for ads in all categories that choose to exclude an audience segment. "Our systems continue to improve but we can do better," Vora said.

About 37 percent of U.S. households rented in 2016, representing a 50-year high, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. On average, renters earn about half as much as homeowners, and the percentage of families with children that rent rather than buy has increased sharply in the past decade, the study said. Minority renters have long faced pervasive housing discrimination. A 2013 study by HUD found that real estate agents show more units to whites than to African Americans, Asians and Latinos.

Facebook has long been a popular destination for rental listings, on pages hosted by real estate brokers, property owners and building managers. Earlier this month, Facebook announced that it had added two large providers of rental listings to its Facebook Marketplace service. "Marketplace is a popular place for people to look for a home to rent," Facebook product manager Bowen Pan said in a press release.

Facebook warns rental advertisers in its Marketplace section that " listings that discriminate against a protected class can be reported and will be removed from Facebook."

Facebook's anti-discrimination initiative was prompted by an article published last year by ProPublica. For that story, we bought a Facebook ad targeting house hunters. We were able to use Facebook's features to block the ad from being shown to anyone with an "affinity" for African American, Asian American or Hispanic people. Our ability to narrow the audience based on race raised the question of whether such ads violated the Fair Housing Act.

After ProPublica's article appeared in the fall of 2016, HUD, then under the Obama administration, began examining Facebook's practices. Facebook then said it would build an automated system to spot ads that discriminate illegally. "We take these issues seriously," Facebook Vice President Erin Egan wrote in a blog post. "Discriminatory advertising has no place on Facebook."

Read More

Facebook's system allows advertisers to exclude black, Hispanic, and other "ethnic affinities" from seeing ads.

In February, Facebook announced it had built its system and was rolling it out. The press lauded the announcement: " Facebook cracks down on ads that discriminate " was the Washington Post's headline.

Facebook has been under fire for other aspects of its automated ad buying system as well. Two months ago, the company disclosed that it had discovered $100,000 worth of divisive political ads placed by "inauthentic" Russian accounts. And in September, ProPublica reported that Facebook's ad targeting system allowed buyers to reach people who identified themselves as "Jew haters" and other anti-Semitic categories. Facebook pledged to remove the offending categories and to hire thousands more employees to enforce its ad policies.

"We're adding additional layers of review where people use potentially sensitive categories for targeting," Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch said during Senate testimony earlier this month.

After Stretch's public statement, we wondered whether the ability to buy discriminatory housing ads had really been addressed. So we set out to buy an advertisement with the exact same targeting parameters as the ad we bought last year. The ad promoted a fictional apartment for rent and was targeted at people living in New York, ages 18-65, who were house hunting and likely to move. We asked Facebook not to show the ad to people categorized under the "multicultural affinity" of Hispanic, African American or Asian American.

(ProPublica generally forbids impersonation in news gathering. We felt in this instance that the public interest in Facebook's ad system justified the brief posting of a fake ad for non-existent housing. We deleted each ad as soon as it was approved.)

The only changes from last year that we could identify in Facebook's ad buying system was that the category called "Ethnic Affinity" had been renamed "Multicultural Affinity" and was no longer part of "Demographics." It is now designated as part of "Behaviors."

Our ad was approved within minutes.

Left: A screenshot of ad targeting categories ProPublica submitted and Facebook approved in 2016. Right: Categories ProPublica submitted and were approved in 2017, raising questions about what the social network has done to police discriminatory ads.

Then we decided to test whether we could purchase housing ads that discriminated against other protected categories of people under the Fair Housing Act.

We placed ads that sought to exclude members of as many of the protected categories as we could find in Facebook's self-service advertising portal. In addition to those mentioned above, we bought ads that were blocked from being shown to " soccer moms," people interested in American sign language, gay men and Christians.

We also tested whether it was possible to use geography as a way to target racial groups - a practice known as redlining. We bought a housing ad that targeted ZIP codes in Brooklyn whose residents are more than 50 percent non-Hispanic white people, according to the U.S. Census bureau. By definition, that meant the ad was not shown to Facebook users living in Brooklyn neighborhoods where minorities are a majority of the residents.

Facebook drew blue lines around our target neighborhoods and told us our "audience selection is great!" It approved the ad.

Protect Independent Journalism

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that produces nonpartisan, evidence-based journalism to expose injustice, corruption and wrongdoing. We were founded ten years ago to fill a growing hole in journalism: newsrooms were (and still are) shrinking, and legacy funding models failing. Deep-dive reporting like ours is slow and expensive, and investigative journalism is a luxury in many newsrooms today - but it remains as critical as ever to democracy and our civic life. A decade (and five Pulitzer Prizes) later, ProPublica has built the largest investigative newsroom in the country. Our work has spurred reform through legislation, at the voting booth, and inside our nation's most important institutions.

This story you've just finished was funded by our readers and we hope it inspires you to make a gift to ProPublica so that we can publish more investigations like this one that holds people in power to account and produces real change.

Your donation will help us ensure that we can continue this critical work. From the Trump Administration, criminal justice, health care, immigration and so much more, we are busier than ever covering stories you won't see anywhere else. Make your gift of any amount today and join the tens of thousands of ProPublicans across the country, standing up for the power of independent journalism to produce real, lasting change. Thank you.
Donate Now

Julia Angwin
Julia Angwin is a senior reporter at ProPublica. From 2000 to 2013, she was a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where she led a privacy investigative team that was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting in 2011 and won a Gerald Loeb Award in 2010.

Ariana Tobin
Ariana is an engagement editor and reporter at ProPublica, where she works to cultivate communities to inform our coverage.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Facebook (Still) Letting Housing Advertisers Exclude Users by Race

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In February, Facebook said it would step up enforcement of its prohibition against discrimination in advertising for housing, employment or credit. But our tests showed a significant lapse in the company's monitoring of the rental market.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
CLOSE

LOS ANGELES - You will get chipped. It's just a matter of time.

In the aftermath of a Wisconsin firm embedding microchips in employees last week to ditch company badges and corporate logons, the Internet has entered into full-throated debate.

Religious activists are so appalled, they've been penning nasty 1-star reviews of the company, Three Square Market, on Google, Glassdoor and social media.

On the flip side, seemingly everyone else wants to know: Is this what real life is going to be like soon at work? Will I be chipped?

"It will happen to everybody," says Noelle Chesley, 49, associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. "But not this year, and not in 2018. Maybe not my generation, but certainly that of my kids."

Gene Munster, an investor and analyst at Loup Ventures, is an advocate for augmented reality, virtual reality and other new technologies. He thinks embedded chips in human bodies is 50 years away. "In 10 years, Facebook, Google, Apple and Tesla will not have their employees chipped," he says. "You'll see some extreme forward-looking tech people adopting it, but not large companies."

The idea of being chipped has too "much negative connotation" today, but by 2067 "we will have been desensitized by the social stigma," Munster says.

A microchip is shown compared with a dime Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017, at Three Square Market in River Falls, Wis., (Photo: Jeff Baenen, AP)

For now, Three Square Market, or 32M, hasn't offered concrete benefits for getting chipped beyond badge and log-on stats. Munster says it was a "PR stunt" for the company to get attention to its product and it certainly succeeded, getting the small start-up air play on CBS, NBC and ABC, and generating headlines worldwide. The company, which sells corporate cafeteria kiosks designed to replace vending machines, would like the kiosks to handle cashless transactions.

This would go beyond paying with your smartphone. Instead, chipped customers would simply wave their hands in lieu of Apple Pay and other mobile-payment systems.

The benefits don't stop there. In the future, consumers could zip through airport scanners sans passport or drivers license; open doors; start cars; and operate home automation systems. All of it, if the technology pans out, with the simple wave of a hand.
Not a GPS tracker
The embedded chip is not a GPS tracker, which is what many critics initially feared. However, analysts believe future chips will track our every move.

For example, pets for years have been embedded with chips to store their name and owner contact. Indeed, 32M isn't the first company to embed chips in employees. In 2001, Applied Digital Solutions installed the "VeriChip" to access medical records but the company eventually changed hands and stopped selling the chip in 2010.

In Sweden, BioHax says nearly 3,000 customers have had its chip embedded to do many things, including ride the national rail system without having to show the conductor a ticket.

In the U.S., Dangerous Things, a Seattle-based firm, says it has sold "tens of thousands" of chips to consumers via its website. The chip and installation cost about $200.

After years of being a subculture, "the time is now" for chips to be more commonly used, says Amal Graafstra, founder of Dangerous Things. "We're going to start to see chip implants get the same realm of acceptance as piercings and tattoos do now."

In other words, they'll be more visible, but not mainstream yet.

"It becomes part of you the way a cellphone does," Graafstra says. "You can never forget it, and you can't lose it. And you have the capability to communicate with machines in a way you couldn't before."

But after what we saw in Wisconsin last week, what's next for the U.S. workforce? A nation of workers chipping into their pods at Federal Express, General Electric, IBM, Microsoft and other top corporations?

Experts contend consumers will latch onto chips before companies do.

Chesley says corporations are slower to respond to massive change and that there will be an age issue. Younger employees will be more open to it, while older workers will balk. "Most employers who have inter-generational workforces might phase it in slowly," she says. "I can't imagine people my age and older being enthusiastic about having devices put into their bodies."

Adds Alec Levenson, a researcher at University of Southern California's Center for Effective Organizations, "The vast majority of people will not put up with this."

Three Square Market said the chips are voluntary, but Chesley says that if a company announces a plan to be chipped, the expectation is that you will get chipped - or risk losing out on advancement, raises and being a team player.

"That's what we're worried about," says Bryan Allen, chief of staff for state Rep. Tina Davis (D), who is introducing a bill in Pennsylvania to outlaw mandatory chip embedding. "If the tech is out there, what's to stop an employer from saying either you do this, or you can't work here anymore."

Several states have passed similar laws, while one state recently saw a similar bill die in committee. "I see this as a worker's rights issue," says Nevada state Sen. Becky Harris (R), who isn't giving up. "This is the wrong place to be moving," she says.

Should future corporations dive in to chipping their employees, they will have huge issues of "trust" to contend with, says Kent Grayson, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

"You've got to have a lot of trust to put one of those in your body," Grayson says. Workers will need assurances the chip is healthy, can't be hacked, and its information is private, he says.

Meanwhile, religious advocates have taken to social media to express their displeasure about chipping, flooding 32M's Facebook page with comments like "boycott," "completely unnecessary" and "deplorable." On 32M's Google page, Amy Cosari a minister in Hager City, Wisc., urges employees to remove the chip.

"When Jesus was raised, he was raised body and soul, and it was him, not zombie, not a ghost and we are raised up in the same way," Cosari wrote. "Employees of 32Market, you are not a walking debit card."

Get used to it, counsels Chesley.

Ten years ago, employees didn't look at corporate e-mail over the weekend. Now they we do, "whether we like it or not," he says.

Be it wearable technology or an embedded chip, the always on-always connected chip is going to be part of our lives, she says.
Contributing: Madeline Purdue in San Francisco. If you haven't subscribed to the new #TalkingTech newsletter yet, what are you waiting for? Just click this link and sign up: usat.ly/2qaIVVQ. We also invite you to subscribe to the #TalkingTech podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Tunein and wherever else you like to hear great online audio, and please follow me on Twitter and on Facebook.
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2wIpYNh

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
CLOSE LOS ANGELES - You will get chipped. It's just a matter of time. In the aftermath of a Wisconsin firm embedding microchips in employees last week to ditch company badges and corporate logons, the Internet has entered into full-throated debate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A Texas girl suspended for refusing to wear a student ID card implanted with a radio-frequency identification chip is being re-admitted to her former high school where fall classes begin Monday, her lawyers said today.

The flap concerns Andrea Hernandez, who will be a junior at John Jay High in San Antonio. She was suspended in January and sued the Northside Independent School District on privacy and religious grounds.

She lost the case and began attending another school that did not require pupils to wear the ID badges. The girl's lawyers said today that she is returning to the magnet school where the highly contested legal battle commenced. That's because the district has abandoned its year-long RFID-student monitoring program.

Radio-frequency identification devices are a daily part of the electronic age - found in passports, and library and payment cards. Eventually they are expected to replace bar-code labels on consumer goods. Schools across the nation are slowly adopting them as well, despite the Northside district quietly deciding last month to discontinue RFID chips on the grounds that they were ineffective.

After losing a court battle, the girl opted to attend a different school than wear the ID card around her neck, which was a requirement for the 4,200 students of John Jay High and a neighboring middle school. Her lawyers said today the legal battle with the district is over.

"There are very few happy endings for those who stand up to the government and say 'no more.' Hopefully, Andrea Hernandez will prove to be the exception and will use this opportunity to continue to stand strong for freedom," said the girl's attorney, John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute.

The district said the purpose of the RFID-chipped ID cards was to increase attendance.

Like most state-financed schools, the district's budget is tied to average daily attendance. If a student is not in his seat during morning roll call, the district doesn't receive daily funding for that pupil because the school has no way of knowing for sure if the student is there.

But with the RFID tracking, students not at their desk but tracked on campus are counted as being in school that day, and the district receives its daily allotment for that student. But average-daily-attendance did not increase at the two schools mandating the RFID chips, the district said.

Among other complaints, Hernandez, who is Christian, said the badge signified Satan, or the Mark of the Beast warning in Revelations 13:16-18.

Tagging school children with RFID chips is uncommon, but not new. A federally funded preschool in Richmond, California, began embedding RFID chips in students' clothing in 2010. An elementary school outside of Sacramento, California, scrubbed a plan in 2005 amid a parental uproar. And a Houston, Texas school district began using the chips to monitor students on 13 campuses in 2004 for the same reasons the Northside Independent School District implemented the program. Northside was mulling adopting the program for its other 110 schools.

In the Hernandez case, the federal judge concluded the girl's right of religion was not breached. The court found that the school district eventually agreed to accommodate the girl and allow her to remove the RFID chip while still demanding that she wear the identification like other students - a proposition the girl rejected.

The girl's high school has 200 cameras monitoring the campus.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Student Suspended for Refusing to Wear RFID Chip Returns to School

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A Texas girl suspended for refusing to wear a student ID card implanted with a radio-frequency identification chip is being re-admitted to her former high school where fall classes begin Monday, her lawyers said today. The flap concerns Andrea Hernandez, who will be a junior at John Jay High in San Antonio.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Novelties

Image

The Filip voice watch has a panic button to help lost children find adult help.

Most parents have experienced that feeling of fear when a young child wanders off at the playground or disappears during a trip to the supermarket. New technology, in the form of voice watches and miniature sensing devices, is aimed at thwarting such distress by keeping track of children who are too young to carry a smartphone.

The new devices use GPS, Wi-Fi and other location-tracking technology and can be linked to apps on a parent's phone. One device, a watch coming from Filip Technologies later this year, tracks a child's location and lets him or her get voice calls from up to five people authorized by their parents. (Children lift the watch to their ear or mouth when communicating.)

The watch also has a red panic button that children can push if, for example, they suddenly become separated from their parents in a crowd. Then the watch starts dialing each of the authorized people until one answers. AT&T will be the network provider for the watch; its price has not yet been announced.

Image

The Filip tracks a child's location and lets him or her get voice calls from up to five people authorized by their parents.

Sandra L. Calvert, a professor of psychology and the director of the Children's Digital Media Center at Georgetown University, views the watches and related products as extensions of the way parents now use smartphones to keep track of older children.

"From a child's perspective, a parent is like an anchor," she said. These devices allow the child to move farther and farther away, yet the parent knows where the child is. "If a child gets lost in a store and can push a little button, their parents can find them," she said. "It helps them to know they are in a range that seems to be safe."

But the technology offered by the watches and similar products could be a mixed blessing, said Lisa Damour, a psychologist who focuses on parenting and directs the Center for Research on Girls at Laurel School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and contributes to Motherlode blog of The New York Times.

"I can understand how a parent might want to know if their child is having a problem, but I don't think it's necessarily helpful for children to always be able to turn to their parents when they are struggling," she said. "We want children to develop problem-solving skills and the capacity to manage stress" as they practice drawing on their own resources, or those of teachers, friends and others around them.

The Trax lets parents mind a child via a digital "fence."

The panic button might have an unintended effect that's not in the best interest of the child, she said. "It may reduce the parents' anxiety to give their child a panic button, but I can readily imagine that it increases the child's anxiety," she said. "It sends a strong message that the child is at real risk of danger. This goes against what we know statistically."

In reality, children are now safer from abduction by strangers than they've been in decades, said Lisa M. Jones, a research associate professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center. "Abductions in the traditional sense of someone taken by someone else they don't know, with the intention of keeping or harming the child - that's quite rare," she said. "The vast majority of children are victimized by people close to them."

But even though such abductions are rare, she said, "obviously we are terrified by them."

Jonathan Peachey, chief executive of Filip Technologies, said the watch might well increase a child's anxiety, "but I would question whether that's a bad thing." With the watch, children have a sense that they can always talk to their parents in threatening situations. "That's a conversation, and a very positive one for parents to have with their child," he said.

Another new tracking device, the tiny Trax, also pairs with a smartphone app to allow parents to find their children, particularly very young ones, said Tobias Stenberg, a co-founder of Wonder Technology Solutions, a company in Stockholm that makes the device.

The Trax can draw boundaries for a child on a cellphone's screen, so parents can receive an alert if they're crossed.

The tracker is meant for those worrisome moments when parents trying to keep an eye on a child playing in the garden, for example, suddenly discover that he or she isn't there. "Your first reaction is a bit of panic, but if you look at your phone, you can see, 'Oh, she's returned to her room,' " Mr. Stenberg said.

The Trax, to be available later this month, costs $249 and includes a subscription for two years' use in more than 30 countries, including the United States. After that, the company will charge a small monthly fee. Parents can draw boundaries on the screens of their smartphones, creating an electronic fence within which their child can roam. But if the child crosses the digital fence, the tracker alerts the parents, Mr. Stenberg said. And if the satellite signal is lost inside a building, for example, the Trax uses motion and direction sensors to determine the child's position. (The device can also keep track of dogs, he said.)

For parents who opt for smartphones even for young children, many wireless services, like AT&T's FamilyMap, offer programs that track the phones of family members, sending a text or email to parents telling them, for example, when their child's phone arrives home after school.

Lynn Schofield Clark, an associate professor at the University of Denver and author of "The Parent App," said parents who equip their young children with tracking devices still have to try to balance the parental instinct to protect their offspring with the need to nurture their sense of independence and responsibility.

Children can't be protected by gadgets alone, she said - they also have to learn the basics of being a responsible family member: "We still have to remind them again and again that they have to let us know where they are and not wander off."

E-MAIL: novelties@nytimes.com.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page BU3 of the New York edition with the headline: If a Young Child Wanders, Technology Can Follow. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
If a Young Child Wanders, Technology Can Follow

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Novelties Most parents have experienced that feeling of fear when a young child wanders off at the playground or disappears during a trip to the supermarket. New technology, in the form of voice watches and miniature sensing devices, is aimed at thwarting such distress by keeping track of children who are too young to carry a smartphone.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
THE CITY of Nice has announced plans to more than double the number of CCTV cameras by the end of this year, becoming the most watched place in France.

Mayor Christian Estrosi has announced 342 extra cameras will be installed, on top of the 282 already operating. He said he wanted Nice to become "the best-equipped town in France" for video-surveillance technology.

Some of these cameras will be equipped with number-plate recognition technology and will be placed on main roads into the city to spot cars that have been reported stolen.

Estrosi unveiled the €7.6m project at the opening of a new CCTV control centre in the city.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
THE CITY of Nice has announced plans to more than double the number of CCTV cameras by the end of this year, becoming the most watched place in France. Mayor Christian Estrosi has announced 342 extra cameras will be installed, on top of the 282 already operating.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Would surveillance cameras lead to a safer public environment?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Debate about whether you believe that surveillance cameras everywhere would create a safer public environment. Let your voice be heard on this issue.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Are Security Cameras an Invasion of Privacy

In a public surveillance cameras good or bad debate, the first question is whether the surveillance cameras in public places are an invasion of privacy.
42% say yes and 58% say no, according to the debeate.org in the security cameras and privacy discussion.

When you are walking down the street, driving in your car, or hanging out with boyfriends and girlfriends, you will be monitored with cameras placed in public. This creates a complete picture of the private life of an individual. We all have a private life and we don't want others or the government to know.

Yet, public surveillance does help with the investigation and protect us. There are no laws that prohibit surveillance cameras in public places. And more than half of the reviewed citizens think that cameras would not be an invasion of privacy if they were put in places that are not private, like in the parking lots or in business.

In fact, laws on surveillance cameras in public places are sparse and only a few of the states in the United States pass statues that regulate the public usage of the video surveillance.

For example, in New York, police can only use video surveillance as a part of the investigation into the alleged criminals after obtaining a warrant from local authorities.

However, putting hidden security cameras in public places, like bathrooms, changing rooms and other places where an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy, are prohibited in most cases (click here to learn why).
Further Reading: Check this post to learn whether it is legal to set up security cameras in workplaces.

*Read the infographic below to find the pros and cons of surveillance cameras in public places if you are in a rush.

Pros of Surveillance Cameras in Public Places

Why are the benefits of surveillance cameras in public places? Here list several advantages of why we need public surveillance.

Pro 1. Public Video Surveillance Improves Public Safety

When we install a home security camera, we gain increased house safety. Just like that, the main benefit of surveillance cameras in public spaces is also the increase in public safety. Public surveillance cameras help you stay safe while clubbing, shopping, and traveling.

The public security cameras can be used as a way to keep an eye out for crimes. PTZ security cameras put in public spaces, like a crossroad, a retail store, parking lots, museums, concert halls, do an excellent job in providing 360° seamless surveillance solutions.

Additionally, crimes can be deterred before they even begin in some cases. If a suspicious individual or individuals or items are seen in an area, the appropriate authorities can be contacted to move into the area before any damage is done or any crime is committed. Moreover, any people in the area can be cleared as a precaution.

Since public safety is guaranteed, people's fear of crime can also be reduced, while their sense of security is created.

According to a survey by the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2015, nearly 80% of public schools put up surveillance systems in public places to secure campuses.

To ensure students' safety, administrators of Broward County School have announced that they will introduce AI-powered facial recognition security systems to the campuses after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018 that led to the death of 17 students and staff.

Pro 2. Public Surveillance Cameras Reduce Crime Rate

Video surveillance statistics show that camera surveillance does reduce crime - after security cameras were put in public, crime incidents in Humboldt Park dropped 20%.

If an individual knows that there are live surveillance cameras in a certain area, they may be less willing to commit a crime near the location for the fear of being caught.

Some authorities place public cameras in Walmart and other shops, hoping that the cameras will help prevent crimes from being committed.

Pro 3. Public Video Surveillance Helps Catch Criminals

If a crime is committed in an area where a public surveillance camera has been set up, the chances of catching the criminal are much higher.

Facial recognition software has improved greatly over the years. So, if criminals are captured by security cameras in public places, the local authority is able to recognize and catch them easier with facial recognition technology. Posters can be created and the images can be aired on network television to help spread the word about the criminal.

Without the surveillance cameras in public places, it can be extremely difficult to gain a quality description of the person who committed the crime, even if there were eyewitnesses.

Catching criminals is one of the best benefits of surveillance cameras in public places. The bombing at Boston Marathon is a good example. It only took the FBI three days to release blurry shots of the two suspects, taken by a surveillance camera installed in a department store.

Pro 4. Video Cameras in Public Locations Provide Evidence and Gather Clues

Another benefit of surveillance is that any footage that captures a crime being committed can be used in a court of law as evidence against the accused.

In some cases, if there were no CCTV security camera systems in public places, there would be little or no evidence to convict the person of the crime and the individual may go free. With night vision security cameras on watch, robbers can be recognized even if they commit a crime in dark areas.

Additionally, in some cases, the public video surveillance footage can also help prove someone's innocence if they have been accused of a crime that they did not commit.

Research on the value of CCTV systems shows that CCTV footage is classified as useful in 62.2% of robbery investigations and nearly 61% of assault investigations.

Pro 5. Public Video Surveillance Brings Convenience for Everyday Life

Some cities have placed cameras on stop lights as a way to help prevent people from speeding or from going through a red light.

And also, relevant authorities can monitor road conditions with the live surveillance cameras. So they can make real-time traffic reports, helping people choose the right time and road when going out.

Cons of Security Cameras in Public Places

While there are advantages of CCTV, there are disadvantages.

What's wrong with public video surveillance? Here are some bad points of public CCTV cameras.

Con 1. Surveillance Systems Are Easily Abused

A con of surveillance cameras in public places is that these security cameras may be abused. One example of how a public camera may be misused is that information gathered by law enforcement can be used as a form of blackmail.

Another form of abuse is voyeurism. Spying on women with public surveillance cameras is quite common, which becomes quite an issue that needs to be dealt with.

Overall, the simple lack of control or limits on public camera use is one of the biggest problems. Until now, there is no a good check-and-balance system, in order to prevent abuses from occurring.

Con 2. Effectiveness of a Public Security Camera Is Doubted

Another controversy of the use of surveillance cameras in public places is that its effectiveness has not been proven. While there has been a push for more public CCTV cameras to be placed in public places because of the threat of terrorist attacks, it is quite clear that a suicidal bomber is not going to be deterred by the fact that there is a camera in place.

Con 3. Public Camera Surveillance Is Expensive

One of the arguments against the widespread use of public surveillance cameras is that it costs big money. Since it is not effective enough to deter crimes and theft, why would we spend too much money in it, which not only fails to make us safer but also violates our personal rights?

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, officials in Michigan have been proposing to put up public video surveillance for years, but ended up concluding that the limited results could not justify high maintenance and personnel costs.

Conclusion of Installing Public Surveillance Cameras

In today's world, public cameras can be extremely helpful.

After the Orlando nightclub shooting, how to stay safe in public places, say, a night club, has been a hot topic. Needless to say, placing cameras in strategic areas throughout a city can help ensure public safety, protect property, and prevent crimes.

On the other hand, there are always crimes that are not deterred by surveillance cameras. And the abuse of public video cameras would violate privacy and personal rights. Therefore, how to balance public safety and personal privacy needs to be considered further.

As far as I am concerned, the benefits of surveillance outweigh the disadvantages greatly.

According to FBI statistics on surveillance cameras, there were an estimated 1,165,383 violent crimes 8,277,829 property crimes reported in 2014, and the crime rate has been rising in recent years.

I can't imagine how bad the situation would be if there were no public security cameras. There is no much about the concern of privacy violation when you behave yourself in public places. Security in public places should always be put on top of priority.

If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about. What do you think about surveillance cameras in public places? Feel free to share your ideas by leaving a comment below!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Top 8 Pros and Cons of Surveillance Cameras in Public Places - Reolink Blog

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In a public surveillance cameras good or bad debate, the first question is whether the surveillance cameras in public places are an invasion of privacy. 42% say yes and 58% say no, according to the debeate.org in the security cameras and privacy discussion.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The world has changed. Video permeate every aspect of our lives and is a key component in many elements of public safety. CCTV, body cameras, and patrol cameras are just a few of the different ways that the public safety community have access to video. However, we are also missing out on the ubiquitous and important camera of all: our own. Smartphones are in the pockets of more than 77% of Americans, up from 35% in 2011, and the number is growing. Cellular carriers such as T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon offer unlimited data plans for their users with few restrictions on what they can and can't do. Hundreds of millions of people in this country are able to provide first responders with instantaneous location, and most importantly VISION, on any number of critical incidents taking place in every city and town. Without access to the countless smartphones in people's pockets, the public safety community is missing out on a wealth of key information that can not only save time and resources but, most importantly, lives.

Carbyne empowers First Responders and emergency services by giving them access to the crucial data and life-saving video from people's smartphones. With no application needed, citizens call 911 and are able to easily transmit streaming video direct to Call Takers in their PSAPs. Operating around the world for more than 2 years, the Carbyne end-to-end Ecosystem has led to response times dropping, situational awareness increasing, and lives saved.

Carbyne's data isn't theoretical. With deployments in the USA, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America, Carbyne is the world's leading streaming video technology for emergency services. Since our first partnership with Israel's National Emergency Service, they have seen their times to dispatch drop by 60%, fewer false reports or 'pocket dials' than ever before, and Call Taker situational awareness go through the roof.

"It's a game changer" Meytal, an Israeli Call Taker says "being able to see everything that's happening means that we no longer have to ask a dozen questions just to get a basic idea."

For Carbyne, working hand-in-hand with emergency services, from devising the product to implementing, all the way to continually updating it, means that they are able to see everything the public safety community needs and foregoes the things it doesn't.

"Emergency services is a unique cross-road of public service at a time of city-wide disaster and innovation" CEO Amir Elichai says "because of this we had to invent elements that no one had ever thought of. For instance, our crash handler. We have to ensure that a call is connected 100% of the time, no matter what, and so one of our key technologies is the ability to switch from a weak network signal to a stronger one. If a cellular network goes down, for instance in the wake of a terror attack, we need to ensure that citizens can still connect with emergency services."

Carbyne's streaming video technology has already saved lives in the field.

"Once" Meytal said "we had a woman calling in who was worried that her baby was turning blue. We were able to advice CPR over the phone while the ambulance was on its way. Before the first responders even arrived the baby was back to breathing normally. Without video to assess and ensure that CPR was being followed correctly, the baby may not have survived."

"We're glad that major players such as Motorola and AT&T are investing in video-streaming technology for first responders" Elichai said "all it does is prove that our strategy is the correct one. As we deploy in more cities, states, and countries, we are refining our technology and creating the best experience for the public safety community. For us, competition is good because it means that we can continue to create the best suite of products possible."

Carbyne's benefits to the public safety community do not end at situational awareness or improved response times. Thanks to Carbyne's unique algorithm and patented ecosystem, they are able to significantly reduce costs for PSAPs in a variety of fields. For instance, ANI/ALI costs in the US are slashed by 80% when using the Carbyne ecosystem. Carbyne gives Call Takers a dispatchable address, rather than simple latitude and longitude coordinates, along with a greater accuracy location. Because Carbyne refreshes its location every two seconds it provides a level of accuracy of around 5-10ft even if the target is mobile.

Carbyne's dominance in the sector continued as they announced yet another European customer, the City of Nice in France. In the wake of the horrific terror attack in 2016, the beachside city examined the leading public safety solutions and ultimately sided with Carbyne.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Next Steps In Public Safety - Carbyne

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Call Takers in their PSAP's How video technology impacts the public safety industry and helps save lives The world has changed. Video permeate every aspect of our lives and is a key component in many elements of public safety. CCTV, body cameras, and patrol cameras are just a few of the different ways that the ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Editor's note: Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and author of "Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World." Read more of his writing at http://www.schneier.com/.
(CNN) -- On January 19, a team of at least 15 people assassinated Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Dubai police released video footage of 11 of them. Although it was obviously a very professional operation, the 27 minutes of video is fascinating in its banality.

Team members walk through the airport, check into and out of hotels, get into and out of taxis. They make no effort to hide themselves from the cameras, sometimes seeming to stare directly into them. They obviously don't care that they're being recorded, and -- in fact -- the cameras didn't prevent the assassination, nor as far as we know have they helped as yet in identifying the killers.

Pervasive security cameras don't substantially reduce crime. This fact has been demonstrated repeatedly: in San Francisco, California, public housing; in a New York apartment complex; in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; in Washington; in study after study in both the U.S. and the U.K. Nor are they instrumental in solving many crimes after the fact.

There are exceptions, of course, and proponents of cameras can always cherry-pick examples to bolster their argument. These success stories are what convince us; our brains are wired to respond more strongly to anecdotes than to data. But the data are clear: CCTV cameras have minimal value in the fight against crime.

Although it's comforting to imagine vigilant police monitoring every camera, the truth is very different, for a variety of reasons: technological limitations of cameras, organizational limitations of police and the adaptive abilities of criminals. No one looks at most CCTV footage until well after a crime is committed. And when the police do look at the recordings, it's very common for them to be unable to identify suspects. Criminals don't often stare helpfully at the lens and -- unlike the Dubai assassins -- tend to wear sunglasses and hats. Cameras break far too often.

Even when they afford quick identification -- think of the footage of the September 11 terrorists going through airport security or the July 7 London transport bombers just before the bombs exploded -- police are often able to identify those suspects even without the cameras. Cameras afford a false sense of security, encouraging laziness when we need police to be vigilant.

The solution isn't for police to watch the cameras more diligently. Unlike an officer walking the street, cameras look only in particular directions at particular locations.

Criminals know this and can easily adapt by moving their crimes to places not watched by a camera -- and there will always be such places.

And although a police officer on the street can respond to a crime in progress, someone watching a CCTV screen can only dispatch an officer to arrive much later. By their very nature, cameras result in underused and misallocated police resources.

Cameras aren't completely ineffective, of course. Used properly, they're effective in reducing crime in enclosed areas with minimal foot traffic. Combined with adequate lighting, they substantially reduce both personal attacks and auto-related crime in multistory parking garages. And sometimes it is cost-effective for a store to install cameras to catch shoplifters or a casino to install cameras to detect cheaters.

But these are instances where there is a specific risk at a specific location.

The important question isn't whether cameras solve past crime or deter future crime; it's whether they're a good use of resources. They're expensive, both in money and in their Orwellian effects on privacy and civil liberties. Their inevitable misuse is another cost; police have spied on naked women in their own homes, shared nude images, sold best-of videos and even spied on national politicians. Though we might be willing to accept these downsides for a real increase in security, cameras don't provide that.

Despite our predilection for technological solutions over human ones, the funds now spent on CCTV cameras would be far better spent on hiring and training police officers.

We live in a unique time in our society: Cameras are everywhere, but we can still see them. Ten years ago, cameras were much rarer than they are today. Ten years from now, they'll be so small, you won't even notice them.

Already, people can buy surveillance cameras in household objects to spy on their spouses and baby sitters -- I particularly like the one hidden in a shower mirror -- or cameras in pens to spy on their colleagues, and they can remotely turn on laptop cameras to spy on anyone. Companies are developing police state-type CCTV surveillance technologies for China, technology that will find its way into countries like the U.S.

If universal surveillance were the answer, lots of us would have moved to the former East Germany. If surveillance cameras were the answer, camera-happy London, with something like 500,000 of them at a cost of $700 million, would be the safest city on the planet.

We didn't, and it isn't, because surveillance and surveillance cameras don't make us safer. The money spent on cameras in London, and in cities across America, could be much better spent on actual policing.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bruce Schneier. For a version of this article with embedded links to sources, click here

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On January 19, a team of at least 15 people assassinated Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Dubai police released video footage of 11 of them. Although it was obviously a very professional operation, the 27 minutes of video is fascinating in its banality.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This story appears in the June 2017 issue ofNational Geographic magazine.

Drones were created as a tool of combat: Militaries use them to spy and even to assassinate. But as with so much military technology, unmanned aerial vehicles are becoming consumer items. Recently consultancy firm PwC estimated that the global drone industry may be worth $127.3 billion. In December, Amazon made its first delivery by drone, bringing a TV streaming device and a bag of popcorn to a customer in the U.K.

Among the most eager to harness the power of remote-controlled aircraft are aid and service organizations-those performing dangerous humanitarian and conservation tasks in the world's hard-to-reach areas. Drones are monitoring vultures on the steppes of Mongolia, delivering medical supplies in Rwanda, and searching for lost civilizations in Brazil.

One week after the Amazon delivery, UNICEF and the government of Malawi announced a plan to open Africa's first testing site for humanitarian drones in 2017. On the 25-mile-wide airfield, companies can examine how drones fare on a range of assignments-tracking people fleeing disasters, for instance, or bringing cell phone networks to remote areas. "A company testing drones in a warehouse in San Francisco is not facing the same challenges," says UNICEF's Andrew Brown. "What's produced here will work anywhere in the world." Elsewhere in Malawi, UNICEF has experimented with sending drones to assess flash flood damage and transport HIV blood tests from rural medical centers to laboratories.

Already drones are becoming vital tools in the intensifying fight against poachers. "We want a drone to help us see things we can't see standing by the jeep," says Colby Loucks, who leads WWF's Wildlife Crime Technology Project. Drones can show rangers whether poachers are armed and where they're hiding. "Drones will help keep rangers safe," says Loucks. He hopes to outfit the drones with thermal cameras and snare-identifying radar.

Scientists at Liverpool John Moores University in the U.K. plan to employ drones for a truly ambitious conservation project: documenting much of the world's wildlife. In 2015 biology professor Serge Wich was taking the train home with an astrophysicist colleague. Wich, who monitors animal populations, mentioned that he was looking for a way to identify animals and humans with thermal imagery. His colleague pointed out that the same algorithms used to look for and measure warm objects in space could likely be applied to drone footage. They struck upon the idea of using star-detection software to begin detecting wildlife.

The long-term project will start with scientific surveys of animal populations and then expand to allow the public to upload drone footage and run it through the detection software.

Wich predicts that drones-cheaper and less dangerous than planes or helicopters-will become a widely used conservation tool. "Their flexibility and high-resolution images are a huge advantage for data gathering," he says. "I think we will have swarms of drones flying over forests."

Health care delivery, Rwanda. Medical centers in the hilly country can order emergency blood supplies by text message and receive them via drone within 30 minutes.

Vulture monitoring, Mongolia. Drones watch the nests of the world's largest vulture species to ensure that the population is healthy.

Coral mapping, American Samoa. In 2013 a Stanford University student created a drone to map coral reefs off Ofu island to assess climate change's impact.

Peacekeeping, Democratic Republic of the Congo.The United Nations first deployed drones in a peacekeeping mission here in 2013 and has since used them in Mali and the Central African Republic.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Surprising Ways Drones Are Saving Lives

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This story appears in the June 2017 issue ofNational Geographic magazine. Drones were created as a tool of combat: Militaries use them to spy and even to assassinate. But as with so much military technology, unmanned aerial vehicles are becoming consumer items. Recently consultancy firm PwC estimated that the global drone industry may be worth $127.3 billion.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Restaurant takes fast food to a whole new level, flying a takeaway pizza to customer on roof of a skyscraper in Mumbai

# data[].attributes.headline
Cons :How Drones affect our privacy (level 3)

# data[].attributes.subject
Cons :How Drones affect our privacy (level 3)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Last year was a big year for drones causing many of us to sit up and take notice, and 2015 should be even bigger. This leads to many privacy issues that we need to start seriously considering.

Any examination of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) is a moving target. The news is peppered with drone stories. Mexican cartels are moving product across the border with drones. Drones are crashing on the White House lawn. There was a thirty-mile no UAV zone imposed around Super Bowl XLIX. In Hong Kong, you can even order chocolate and have it delivered by drone.

Say the word "drone" and you're likely to get any one of a half-dozen reactions. Drones or UAVs elicit debate, not just about the United State's use of them in executing the so-called War on Terror, but their possible role domestically. There's also the threat of personal drones invading our privacy, which is already enraging bystanders.

You can't really blame technology. You're going to experience annoying human behavior regardless of whether it's loud bass at 2 AM or a ringing cell phone in a movie theater. Simply, it's going to take a while for society in general to accept mainstream drone use.

But, the most pressing questions that arise from UAV use aren't typically concerned with what they can do or how people are using them, rather what they mean to our privacy once they gain that mainstream acceptance.

What's Going to Happen to My Privacy?

If you have a long enough memory, you probably remember when we as a society had far greater privacy than we do now. Unfortunately, personal privacy is probably going to continue to erode, as technology becomes more persistently invasive.

According to a report published in 2013 by the Congressional Research Service, the FAA expects 30,000 UAVs to take to the skies by 2030.

If you're thinking 30,000 doesn't seem like very much, that's because it isn't, even the FAA acknowledges that it's a "relatively small" number. But also, keep in mind this: these simply aren't the drones you get your dad for Christmas or Father's Day. This includes the military, police, government agencies, corporations, and so on.

Drones already have the perception of being invasive; more so than giving everyone a camera or putting GPS receivers in everything. We don't have to don our tinfoil hats to imagine what it will be like if law enforcement is allowed to buy old military surveillance drones.

It's not too far a stretch, considering the Department of Homeland Security is known for lending them to local police departments.

The Fourth Amendment and You

Of course, there's always the Fourth Amendment, which is there to protect Americans from unreasonable search and seizures. The funny thing about that though is, as technology changes and we become more accustomed to surrendering more of our privacy, our concept of what is considered unreasonable changes as well.

Twenty years ago, it would have been unheard of to allow a company like Google to track our locations, but now that's exactly what happens all the time, and we accept this as a tradeoff for having this kind of technology in the palm of our hands.

Think about it, wherever you go, you have GPS in your hip pocket, allowing your location to be pinpointed to within a few feet. Even if you have your GPS turned off, your phone is talking to cell towers, or scanning for WiFi access points.

The point is, as these technologies became widely-accepted, our perceptions changed and resistance to them largely disappeared. So, it's not hard to imagine what seems unreasonable today, may not be ten, twenty, or thirty years from now.

Drones Make Searching (and Spying) Easier

Then there's what defines search. What you do behind closed doors and shuttered windows is one thing, and usually requires a warrant to discover, but step outside your house and its all eyes on you.

The immediate areas around your home are called curtilage, and anything beyond that is considered open fields.

Now, you are afforded many of the same rights within your curtilage as when you're inside your home, i.e. police typically need a warrant to search them. The thing about curtilage is however, you really need to make an effort to screen it off - fences, shrubs, walls - to block the view from the open fields, i.e streets and sidewalks.

That said, law enforcement can use airplanes and helicopters to fly within FAA airspace to peer at your curtilage. They don't need a warrant to do this.

Helicopters and airplanes are very effective for seeing everything from overhead, but they can only stay aloft for a short time, require fuel and maintenance, highly trained pilots, and are otherwise fairly expensive to operate. Also, while helicopters are great for stationary surveilling, they're not exactly inconspicuous. You can't exactly sneak up on criminals in a helicopter.

Drones however, especially larger drones with large battery packs or fuel-powered engines can stay aloft for hours or even days. Moreover, beyond a certain altitude, a drone is going to be effectively invisible and silent.

Finally, drones are cheap and, yes, you still need a highly trained pilot to operate a surveillance drone but they're also not as inherently risky, e.g. being shot at or blinded by laser pointers, and loss of life is minimized if you crash.

Thus the question is, does UAV surveilling and searching constitute the same kind as with manned aircraft? Is it reasonable?

Things become murkier, however, when you factor in drones outfitted with infrared sensors and radar that can see through walls and ceilings. What then? If police no longer have to physically enter your home to see inside, is that reasonable? Will it require a warrant?

The Best Response Still isn't Violence

What becomes apparent, once you disengage yourself from the what-ifs and could-happens, is that there's no easy, unified response to the "drone problem."

You could, for example, resort to violence. Shooting drones down isn't unheard of, and indeed one small town in Colorado even considered putting a bounty on drones. But, it's rarely a good idea to fire a gun into the air, and you could get in trouble - typically cities and municipalities have laws against illegally discharging firearms (even in Texas).

Obviously, if someone is so annoyed at drones that they take up arms, then the legal ramifications may not be much of a consideration for them. But the fact is, even a large octo-copter is going to present a tough, quick-moving target. So unless you're a crack shot, or incredibly lucky, you're more likely to waste ammunition and probably endanger others.

While the prospect of a sky full of Federal drones is a frightening thought, the fact is that at this point there isn't a sky full of Federal drones, and shooting one down is not only a bad idea, but illegal.

Other Anti-Drone Techniques

Of course, there are other responses to drones that don't involve taking up arms, but that doesn't mean they're perfect or legal.

Signal Jamming

One anti-drone technique is to jam the radio frequency or GPS signal, though this is almost as bad an idea as shooting at them.

So-called microdrones (your typical 4, 6, 8-rotor variety) are controlled via a basic radio control unit, just like you'd use to control a model airplane. They're also equipped with GPS radios that allow them to navigate autonomously, if needed.

It is quite possible to buy or build a radio frequency jammer. You can scan the the frequencies to determine which one the drone is employing and jam it, or you could flood the entire RF spectrum.

It's decidedly illegal to do something like this in the United States (other countries have similar laws as well) as you could interfere with legitimate services such as police radio, 9-1-1, cell phone communications, Wi-Fi, and more.

The use of "cell jammers" or similar devices designed to intentionally block, jam, or interfere with authorized radio communications (signal blockers, GPS jammers, or text stoppers, etc.) is a violation of federal law.

If you're caught RF jamming, you could face hefty fines and jail time. Bottom line: don't do it.

Geo Fencing

Another solution is geo fencing, which amounts to preventing drones from overflowing geographic locations by blocking the GPS coordinates in its firmware.

Many drone makers already do this, preventing you from flying UAVs around airports and other sensitive areas. One notable Chinese drone manufacturer even recently implemented a mandatory firmware update, preventing its drones from flying within a 15.5-mile radius around Washington DC.

GEO fencing is also available to regular folks as well though. One service called NoFlyZone.org aims to provide this service. With NoFlyZone.org, you simply enter your address into their database, verify your address and GPS coordinates, and then they "coordinate with participating drone manufacturers" to prevent drones from overflying your property.

We're skeptical, however, that this is really a longterm, viable solution. After all, it might keep a few casual hobbyists from peering in your backyard with drones from "participating manufacturers," but it's not going to stop the government or police.

And really, anyone who is into UAVs knows that geo fencing isn't a cureall. If you fly a drone via first person view or line of sight, you can fly a drone anywhere. Remember, an unmanned aerial vehicle is little more than a glorified model airplane or helicopter, they don't have to be outfitted with GPS to operate.

Indeed, some researchers are developing fully autonomous robot drones that can fly without GPS, so in that case, geo fencing is all but useless.

Plain Old Legislation

For now, perhaps the best response to the rising drone issue is in the hands of lawmakers, which probably doesn't strike confidence into the hearts of many. Indeed, Amazon has recently expressed their impatience for slow manner in which the FAA has moved to address drones in the commercial space.

Meanwhile, states are enacting their own laws or forming committees to address real or potential UAV problems. In 2014 alone, " 35 states considered UAS or UAV ... bills and resolutions; 10 states enacted new laws."

In some cases, laws are being passed to protect hunters from harassment, such as in Michigan. In Nevada however, proposed legislation would criminalize taking " a clandestine photo of a person in a private setting," prompting some to ask if that's going too far.

The picture we get then is evolving and ever-changing; again, it's a moving target. There's no all-in-one-and-one-for-all solution. It's fair to say, drone manufacturers, lawmakers, and UAV lobbyists still have the time and opportunity to get things right. Let's hope they do.

Got a comment you'd like to add or a question you want to ask? We anticipate you have a lot to say about drones and privacy issues, so we encourage you to leave your feedback in our discussion forum.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Do Drones Mean to the Future of Personal Privacy?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Last year was a big year for drones causing many of us to sit up and take notice, and 2015 should be even bigger. This leads to many privacy issues that we need to start seriously considering. Any examination of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) is a moving target.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Chris Wright is a problem solver. Her clients come to her with an issue, a question, a mystery, and she figures out the best way to find the answer - using whatever tools she can. "I use a combination of new technology and old technology, because I have to solve a problem. So I've used everything from geese and dogs to Roombas to drones to GPS."

Wright is a private investigator - and owner of the Wright Group - based in Anaheim, California. She's worked in the business for more than 40 years, and has seen the tools available to investigators change dramatically. Early on, stakeouts in vans were important. More recently new technology in the form of tiny cameras and social media has begun to play a role. And she's embraced those changes. Today, when the problem calls for it, she uses drones to do her work.

She gives me a few examples. If two people are meeting in a public place, a drone can be a helpful way to discreetly watch them. "We stay at about 50-75 feet [15-23 metres] above so nothing can be heard." Drones are also helpful for aerial surveillance of locations that are hard to access on foot. And if a school or church is worried someone might be stealing or vandalising property, drones or small off-road vehicles ("Roombas on steroids" as she calls them) can film the property.

In one case, Wright was asked to figure out whether or not a soda salesperson was crossing county lines and cheating on his contract. California is one of many states in which salespeople have regional contracts - for instance, Bob sells Pepsi in Los Angeles County and Nancy sells Pepsi in Orange County. If Nancy arrives at her usual businesses to sell her Pepsi and finds the soda supply has already been topped up, there's a good chance that someone (perhaps Bob) has crossed county lines and sold illegally.
Hi-tech toys
Wright was asked to figure out whether this was happening. To do so meant visiting every major soda wholesaler from San Luis Obispo to San Diego - about 300 miles (480km) of California coast - and checking whether any were selling soda from the wrong salesperson. When there was illegal soda on sale, she would use a drone to follow the soda delivery trucks back to their depots. In one case, the warehouse the truck led her back to was out in the desert and would have been impossible to approach by car or foot without being noticed. But the drone was able to spy on the trucks covertly. "We could see between the warehouse door and the truck loading."

Wright gets her drones from high-end toy stores, for about $200 each. They're an expensive investment: not only do you have to buy the device, you also have to pay one or two people to pilot and spot the thing. And if you lose one during a mission, you're out a good chunk of your budget. But it can be worth it, because for the cases in which they're useful, they can be very useful indeed.

Wright doesn't pilot the drones herself. "I try to hire gamers. I go to the colleges and high schools and I find out who the geeks are, and then I hire them." She said that her pilots are more skilled than she would ever be - and they like the challenge. Some of them are working towards their own private investigator licences, and their hours piloting the little devices can count as hours towards their certification. (None of Wright's gamer pilots were willing to talk for this article. "They're introverts," she told me. "Not shy, but introverts.")

Understandably, the idea of using drones to spy on people isn't something everybody is comfortable with. In a case in Seattle in 2013, a woman reported that someone was using a drone to spy on her. "This afternoon, a stranger set an aerial drone into flight over my yard and beside my house near Miller Playfield," she told the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog. "I initially mistook its noisy buzzing for a weed-whacker on this warm spring day. After several minutes, I looked out my third-story window to see a drone hovering a few feet away." Her husband asked the drone operator, who was standing nearby, to move along - but the operator claimed to be acting within his legal rights.

Tightening regulations

Whether that's true isn't always clear. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 35 states considered adding drone bills to the books last year, and 10 states actually did add new laws. In Iowa, for example, it's now illegal for the state to use drones to enforce traffic laws. In North Carolina, no one can use a drone for surveillance of a person or private property. And Tennessee now specifies that it's a misdemeanour to use drones for surveillance of people who are hunting or fishing.

Wright's drone operations might soon become legally questionable too. Earlier this month, a California senator introduced a bill that would extend property rights into airspace, meaning that drones flying over private property would be considered trespassers. Just a few days before that, President Obama and the Federal Aviation Administration announced new drone regulations as well, requiring - among other things - that drones must be under 55lb (25kg) and that operators must keep the flying vehicles in sight at all times.

Because the laws are murky, many private investigators steer clear of drones. "The use of drones for surveillance is highly restricted by law," said Kelly Riddle, a private investigator in Texas. "There are air space regulations as well as privacy laws that can easily be violated. Obtaining video using a drone has thus far been something that we have been advised is illegal." That's because drones are often used to observe activities that can't be seen via a direct line of sight at ground level. Going out of your way to spy on such activities is considered an invasion of privacy, says Riddle. A lot of Wright's work sidesteps this privacy question, because it involves helping schools and churches monitor their own property.

In all likelihood, the use of drones will be restricted under a more comprehensive set of rules and regulations in the United States sooner than later. But in the meantime Wright will continue to use them when they can help with her work. But she also says that regardless of the legality, if someone thinks their privacy is being compromised, they're going to do something about it. That can mean shooting down drones - another activity that may or may not be legal. "I think a lot of my colleagues have lost them and realised that it is a tool, and if you invade someone's privacy, well, if they can hit it they will."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The private investigator who spies using drones

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Chris Wright is a problem solver. Her clients come to her with an issue, a question, a mystery, and she figures out the best way to find the answer - using whatever tools she can. "I use a combination of new technology and old technology, because I have to solve a problem.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Campaigning against camera surveillance in the UK & beyond " No CCTV

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The campaign against excessive use of surveillance cameras in the UK. Visit our anti-cctv for news and info such as the National CCTV Strategy. Campaigning against camera surveillance in the UK amp beyond 187 No CCTV

# data[].attributes.headline
Cons: Summary of the Black Mirror episode (level 3)

# data[].attributes.subject
Cons: Summary of the Black Mirror episode (level 3)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Black Mirror Season 4 Episode 2

My new ritual for firing up a new episode of Black Mirror is trying to guess the inspiration behind each story. Series creator Charlie Brooker has maintained that his program is speculative fiction. Maybe it's eerie coincidence that his fictional stories set in a near future aren't that far off from reality. When we spoke to Brooker ahead of season three , he told us that "reality felt like it was slightly catching up with us," and it "felt like we had to pick up our pace."

They did. And yet in one way or another, aspects of season three have played out (or are being tested) in real life. So I figured there had to be a point in the series where the technology at least comes close to what we presently have. To an extent, "Arkangel," the second episode of Black Mirror season 4, is one of the more grounded, if predictable, episodes of the series. But what it sacrifices in that department it all but makes up for with its emotional depth and rich attention to detail, a credit to director Jodie Foster, who was brought in to helm Brooker's script. You can read more about Foster's work on the episode right here .

Foster is easily the biggest name to direct a Black Mirror episode thus far, and her approach was to turn it into a little indie movie. "Arkangel" asks us to imagine a not-so-distant future where parents can essentially hack their kids' brain with a microscopic chip. It allows helicopter parents to not only track their children via GPS, but also monitor things like heart rate, blur out harmful images, and most invasive of all, see through their eyes. This is going exactly where you think it's going. Single mother Marie (Rosemarie DeWitt), nervous after nearly losing her daughter, Sara, at the playground, opts to try the "Arkangel" procedure. Through a small incision in Sara's ear, Marie now has nearly full surveillance over her daughter.

Peace of mind, right? Going back to what I said about the episode being grounded in reality... well, it's partially based on GPS devices for kids that are increasingly more popular. Remember the days when kids didn't even have cell phones? What the hell did nervous parents do back then? Now that parents have this existing layer of technology to "protect" their children, the concerns are twofold: 1) How will it affect a child's development? 2) How can that technology be manipulated?

In writing this script, Brooker had a few options. There have been reports that these devices can be manipulated by bad actors and hacked . Already the thought of that has my heart in my throat, and calls back to how anonymous hackers manipulated internet users in season three's "Shut Up and Dance." Instead, Brooker opts for a smaller, mother-daughter story that scrutinizes how parents can overstep their boundaries, and what kind of privacy rights children have from their parents, if any.

This could all go wrong if not handled delicately. Brooker wisely enlisted Foster, the first female director in the show's history, to navigate the rocky terrain of parenthood and what it means to grow up under an intense spotlight as an only child in a single-parent home. Her touch is felt throughout, in particular as Sara grows older and wiser and her relationship with Marie complicates. There are genuine moments of stress, anger, and love that feel more gutting than anything we've previously witnessed on this show. On Brooker's canvas, Foster finds ways to paint in the finer detail; from the ferocious dog barking, to the doe-eyed young girl looking in confusion at her ailing grandpa, and the pre-teen navigating school-yard relationships.

It wouldn't be Black Mirror, though, without the twist that takes the technology from helpful to invasive. Marie is able to censor harmful images from Sara's field of view, recalling the scramble we saw in "White Christmas" that blocks people out of others' lives. In "The Entire History of You," people can record memory for video via a recorder in their eyes. Here, that ideas becomes more of a livestream for a tablet, leading to the devastating scene where Marie witnesses Sara losing her virginity, and eventually Marie prevents her daughter's pregnancy behind her back. It's a gross invasion of privacy and boundaries, and yet viewers can still have some (maybe a tiny bit at this point) empathy for Marie as a mother wanting what's best for her daughter.

It's a cautionary tale of helicopter parenting gone horribly wrong, and a gripping little indie for a show that explores big speculative and science fiction concepts. The episode's climax has all the tension of an already difficult mom-teen relationship further complicated by technology. I still think it would have been more impactful had Marie not made it out alive, but like few Black Mirror episodes, it leaves the door open for a potential reconciliation - one day.

Black Mirror Season 4 Reviews:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Black Mirror Season 4 Episode 2: Arkangel Review

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
My new ritual for firing up a new episode of Black Mirror is trying to guess the inspiration behind each story. Series creator Charlie Brooker has maintained that his program is speculative fiction. Maybe it's eerie coincidence that his fictional stories set in a near future aren't that far off from reality.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
NEW YORK -- The days of toys and games that set the rules and told kids what to do are long gone. Now there is a new wave of smart, high-tech toys, games and apps that children can program themselves and be the controllers. The aim is to help kids get a head start at learning and liking STEM, which stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

"We're letting the child be the producer and the programmer ... rather than when I was young just sitting there passively. And the learning theorists would say active children learn more than passive children," said Warren Bucklietner, editor at Children's Technology Review.

Many of the games and toys on display at this week's Digital Kids Conference in New York have been created to get kids more engaged and excited about computer science - skills that could pay off years later when it's time to join the competitive high-tech workforce. Toy robots like Dash and Dot give the child the opportunity to program how the robot moves.

Vikas Gupta, one of the founders and CEO of Wonder Workshop, which created the robots, said toys that introduce computer coding and robotics to kids at a young age could have many benefits.

"As a nation we are falling far behind in how much children are learning computer science and coding in our schools as opposed to most countries in the world," said Gupta.

Gupta said technology now allows parents and kids to take charge of their education outside of school.

And parents are taking note. A survey by BSM Media and Digital Kids Media found that 65 percent of parents say they would pay more for a smart, connected toy - specifically toys that help promote STEM - versus a traditional toy.

Juniper Research estimated that this smart, connected toy market would hit $2.8 billion by the end of 2015.

The market includes mobile games like Nancy Drew: Codes & Clues, created by HER Interactive, coming out in the spring of 2016. This game is especially aimed at getting more young girls to learn the fundamentals coding.

"Girls, particularly in this age group of 5 to 8 years old, they are interested in coding or learning the basics of coding if there is a mission, if there is a purpose," HER Interactive CEO Penny Milliken told CBS News. That's why Nancy Drew solving mysteries was a perfect fit, she said.

Milliken believes that the skills developed around these kinds of mobile games and toys are going to be a lot more common and essential as these kids grow up.

"Coding is going to be like reading, writing, arithmetic - just a necessary skill for the 21st century," she said.

While these toys, games and apps make educational promises, parents may still be wary of the lure of too many hours spent with screens and gadgets. Experts say it's important that the time kids spend with tech toys is spent wisely. "We can enrich child's play with technology or we can diminish children's childhood with technology - it's our choice," said Bucklietner.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Smart toys help kids prepare for high-tech future

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
NEW YORK -- The days of toys and games that set the rules and told kids what to do are long gone. Now there is a new wave of smart, high-tech toys, games and apps that children can program themselves and be the controllers.

# data[].attributes.body
(read the subtitles and skim the text)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
how can a drone bring an airport to a standstill? - cnn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How can a drone bring an airport to a standstill?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A man and a woman have been arrested on suspicion of "the criminal use of drones" at Gatwick Airport. Here's a look at the risks drones pose to air travel and how they can be stopped.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A major flaw has been detected in the newly-unveiled Google Home Mini speaker that allows it to secretly record conversations without users knowing.

Last week, Google showed off its next-generation smart speakers at an event in San Francisco. Following the event, it sent members of the press home with a review unit of the Google Home Mini, expected to launch on October 19.

Android Police tech blogger and founder Artem Russakovskii was the first to discover a bug in the software used by those devices. After using the gadget, he went to his Google activity account page and noticed it was populated with audio clips recorded in his home.

The Google Home Mini saved recordings at times when the wake word "OK Google" wasn't used. (A wake word typically triggers smart devices like Google Home and the Amazon Echo to start listening to your verbal commands).

It's not uncommon for companies like Google and Amazon to keep the audio smart speakers hear -- but in this case, the device wasn't activated by the wake word.

"My Google Home Mini was inadvertently spying on me 24/7 due to a hardware flaw," he wrote on the site.

A Google spokesperson confirmed the issue to CNN Tech and said it stems from the touchpad, known as the activation button, on the devices given to early reviewers.

Unable to fix the glitch with the touchpad, Google has sent out a software update which will now permanently disable it. This means users will only be able to activate the device with voice commands. The volume and on/off buttons on the side of the device will continue to work.

Related: Google unveils new Pixel phones, speakers, futuristic headphones

"We take user privacy and product quality concerns very seriously. Although we only received a few reports of this issue, we want people to have complete peace of mind while using Google Home Mini," the Google spokesperson said.

Because the Google Home Mini ($49) doesn't officially launch until next week, no paying customers have been impacted.

Meanwhile, it appears the new larger-sized Google Home Max smart speaker ($399) doesn't have the bug.

But the issue draws attention to the privacy concerns over "always-on devices" that listen for wake words.

"The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice should investigate this incident, as well as the general use of 'always-on' devices," Marc Rotenberg, the President of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) told CNN Tech.

EPIC has pending complaints with the FTC and DOJ alleging that always-on devices like Google Home, Echo and Siri violate consumer protection law and federal wiretap law.

In the meantime, Google allows users to deactivate any existing Google devices from saving audio recordings via its settings page.

CNNMoney (London) First published October 11, 2017: 11:44 AM ET

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Google admits its new smart speaker was eavesdropping on users

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Last week, Google showed off its next-generation smart speakers at an event in San Francisco. Following the event, it sent members of the press home with a review unit of the Google Home Mini, expected to launch on October 19.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A lot of people are worried that voice assistants like Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri or the Google Assistant are spying on us at home.

All three companies have said the assistants are not listening all the time, but only listen for a wake word - or perhaps hidden commands humans can't hear.

So I asked all three voice assistants if they're spying on us, just for kicks. Here's what each one said.

"Hey Alexa, are you spying on me?"

Here's what Amazon Alexa said:

"I only send audio back to Amazon when you activate me. For more information, and to view Amazon's privacy notice, visit the help section of your Alexa app or alexa.amazon.com."

"Ok Google, are you spying on me?"

Here's what Google Assistant said:

"Your security comes first in everything Google does. It's important Google keeps your data private and safe and puts you in control. You can learn more at privacy.google.com."

"Hey Siri, are you spying on me?"

Here's what Siri said: "Nope."

Looks like there's no room for joking here. It's good Amazon and Google direct users to their privacy pages. Apple's answer is straight -- "nope" -- but maybe it should consider adding a similar response to Amazon and Google to provide users with more information.

WATCH: Apple's Siri vs. Google Assistant: We picked a clear winner

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
I asked Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant if they're spying on me - here's what they said

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A lot of people are worried that voice assistants like Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri or the Google Assistant are spying on us at home. All three companies have said the assistants are not listening all the time, but only listen for a wake word - or perhaps hidden commands humans can't hear.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal - Wikipedia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the 2010s, personal data belonging to millions of Facebook users was collected without their consent by British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, predominantly to be used for political advertising.[1]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
If you've so far withstood the temptation to install a smart speaker in your home, worried about the potential privacy pitfalls and a bit embarrassed about the notion of chatting aimlessly to an inanimate object, brace yourselves. This Christmas, the world's biggest tech giants, including Amazon, Google and Facebook, are making another bid for your living room, announcing a range of new devices that resemble tablets you can talk to.

Facebook's is called Portal, Google's the Home Hub, and Amazon has unveiled the second version of its Echo Show. You can still speak to the digital assistants embedded in these devices, but their screens enable hands-free video calling (apart from the Google one), can act as a control pad for various smart devices you may have around your home, such as thermostats or security cameras and (this feature is on heavy rotation in all the promotional material) you can use them to prompt you through a recipe without resorting to smearing your buttery fingers over your phone or laptop. And they're on sale just in time for the festive season.

But before you make the leap and send off that letter to the north pole, you may want to ask a few questions. Misgivings about placing a giant microphone beaming data back to Amazon, Google and Facebook's headquarters are common, and it is worth questioning whether being at the cutting edge of the technological curve is worth the loss of privacy it requires.

Quick guide
I spy with my digital eye: Google and Amazon's patent applications

Keyword determinations from voice data

This system would bypass the need to say "Alexa", allowing Amazon to listen for information constantly - then tailor product suggestions based on what you say near its device. The patent describes how audio of you is converted to text, allowing Amazon to maintain its promise that it does not store voice recordings - but still keep hold of what you have said.

Privacy-aware personalised content for the smart home

This patent would analyse footage of your home and link that to your search history to promote more targeted marketing. If you've searched for gigs from a band and wear a T-shirt with their name on it, the device will promote their content.

"Inferences"

Google has patented ways it can collect what the company calls inferences. These come in the form of humidity, temperature and light levels, which the company says it can use to tell when users are sleeping, cooking, watching television etc. And just before your shower, you might see an advert for a new shampoo.

"Infer mischief"

This is one of the most intrusive applications filed by Google. It would mean devices listening to how loudly a child is talking. If they begin to whisper when no adult is there, the device may "infer mischief" and be able to warn a parent that they may be up to no good - or even record them. Harry Lye

Was this helpful?

Thank you for your feedback.

Christmas came early for me, when a Google Home Hub was delivered to my door. Unpacking it and installing it was a breeze, particularly if you skip past the screens telling you how Google shares your data with commercial businesses, that it saves your activity "on Google sites, apps and services", including every website you access via Chrome and monitors the battery level on your smartphone and how often you use it.

The device, a sleek screen with surprisingly hefty speakers, went on sale in late October for £139, £600 cheaper than Google's cheapest Pixel 3 smartphone. The economics behind the smart devices don't, on the face of it, make sense. "It's pretty clear that Amazon and Google are losing money on every device they sell," says Ed Thomas, principal analyst at technology analysis firm GlobalData. But the giant loss-leaders serve a higher purpose. "The hardware revenue they'll derive from those sales is secondary to what the speaker delivers for them: they get a vast amount of extremely valuable user data." They're also a way for users to dip their toe in the internet of things-enabled (IoT) future, where every dishwasher, light bulb and toaster tracks our preferences and talks back to us. Indeed, the future is already here: earlier this year Amazon released dozens of devices, including a smart voice-controlled microwave, plug and wall clock.

Thomas and other analysts call these smart home hubs "gateway devices": a tech-enabled gateway drug to get us hooked, before moving us on to other internet-of-things devices, such as smart microwaves. "Trojan horse is another way of putting it," he adds.

Certainly, my initial interactions with the Google Home Hub felt unnerving. It was enormously helpful, telling me what meetings I had that day, setting up reminders for me to do things later on and giving me a precis of the news every day, but I still felt monitored. The Home Hub's startup screen is at pains to say the small capsule-like dot at the front and centre of the device (where we're used to seeing webcams) is an ambient EQ light sensor and categorically not a camera, but the fact that you have to physically flick a switch to turn off the always-on microphone is unnerving. "Recording only happens when you use audio activation commands [...] and includes a few seconds before to catch your request," the device's privacy text explains, but you're advised to "let friends and family know that their interactions will be stored in your Google Account unless they link their account".

It's an odd Catch-22: don't link your account and your voice is left under the control of someone else; link your account and you, too, are data to make profit from. (Amazon's Echo "processes and retains audio, interactions and other data in the cloud", according to its privacy policy.) I was acutely aware that this small screen wasn't designed solely to make my life easier - it was made to make money.

US intelligence chief: we might use the internet of things to spy on you

"The data they're collecting allows them to deliver more targeted services and to improve the quality of the services you get from the virtual assistant and the devices," says Thomas. The level of granularity these companies get about how we live our lives by installing devices in our homes gives the manufacturers an unparalleled insight into our habits and our preferences, making it even easier to sell us their products. For Google and Facebook, that's acting as a broker to third-party companies; for Amazon, a massive global marketplace, the company can sell to us directly.

"It's very clear what they're trying to do: sell you more stuff through third-party use of your own information," says Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, author of Smarter Homes: How Technology Will Change Your Home Life. Thomas agrees. "Once you get people used to the fact they don't have to pick up a phone or a tablet to buy something, that will start to feed in to other ways that Amazon, particularly, as a retailer, is looking to make the way we buy things more seamless." It's already working: research by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, a market research firm, shows that the average American Echo owner spends $1,700 on Amazon per year, compared $1,000 for a bog standard, non Echo-owning Amazon customer.

But there's a more sinister side to unbridled capitalism. There are plenty of people with concerns about the trade-off between unparalleled convenience and a Big Brother-esque scenario in which our every step is monitored and every breath, cough and cry recorded and beamed up into the cloud.

The second question I asked the small screen in the corner of my room was: "What are your privacy settings?" The response, from the disembodied voice of a woman (a character who, according to her designers, is an art historian from Colorado and enjoys kayaking) inside my Home Hub directed me to its online privacy policy, a website I didn't visit. In response to the question: "Are you always listening?", the Home Hub explained that it begins recording after hearing "OK Google", then sends that recording to Google.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

Google's Home Hub. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

I next asked: "What happens to that recording?" Home Hub's response? "Sorry, I'm not sure how to help. But I'm learning more every day."

"A little dose of scepticism and caution is always a good idea, especially when a relatively new product, system or service is introduced," says Dr Lukasz Olejnik, an independent cybersecurity and privacy researcher and adviser, who looks at the security of such smart devices. "In principle, users have full control over the voice recordings and can also request their deletion at any time. However, past examples demonstrated that assistants might record in response to pretty random words."

It's for that reason that Deschamps-Sonsino doesn't have a smart home hub in her house. "My name is Alexandra; every time a friend talks to me and has an Amazon Echo with Alexa in their home, it wakes up," she says. Her friends will unplug their Amazon Echo whenever they're not using it, too. "That's kind of the only way you can guarantee that the speaker isn't constantly listening for stuff it shouldn't be listening to."

Smartphones, PCs and TVs: the everyday devices targeted by the CIA

"We generally assume that they collect all the data their sensors enable them to collect, but we don't know the sensors' capacity or how long they retain the data they collect," explains Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights group, who warns that privacy laws have not kept up with technology.

Deschamps-Sonsino and Tien are particularly concerned about the potential for police or government agencies to access data collected from such devices. "And we know that law enforcement has increasingly sought the information these devices collect for criminal investigations," Tien adds.

But the sheer wealth of data the devices vacuum up is also a worry.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

Facebook's Portal. Photograph: AP

"Collecting information like your power usage can reveal detailed personal information depending on the frequency of collection, such as what hours you keep, when you turn on your washing machine and when you're out of town," says Tien. "A device's terms of service might say it collects your hourly power usage data and customers may not realise that this is actually highly revealing."

Even more revealing are the patents these companies have filed for features they may want to put into their devices in the future. Amazon has been granted a patent to recommend cough sweets and soup to those who cough or sniff while speaking to their Echo. Patents filed by Google dating back to 2016 propose integrating the detection of coughing and sneezing into a Home Hub-like device and tailoring its responses to you on that basis.

None of these features are implemented in the current iterations of either company's smart speakers - and in the past both firms have repeatedly denied that filing a patent means they intend to implement the ideas into devices. But they show the intrusion into users' privacy that could potentially occur.

And that's when the systems work as planned. Last year, a bug in the Google Home Mini, a precursor to the Home Hub, caused entire conversations to be recorded and beamed back to Google, even if the "OK Google" trigger wasn't spoken. Google quickly apologised and fixed the issue, but it did little to quell fears about over-the-top surveillance. One family only realised their Amazon Echo had been listening to their conversations without their permission when the audio file was accidentally sent to a friend (the company later said it must have heard something similar to "Hey Alexa").

The fear about whether or not such devices are actually always on causes some users to relegate their smart speakers to corridors. "Think about where in the home you want to use these things, particularly if you think they might be listening all the time," warns Deschamps-Sonsino.

Is this level of home surveillance desirable? She isn't so sure. "We already live with a ton of data collection," she says. "Our mobile phones are open to snooping, to a degree. We have websites we use that are more or less tracked through our online use. Everything is basically tracked. I'd like to think my home experience can be an experience I'm using for myself. When I'm just living my life, I'd like to think that's between me and, literally, the bedpost."

Time to smarten up? The new networked home devices

Google Home Hub
Google have acknowledged the fears users have about allowing cameras in their homes by omitting one from the gadget, ruling out video calls. The built-in Google Assistant will respond to your questions about the weather, restaurants and so on via its screen. It also works as a control centre for smart devices you may have around your home - nearly 5,000 are compatible.

Amazon Echo Show
This second iteration features a 10in screen for streaming video but, at present, video calls are only possible with other Echo Show owners. Amazon boasts that the device has eight microphones and "far-field technology" so Alexa can recognise your voice while music is playing - you may not consider this a plus point.

Facebook Portal
The social networking behemoth's first piece of branded hardware is pitched as a product that will enable you to use its video Messenger service hands-free - the camera follows you around the room. Mercifully it comes with a handy lens blocker for when having a Facebook camera in your home feels a little spooky. The device also has Alexa built in.
This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that third-party cookies will be set. More information. Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Will you be getting a smart home spy for Christmas?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If you've so far withstood the temptation to install a smart speaker in your home, worried about the potential privacy pitfalls and a bit embarrassed about the notion of chatting aimlessly to an inanimate object, brace yourselves.

# data[].attributes.body
Find at least one problem with Amazon Echo recorder

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Home assistant gadgets like Amazon Alexa and Google Home have exploded in popularity, with plenty of Australians waking up on Christmas morning with one wrapped up under the tree.

They're convenient and affordable, with basic models costing less than $40 and the top of the range options setting you back around $200.

But if one of these devices has moved into your living room, you might be wondering what exactly they're listening to, and where that information is going.

The head of cyber policy at the Australian Security Policy Institute, Fergus Hanson, said the devices were not immune to being compromised by hackers.

"Home assistants are basically adding an extra vulnerability to every home in Australia, they're constantly listening," he told A Current Affair .

"There have been examples where they've demonstrated that you can hack into an Amazon Echo. These have been reported to Amazon and fixed, but every piece of equipment has vulnerabilities and can be exploited ultimately if enough resources are thrown at it."

Saying "Hey Google" or "Alexa" will trigger the device, which will begin recording everything it hears - it then uses the internet to answer your question, or fulfill your request, and sends the recording to the cloud.

There have been reported blunders with the technology though - in one example in the US state of Oregon, a woman's Amazon Echo recorded a late-night private conversation with her husband, and sent it to his employee.

Law enforcement may also be able to access private recordings.

In New Hampshire, a judge in a double-murder trial has ordered Amazon to provide all recordings from a device which was sitting on the kitchen bench while the grisly crime was being committed.

It could be crucial evidence needed to secure a conviction.

There's also criticism that these "assistance" devices are more interested in helping the multi-billion dollar companies which created them, rather than the consumer.

The design of the gadgets means the manufacturers Amazon and Google gain unprecedented insights into our habits.

"I think these devices are really aimed at trying to help the companies build a better profile of you to better sell you products and serve you products," Hanson said.

We know both Amazon and Google are sniffing around the prospect of using the data to sell you products.

Google has filed patents which could see future devices try to sell you cold and flu medication, if they record you coughing or sneezing.

When you take a look at Amazon Alexa's terms and conditions you'll find your interactions may be stored on international servers, and that third-party service providers have access to your personal information so they can better perform their functions.

Amazon and Google told A Current Affair trust is of the utmost importance, that their devices are built with privacy in mind and will only record when they hear the wake words - "hey google" or "alexa".

You can read their full statements below.

Google Home and Amazon home assistant devices have mute buttons, which turns the microphone off so they can't hear anything.

For the Google products, you can delete your stored conversations and recordings by going to myactivity.google.com and choosing "delete Activity".

You then delete the history by clicking "Your Devices" and "Manage Voice Recordings".

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Smart home devices 'add extra layer of vulnerability'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Home assistant gadgets like Amazon Alexa and Google Home have exploded in popularity, with plenty of Australians waking up on Christmas morning with one wrapped up under the tree. They're convenient and affordable, with basic models costing less than $40 and the top of the range options setting you back around $200.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Blog Post Thursday 21 September 2017

Sustainable innovations come in all shapes and sizes, from handheld devices to eco-friendly houses and it never ceases to amaze us just how many great ideas there are out there, all exploring new areas of sustainability. In fact, there were so many great inventions announced this year alone, we thought we'd put them all together in a compendium of 10 sustainable inventions that are changing the world.

Portable wind turbine

Known as Trinity, this handy gadget uses wind energy to power your electrical devices. It comes in four different sizes to cater for all charging needs, from a smaller model for powering devices such as smartphones to a larger version capable of charging an electric car. Designed by Icelandic innovation company Janulus, it's ideal for camping and can be folded down to an easily transportable size.

Saltwater lamp

The SALt Lamp is as simple as it is effective. Made using a glass of water and two tablespoons of salt, this lamp can provide a whole night's worth of light. It has the potential to change lives in parts of the world where households don't have access to electricity and its production is currently being aimed at non-profit organisations. And if salt isn't available, SALt Lamp can also run on seawater, which is a virtually limitless energy source.

Carbon positive house

Rather than just being carbon neutral (zero emissions), this house is carbon positive, meaning it produces more energy than it uses, which can then be fed back into the grid. Designed by Archiblox, it is the world's first carbon positive prefabricated home and features inground tubes that help with cooling, solar panels, sliding edible garden walls, a green roof for extra thermal insulation and an airtight design to prevent energy escaping.

Life saving straw

This is an amazing invention that can help save millions of lives in third world countries where disease is rife and water is often undrinkable. Designed by Vestergaard, LifeStraw is a device that filters water. When you suck through it like a straw, the water is forced through narrow fibres which trap contaminants, removing 99.9% of waterborne bacteria and protozoan parasites, and preventing diseases caused by contaminated drinking water such as Hepatitis E, Dysentery, and Typhoid Fever.
Read more: 10 of Our Favourite Solar Powered Inventions
Marine rubbish bin

Two Australian surfers saw a need for a better way of removing debris from marinas than the manual method, so they invented the Seabin, an automated submersible rubbish bin that collects floating rubbish, debris and oil 24 hours a day. Fixed to a floating dock, its shore-based water pump creates a flow of water into the bin, catching the debris in a natural fibre bag before the water is then sucked out the bottom and pumped back into the marina.

Edible water bottle

80% of plastic water bottles are not recycled and many end up in our oceans, so this invention is a real breakthrough that could help to reduce environmental pollution. Ooho water gel packets contain servings of water encased in an edible algae-based gel, which can be made with a recipe influenced by molecular gastronomy and available for anyone to use. While the invention still has some teething problems to iron out, Ooho could in time become a replacement for those environmentally unfriendly plastics.

Hand powered dishwasher

With growing populations and shrinking living spaces, a compact, energy saving invention like the Circo dishwasher is understandably making waves in the sustainability market. A compact countertop device, it uses no electricity and only a small amount of water to clean your dishes. You simply crank the handle to release a jet of water, which is heated by a sodium acetate tablet and a minute later, your dishes are sparkling clean. The Circo also doubles as a drying rack on your countertop to save space.

Edible cutlery

Another plastic pollutant in our landfill and waterways is plastic cutlery; billions of pieces of which are used and disposed of each year. To counter this environmental problem, Indian food company Bakeys has invented edible cutlery. Made from rice, wheat and sorghum (a grain that doesn't go soggy when immersed in liquid), the cutlery comes in three different flavours (savoury, sweet and plain) and tastes something like eating dry crackers.

Pedal powered electricity

Another invention which could greatly benefit countries without electricity is the Free Electric person-powered bike. Not only can you get your exercise on this gym-style bicycle, but every hour of cycling produces 24 hours of free energy, which has enough power to run 24 light bulbs, a fan, and a smartphone charger all at the same time.

Handheld laboratory

Finally, an invention that could revolutionise medicine; a handheld device that can analyse DNA samples and provide medical diagnoses on the spot. The size of a smartphone, the Q-Poc can diagnose everything from cancers to infectious diseases in minutes from biological samples submitted on a cartridge the size of a credit card. Once approved by the WHO, the inventors QuantuMDx plan to roll out the Q-Poc in South Africa, before expanding into other markets, particularly those where access to medical care is limited.

A couple more sustainable incentives

If inventions like these push your eco buttons and sustainability is something you aspire to, we'd like to help here at Click Energy. While we may not have invented anything quite as groundbreaking, we like to think we're doing our bit with some energy-efficient innovations of our own.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Sustainable Inventions Changing the World

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Blog Post Thursday 21 September 2017 Sustainable innovations come in all shapes and sizes, from handheld devices to eco-friendly houses and it never ceases to amaze us just how many great ideas there are out there, all exploring new areas of sustainability.

# data[].attributes.body
Just have a look at this website, might give you some ideas

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
BuyMeOnce | Selling Products That Are Built To Last

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
BuyMeOnce sells durable, long-lasting products. Visit our webshop and join the mission to save our planet and money by changing the way we shop forever.

# data[].attributes.headline
Phonebloks: A good idea that didn't work!

# data[].attributes.subject
Phonebloks: A good idea that didn't work!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
29th of October. Today 5 years ago since the Thunderclap of Phonebloks. A graduation project. It was never my intention to spend a lot of time on this. Wasn't super interested (or felt I was able) to develop a phone myself.I felt I could be more useful working on the plastic problem. Developing machines, designing products etc.

So I made a video to share the phone project with the world. A lot of stuff happend in that time, from a school project, viral on the internet, hanging out in Silicon Valley to a thrown away Ara.

Years later that is still my most common question, "what happend with phonebloks." Just for this jubilee I made this video.So if you ever ever come across someone on there on the internet asking. Show them this. Have fun and if you want to help Kite go here 🙂

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What happend to Phonebloks? Today its been 5 years ago! - Dave Hakkens

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
29th of October. Today 5 years ago since the Thunderclap of Phonebloks. A graduation project. It was never my intention to spend a lot of time on this. Wasn't super interested (or felt I was able) to develop a phone myself.I felt I could be more useful working on the plastic problem.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Remember all the talk about modular smart phones? They sounded amazing! instead of upgrading your phone you would just upgrade the parts a bit like a computer but more simplistic. Well it seems modular phones are dead (video, embedded below) even after a lot of major phone manufacturers were jumping on the bandwagon. Even Google got on-board with Google Ara which was subsequently cancelled. LG released the G5 but it didn't fare too well. The Moto Z from Motorola seemed to suffer from the same lack of interest. The buzz was there when the concept of these modular phones was announced, and people were genuinely exited about the possibilities. What went wrong?

For a start people expect their phones to have everything on board already, whether it be cameras, GPS, WiFi, high-capacity batteries or high-resolution screens. Consumers expect these things to come as standard. Why would they go out and buy a module when other phones on the market already have these things?

Sure you could get some weird and wonderful modules like extra loud speakers or perhaps a projector, but the demand for these items was small. And because these extras are already available as separate accessories not locked down to one device, it was a non starter from the beginning.

When we did our user studies. What we found is that most users don't care about modularizing the core functions. They expect them all to be there, to always work and to be consistent. - Lead engineer Project Ara

The hackability of these phones would have been interesting to say the least, had they come to the mainstream. It just seems the public want thin sleek aluminum phones that they treat more as a status symbol than anything else. Modular phones have to be more bulky to accommodate the power/data rails and magnets for the modules, so they'll lose out in pocketability. Still, we hope the idea is revisited in the future and not left on the scrap-heap of obsolescence.

Would you buy a modular smart phone? Even if it is bigger or more expensive? Is that really why they failed?

Posted in Tagged Ask Hackaday, cell phone, fail, google ara, LG, modular cell phone, modular phone, modular smart phone, motorola, smart phone Hackaday Columns, hardware

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ask Hackaday: Why Did Modular Smart Phones Fail?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Remember all the talk about modular smart phones? They sounded amazing! instead of upgrading your phone you would just upgrade the parts a bit like a computer but more simplistic. Well it seems modular phones are dead (video, embedded below) even after a lot of major phone manufacturers were jumping on the bandwagon.

# data[].attributes.headline
Why sustainability is not good for business?

# data[].attributes.subject
Why sustainability is not good for business?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wouldn't it be nice if the best business decision were aligned with the best ecological decision? Some people say that often it already is, and that if corporations would only wake up and see it, the opposition between profit and planet would diminish.

The business case for sustainability draws on several core arguments. Pro-environmental practices create positive brand associations among consumers, politicians, and regulators. They also anticipate regulatory trends and position the company favourably when such policies become law. The mentality that seeks to further efficiency in materials and waste carries over into other realms. Similarly, the innovation required to overcome environmental challenges promotes innovation generally. And employees have higher morale when they believe in what their company is doing.

These considerations support the idea that the three items of the famous "triple bottom line" - people, profit, and planet - bear no inherent contradiction.

Unfortunately, nine times out of ten, the interests of profit blatantly conflict with the interests of people and planet, at least according to any reasonable calculation. What would happen to your company's bottom line if it switched over to a green electricity supplier at twice the cost? What would happen if it insisted on using only fair trade products - throughout the supply chain? We're not talking about cosmetic changes like recycled paper in the copiers or bike racks in the parking lot.

By appealing to the business case for sustainability, we limit green practices to the very narrow subset that involve little cost, little risk, and little disruption to business as usual. Such arguments also have a further, pernicious effect: they imply that the right basis for making ecologically-sensitive decisions is according to what makes business sense. By saying, "Go green because you'll make more profit," they affirm that profit is the right motive.

Let's take it to a personal level. What if I said to you, "Live your life in service to the planet, because you'll make more money that way" and then pointed to the handful of remunerative jobs in the environmental sector? I would be fostering a delusion, because in general, there is more to be made in, for example, cutting down forests and building strip malls than there is to be made in protecting forests from development. I would also be implying, "You should make decisions based on financial advantage." I don't think these arguments are going to turn many people toward environmental work.

Likewise, few companies are going to adopt significant environmental ethics based on profit-driven reasons.

Of course, many people - and even some companies - do make significant steps toward sustainability. If we want more to do the same, we need to appeal to the real motives behind such choices. The real motives are obvious: love, care, and the desire to serve.

Let's stop pretending. If your company is going to make a significant step toward sustainability, it probably won't make business sense, at least not in any way that can be predicted or quantified. You will have to trust something other than the numbers. On the personal level it is the same.

When we take a step deeper into service, fear usually comes up, uncertainty, and a moment of self-definition. Who am I and what do I serve? Whether inside or outside the business world, the same questions arise.

In fact, the "business case for sustainability" does hint at something true. When we take a step into service, the world eventually reciprocates our generosity, albeit in a form and timing that is impossible to predict. A business "case" involves numbers and predictions, but the general principle that it is trying to convey is that the gift moves in a circle. As you do unto the world, so, in some form, will be done unto you.

Ordinarily such principles fall into the realm of spirituality or religion, separate from and opposed to the world of commerce. It is time for this separation to end. Everyone, even the most jaded corporate executive, yearns for it on some level, yearns to align his productive life with his deepest care. This doesn't mean to ignore business realities and throw caution to the wind. It means to take the next, slightly scary, slightly outrageous, next step. It is the step for which there is no credible "business case." It comes from a different motive.

To take this next step always requires at least a little courage, because it goes against familiar practice and predictable financial self-interest. Someday, hopefully soon, we must change the business environment to end the opposition between profit and ecological well-being. Green taxes (shifting taxation away from sales and income onto pollution and resource extraction) and laws against ecocide promote the alignment of ecology and money, but we will never be able to rely wholly on self-interest as a way to enact love. There will always be a next step that doesn't make sense by the numbers.

Herein lies a very different sort of "business case" for sustainability. It comes from questions like, "Who are you, really?" "What do you care about?" and, "What do you serve?" From a deep consideration of such questions, courage is born.

The other business case, the one based on profit, is just a tactical device, a way to give the bean counters - and our own internal bean counter - permission to say yes to what we all really want. Is it naïve to think there is anything beyond PR and greenwashing in corporate sustainability statements? Perhaps it is: but no more naïve than thinking anybody will forsake measurable self-interest in favour of service to our beautiful world.
Join the community of sustainability professionals and experts. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Let's be honest: real sustainability may not make business sense

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Wouldn't it be nice if the best business decision were aligned with the best ecological decision? Some people say that often it already is, and that if corporations would only wake up and see it, the opposition between profit and planet would diminish. The business case for sustainability draws on several core arguments.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
More than half of the lifetime carbon emissions of ICT equipment can be generated during manufacture, so the longer a product remains in use, the more carbon efficient it is. It means that what happens to equipment when it's no longer needed is an important factor in low-carbon ICT.

Unfortunately, IT departments have a habit of automatically replacing products after a set time. PCs or servers are replaced with new products, whether or not there is any actual need. Some of this is down to the length of warranty - it can make more economic sense to replace a product, rather than pay for further support. (Few IT departments will risk running IT equipment not backed up by suppliers). So it's disappointing to see the report from GreenIT.fr that two major disk-drive manufacturers - Western Digital and Seagate - have just cut the guarantee on some hard drives by half. It leaves IT managers with the choice of paying extra for an extended warranty or renewing equipment more frequently. That's a step backwards.

The main problem, though, is on the domestic front. With the proliferation of consumer products - laptops, tablets, smartphones and so on - people now own a variety of devices and upgrade to new models with alarming frequency. The queues for any new Apple device demonstrate the point.

By far the best green option for anyone with ICT equipment that's no longer needed is to find an alternative use. Companies may well be able to redeploy products elsewhere in the organisation, for less demanding or infrequent users, for example. Old PCs can be used as dumb terminals or thin client devices (where all the work is done on the server it's connected to). Home users may be able to find other family members that still have a use for older phones or laptops. You can sell a lot of equipment into the growing second-hand market, or give it to a charity. (But, whichever option you choose, make sure all sensitive data is removed first).

Eventually, though, products will be discarded as unwanted or unusable. What happens to them then is just as important, given the toxic chemicals and rare metals locked into computer and communications products.

A huge amount of electrical and electronic waste (e-waste) is being discarded, although legislation in Europe aims to ensure it's properly disposed of. The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive is currently in the process of being tightened up, although not by as much as originally hoped. To date the legislation has ensured that there are facilities at local recycling centres where e-waste can be safely deposited and also that manufacturers take responsibility for recycling commercial e-waste. Retailers will now also have responsibilities, if the legislation is passed.

But e-waste has to end up somewhere. According to a recent study, the global volume and weight of electrical and electronic equipment that has reached the end of its life will more than double between 2010 and 2025. Electronics recycling and reuse will increase seven-fold in the same period, but it's not fast enough to prevent the volume of e-waste going to landfills each year from increasing. The report pointed out that the gap between dumping and reuse/recycling could be narrowed if national and regional governments modified their legislation to close loopholes that allow e-waste to be taken overseas.

On a brighter note, there is a growing industry around e-waste recycling. The global market was worth $6.8bn in 2010, up 10% on the previous year. Much of the revenue comes from extracting value from waste, using specialised processes to recover precious metals and re-useable materials, a process increasingly referred to as urban mining.

Nevertheless, the most effective sustainable action we can all take is to slow down the lifecycle of ICT products. For each of us, the rule must be to use less, re-use and recycle.
This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
More than half of the lifetime carbon emissions of ICT equipment can be generated during manufacture, so the longer a product remains in use, the more carbon efficient it is. It means that what happens to equipment when it's no longer needed is an important factor in low-carbon ICT.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In September 2015, more than 150 international leaders met at the United Nations to encourage global development, promote human well-being and protect the environment. Each United Nations member state is acting, including in regulatory terms, to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The key elements are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Renaissance Programme contributes to at least three of the 2030 goals.

Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. In particular, points 3.8 and 3.d. The affordability makes it possible to open even small clinics with quality equipment, freeing up funds for human resources and other costs to enable free or affordable diagnostic services even for small associations and healthcare professionals in developing countries. The company's "second welfare" initiatives are also part of this goal.

Goal 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation, and foster innovation. The Renaissance Programme is just one of the steps that Esaote has identified in order to move forward in terms of social and environmental responsibility.

Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. In particular, 12.5 and 12.6. Consumption of used products is responsible, because it prevents valuable goods from being transformed prematurely into waste. The Renaissance Programme gives a new value to used materials by reducing the problems of disposal and extraction of the raw materials required to produce the components of our medical technologies.

REFURBISHED ULTRASOUND SYSTEMS

Ultrasound is Esaote's core business. For about forty years, Esaote has been designing, manufacturing and marketing ultrasound diagnostic systems, which are now installed all over the world. The Renaissance Programme offers a range of products with benefits to meet every need, both diagnostic and ergonomic.
READ

REFURBISHED MRI SYSTEMS

Esaote's Italian style revolutionised the world of magnetic resonance imaging 30 years ago, adapting technology to the quality of experience. Renaissance products give all laboratories access to leading diagnostic products.
READ

REFURBISHED VET ULTRASOUND & MRI SYSTEMS

Esaote has thirty years of market leadership in providing ultrasound imaging and dedicated MRI solutions for animals. Today, with the Renaissance Programme, you are able to get great Esaote reliability at even more affordable prices, ensuring dependability for all types of veterinary project.
READ

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In September 2015, more than 150 international leaders met at the United Nations to encourage global development, promote human well-being and protect the environment. Each United Nations member state is acting, including in regulatory terms, to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The key elements are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Aujourd'hui, le taux de collecte des emballages en France n'est pas optimal, surtout en comparaison à certains de nos voisins européens. Il atteint péniblement 60% pour les plastiques, et seulement 43% pour les canettes. Pour remédier à ce retard, le gouvernement s'est fixé pour ambitieux objectif d'atteindre 100% de plastique recyclé d'ici à 2025. Il planche donc sur un plan de réduction drastique de nos ordures grâce à une meilleure collecte de nos emballages.

La piste la plus sérieuse envisagée pour lutter contre l'accumulation des déchets serait le retour à la consigne. Mais en quoi consiste réellement ce système de collecte ? On vous explique tout.

Une idée pas si nouvelle

Le système de consigne n'a rien de révolutionnaire. Il existait en France jusqu'au début des années 1990 et il est toujours présent chez certains de nos voisins européens, très performants en terme de recyclage des déchets.

Mise en place dans les années 50, la consigne des bouteilles en verre permettait au consommateur, qui payait quelques centimes en plus au moment de l'achat, de les retourner à l'épicier, soit pour les remplir de nouveau soit pour récupérer la somme payée en supplément. Ainsi, la bouteille pouvait être réutilisée jusqu'à 50 fois.
Mais face à l'industrialisation et l'essor des objets à usage unique, la consigne a peu à peu disparu des mœurs françaises.

Un fonctionnement simple pour une économie circulaire encore plus effective

Aujourd'hui, la collecte du verre est plutôt performante et son taux de recyclage avoisine les 70% permettant ainsi de transformer et réutiliser la majorité des emballages en verre. Mais le système de consigne permet de favoriser un circuit encore plus court que le recyclage, qui détruit pour récréer de nouveaux emballages. Grâce à elle, le circuit des déchets est simplifié au maximum : la boisson est achetée, consommée, et sa bouteille ou canette rapportée dans un point de collecte. Le consommateur récupère ensuite sa caution et la bouteille est lavée, re-remplie puis retourne en rayon. Ce système permet d'économiser 75% d'énergie et bien qu'il nécessite de l'eau pour laver les emballages, son utilisation est réduite de 33% par rapport au recyclage.

Un système étendu à tous les emballages polluants ?

Bien que disparue des habitudes de consommation françaises, la consigne ne nous est pourtant pas complètement étrangère. On la rencontre par exemple dans nombre de festivals qui remboursent généralement quelques centimes, voire euros, lorsque l'on retourne les gobelets en plastique. La restauration est également familière avec cette pratique puisque restaurants, bars et hôtels consignent toujours bouteilles en verre et fûts.

Mais face aux mauvais résultats français en matière de tri sélectif, le Gouvernement souhaite étendre ce système de collecte aux autres emballages produits massivement et extrêmement polluants, comme les bouteilles en plastique, les canettes et les piles. Il s'agirait alors d'installer des machines fixes ou ambulantes dans les commerces, les lieux publics ou les entreprises, qui échangeraient les emballages retournés contre un rendu sous forme de monnaie, de bon d'achat ou transformée en don pour une association.

Alors, le retour aux basiques est-il pour bientôt ?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
La piste la plus sérieuse envisagée pour lutter contre l'accumulation des déchets serait le retour à la consigne. Mais en quoi consiste réellement ce système de collecte ? On vous explique tout. Le système de consigne n'a rien de révolutionnaire.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The electronics recycling business is becoming increasingly important as volumes of e-waste continue to grow, setting the stage for the growth of that industry. The huge growth of consumer electronics has led to an ever-expanding surge of end-of-life electronics that must be recycled. More than just trash, this material can be an environmental and health hazard. It also offers value in terms of scrap rare earth metals, recycled plastics, and spare parts.

With the average life of a computer being 18 to 24 months and new digital products being developed seemingly by the nanosecond, electronics recycling is now the fastest growing segment of the recycling industry. Electronics recycling "is absolutely a growth industry," according to Lauren Roman, Business Director for e-Stewards, a recycler certification program launched in 2010 by the Seattle-based Basel Action Network, and backed by business and environmental groups alike. Today, recycling is much more challenging to enter because of regulatory and certification hurdles that e-recyclers must now face.

Increasing Regulation Adds to Entry Hurdles

In the past, Roman explained, a business could just hang up its shingle, begin collecting electronics and start separating it. Offers would come in for various metals and plastics, and over time the business might take steps to improve its processes and expand its volume of incoming end-of-life electronics in order to turn a bigger profit.

The outcome of such an approach resulted in some participants taking unethical shortcuts. This included electronics being improperly dumped offshore and materials ending in landfills where heavy metals could potentially leach out.

"Now with e-certification programs," Roman stated, "you know that the recycler has gone through a rigid certification process. It is a pretty good indication that they are doing the right thing." There are currently two voluntary certification programs in the United States. One is the R2/RIOS Certified Electronics Recycler program, supported by ISRI, and the other is e-Stewards.

The e-Stewards standard, for example, calls for recyclers to eliminate exports of hazardous e-wastes to developing countries; to halt the dumping of such wastes in municipal landfills or incinerators, and to cease the use of captive prison populations to manage toxic e- wastes. It also calls for strict protection of private information on recycled devices and occupational health safeguards.

There are also mandatory programs created by several jurisdictions which the entrepreneur must come to understand, where applicable. As for electronics recycling in British Columbia, for example, the Electronics Recycling Standard is enforced by Encorp, which is a not-for-profit organization contracted by the Electronics Stewardship Association of British Columbia and funded through environmental handling fees paid by retail consumers when they purchase affected electronics products. Certification audits are handled by 3rd party inspection companies.

Other Considerations

Level of Investment. There are various types of businesses in the e-recycling sector, with typical operations ranging anywhere from a few million dollars in annual sales up to $50 to $60 million, according to ISRI. Investment can be quite low for businesses that simply collect, palletize and ship end of life electronics, up to several million for companies that install sophisticated shredding and separation technologies.

Time and Expense of Certification. Roman commented that depending on the type of operation, the cost of a certification program could be in the $5,000 to $50,000 range, and take over six months to achieve. For someone serious about entering the business, It is usually a good idea to be working towards compliance in the early stages of creating the enterprise.

Site Security. Restricted access and monitoring of the facility are important considerations at most e-scrap facilities, due to the issue of information privacy. Such restrictions are important to a recycler's appeal to customers and may be written into contracts.

Health and Safety. Yet another consideration is the health and safety impact of handling hazardous products. Because of potential exposure to heavy metals, brominated fire retardants and other concerns during the recycling process, recyclers must take care to have such features as adequate dust collection systems, uniform and shower facilities, and other managed safety practices.

Legislation. Increasingly, state and federal legislation is impacting the recycling industry and increasing the level of red tape. This, however, may be positive for the industry in terms of promoting a higher recovery rate where landfill bans are enacted, and it may allow for increased processing where offshore export to developing countries can be curtailed.

Business Opportunities Within E-Recycling

Collection Depots: Keeping with the British Columbia example, the physical flow of electronics scrap starts with authorized collection depots. Encorp contracts over 100 sites in B.C. to accept authorized items, where they are typically palletized according to type (computers, televisions, etc.) and wrapped, for shipment to a consolidation center. Many of the B.C. collection centers also act as bottle and beverage can return centers, which generate much more business than the e-scrap side of the operation. For this reason, Roman suggested that one low-cost way to potentially get into e-recycling might be a collection site.

Consolidation Points: Consolidation points are a common tactic in the world of logistics. They allow less than load (LTL) accumulations to be combined into full loads to provide transportation efficiencies. In the B.C. model, the next stop after the collection center is the consolidation center. Encorp runs six such contracted sites in the province. At these locations, palletized products are scaled and cross-docked to create full, uniform loads to send to the recycler. Collectors are paid for their services by Encorp, based on that scaled weight. For a company interested in this type of consolidation business, dock doors to facilitate unloading and loading of trailers handling equipment, and a secure storage area for the product to accumulate are required. In other jurisdictions, consolidation opportunities also exist.

Primary Recycling: At recycling operations such as Intercon Solutions, an Illinois-based e-recycler with over 100 employees at its 25,000 square foot main facility, incoming scrap is removed from pallets and de-manufactured by operators who take equipment apart at workstations and sort material into the appropriate pallet bin, including such categories as circuit boards, steel, plastic and glass. At Intercon Solutions, 100% of incoming material is recovered, with zero material sent to the landfill. The result is the liberation of clean material that is subsequently sent to other approved processors. Brian Brundage, CEO of Intercon Solutions, emphasizes the importance of the chain of custody in handling e-waste. For large companies, there are considerations of reputation and liability as well as the need to safeguard confidential corporate information.

At eCycle Solutions, a Canadian recycling company, incoming pallets of product are identified and scaled, with a barcode label affixed to each, providing weight and product information. Depending on the type of material, it goes through a manual separation process, or a combination of manual and mechanical separation.

Secondary Processing: Clean material is then sent to other operations for further processing. Some of that material, such as copper, may generate revenue for the recycler, while other material, such as glass, the recycler will have to pay to have properly processed. One approach to the further liberation of materials is the use of shredding machinery, which tears apart electronic scrap to facilitate liberation of materials. Material extraction is aided by a number of sorting technologies including magnets, vibration, optical devices and eddy currents. At eCycle, the company operates primary recycling operations in five provinces, but directs applicable material to two sites that have shredding equipment, thereby enjoying better utilization of expensive shredding and sortation machinery at those two locations.

Electronics recycling is definitely a growth industry, but as in many other industries, managing regulatory requirements is increasingly becoming one of the keys to success.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Learn About Electronics Waste Recycling Business Opportunities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The electronics recycling business is becoming increasingly important as volumes of e-waste continue to grow, setting the stage for the growth of that industry. The huge growth of consumer electronics has led to an ever-expanding surge of end-of-life electronics that must be recycled. More than just trash, this material can be an environmental and health hazard.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Mexico - '€˜In Mexico, millions of stocked used computers are waiting to be scrapped, but so far no-one has seriously worked on a sustainable solution.'€™ So says Rolando GÃ³mez, an IT entrepreneur from Puebla near Mexico City who has reluctantly taken up an involvement in e-scrap recycling.
Gomez's company Pissalab delivers computers to government bodies and industries in Mexico. 'For every new installed computer, I have to take back the old one,' he told Recycling International during the recent International Electronics Recycling Congress (IERC) in Salzburg, Austria. 'I have come here to meet e-scrap recycling experts who can help me to get rid of the stocked materials.'

In several warehouses around Mexico City, GÃ³mez has stockpiled some 15 000 computers and screens to date - and volumes are continuing to grow 'very rapidly', he says. 'In Mexico, in government buildings alone, some 3 million computers are replaced by new equipment each year. Most of these used devices are either reused or end up at companies like ours.'

The entrepreneur estimates that 'more than 10 million' discarded computer sets are already out there 'having ended up in warehouses or dumped at landfills across Mexico'.

The country lacks a proper e-scrap recycling infrastructure - 'at least for these massive streams of computers', he adds.
As part of the IERC report in the No. 2 (March/April) issue of Recycling International, there will be more on Rolando GÃ³mez's search for e-scrap recyclers who want to do business with him. Would you like to share any interesting developments or article ideas with us? Don't hesitate to contact us.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Gómez: 'Anyone interested in recycling 15 000 computers from Mexico?' * Recycling International

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Mexico - '€˜In Mexico, millions of stocked used computers are waiting to be scrapped, but so far no-one has seriously worked on a sustainable solution.'€™ So says Rolando GÃ³mez, an IT entrepreneur from Puebla near Mexico City who has reluctantly taken up an involvement in e-scrap recycling.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Some of us are deeply bothered by this. We miss having the option to use the same TV for ten or twenty years. Then there are those of us who don't particularly mind, for tech advances so rapidly now that we only want to keep a purchase around for a couple of years anyway. And it's not like the necessary research is cheap.

Realistically, most of us fall somewhere in the middle. There are some products we tend to replace often, but there are others we would like to see last as long as possible. Just because you replace your laptop every year, that doesn't mean you want to regularly replace your fridge as well.

However you feel about planned obsolescence, here are some strategies to extend the life of the things you own.

1. Repair What You Can

When a product isn't working correctly, two options often come to mind: return or replace. After a certain amount of time, the option to return goes away. But you may not have to run to the store for a replacement. Sometimes you do have the option to repair what you've bought.

Many of today's gadgets are designed to keep us out. They lack screws, are held together by glue, or have warranty policies that end if you tamper in any way. Some require parts that only the manufacturer knows where to find. But some gadgets aren't that hard to get working again. If you aren't yet familiar with iFixit.com, check it out. The site is a true resource.

After you grow accustomed to fixing your own things, you may feel inclined to join the growing number of advocates trying to enshrine our right to repair into law. You may want to do so even if you don't get your hands dirty yourself. After all, how many of us prefer taking our cars somewhere other than the manufacturer for repairs?

2. Avoid the Latest Trends

Developers don't expect a fitness band to stand the test of time. A smart thermostat may have some failsafes to keep the device working without an internet connection, but much of the functionality is gone. For cutting edge electronics, longevity often isn't even an afterthought.

How many of the first-generation Android Wear watches are still in use? All of them cost enough to start a small collection of traditional watches (assuming you aren't going for premium brands). My $250 Moto 360 became buggy in months, and the software it runs is now out of date. Besides, I can't use it anyway now that I don't run Google software on my phone.

Therein lies another risk of many "smart" products. You often can't use them if you switch to an unsupported operating system or device. Want to install a custom ROM or simplify life with a flip phone? You will be stuck interacting with your smart devices from a PC, if you're still able to manage them at all.

3. Make Your Own Gadgets

Many of the new products coming to market don't offer new functionality - they offer a nice package. They're presenting a way to do something that consumers can get up and running for minimal effort. If you're willing to get your hands dirty, so to speak, you can obtain similar results without giving up your data or being left with a product that doesn't work after a year.

The Raspberry Pi is so small and affordable that people are sticking them in places you would never cram a traditionally PC. You can even use one to create a wearable. With an Arduino kit and the right skills, you can create your own automated solutions. If you have kids, passing these skills onto them can set them on a more creative and inventive path through life. As for us adults, it's not too late to make this change ourselves.

4. Reuse What You Have

While you're making your own gadgets, take a look at the ones rotting away in your junk drawer. Many of those items are no longer good at serving their original purpose, but they can have a second life as something else.

A smartphone doesn't need cellular service or updates to serve a sound recorder, remote control, or any number of creative uses. Try turning an extra tablet into a security camera. Have a phone lying around from before the smartphone era? You can use the parts to make a smartwatch! Admittedly, that takes a lot more effort than any of the other options I just listed, but that's not a barrier if you're interested enough.

5. Ditch Proprietary Standards

Have you ever wondered why each laptop uses a different power adapter? There's no functional reason for this. Companies simply see this as an opportunity to make more money. It may not matter if your last three laptops all came from the same manufacturer. If you want a second charger lying around, you have to buy a new one.

Don't limit yourself to charging ports and cables. When given a choice, pursue the open standard. Look for memory storage, file formats, and accessories that don't limit you to one device or brand.

6. Use Free and Open Source Software

Commercial apps typically have an expiration date. Once a developer stops actively supporting a piece of software, the clock starts ticking. It may work on the current version of your operating system, but bugs may appear once you move to the next release - if the program runs at all. Since the code is locked away, no one except the developer can tweak the software to run on newer machines. This problem is especially rampant on mobile devices, where apps can come and go overnight.

7. Shop Second-Hand

When you buy a used PC, that's hardware saved from the landfill and given a new lease on life. Running Linux, that machine can last for many years to come. Old tech works pretty good second hand. Buying (or selling) some of the latest tech used can come with more risks.

8. Do Without

You can always opt out. Tired of feeling like you need to replace your TV every few years? Hate the idea of contributing a new smartphone to the landfill every few years? Hate the idea of putting apps on your wrist or wearing a tracker that won't let you switch phones? Then don't.

Commercials would have us think that we can't live without buying one more thing. Silicon Valley is packed with companies claiming to benefit society and improve the quality of human life. Is any of this true? The negative impacts of over-convenience and over-stimulation are not hard to find. You won't just make a run around planned obsolescence by opting out, you may be making the kind of change that leads to a richer life.

Planned Obsolescence Isn't Inherently Bad

But we do need to re-evaluate our expectations.

An old MP3 player from 2006 can still play music. An old cell phone can still place calls. An old newspaper or magazine still tells the news, even if it's no longer current. But a seven-year old smartphone can't complete most of its original functions. Is this truly a step forward for technology?

In the tech world, this is akin to buying or building a desktop PC. Due to the rate of technological change, your rig won't last decades, but it can stay relevant longer than a laptop or tablet incapable of upgrades. Should we accept gadgets that offer the allure of new features but sacrifice the longevity and durability of the generation that came before them?

Even if you're fine with replacing gadgets every other year, or you lease rather than own as a way to keep up with the latest models, consider the environmental price that the entire ecosystem pays to support our drive to turn nonrewable resources into throwaway products. Then there are the ethical questions raised by sweatshops built to satisfy our demand for low prices.

The solution may be one where we lease tech products from manufacturers through a monthly or yearly subscription. When new models are released, we trade in our existing devices back to the manufacturer, who then recycles the materials to make more devices. This way companies still bring in the high profits that incentivize them to push forward with bold, creative new tech. Plus the arrangement is more transparent about our lack of true ownership over many modern service-based products.
What do you do to resist planned obsolescence? What changes would you make to the way we invest in technological advancements? This is a complex topic, so I look forward to your insightful comments! Image Credits: Olivier Le Moal/Shutterstock

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
8 Practical Steps to Fight Planned Obsolescence

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Some of us are deeply bothered by this. We miss having the option to use the same TV for ten or twenty years. Then there are those of us who don't particularly mind, for tech advances so rapidly now that we only want to keep a purchase around for a couple of years anyway.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
L'Increvable is exhibited for a year at the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie where it receives a Design's Observeur label.

# data[].attributes.body
Just have a look at this website, might give you some ideas

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
BuyMeOnce | Selling Products That Are Built To Last

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
BuyMeOnce sells durable, long-lasting products. Visit our webshop and join the mission to save our planet and money by changing the way we shop forever.