In fact, some people at the paper’s annual stockholders meeting in the New Amsterdam Theatre exchanged confused looks when Janet Robinson, the company’s president and CEO, uttered the phrase “data mining.” Wasn’t that the nefarious, 21st-century sort of snooping that the National Security Agency was doing without warrants on American citizens? Wasn’t that the whole subject of the prizewinning work in December 2005 by Times reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen?
And hadn’t the company’s chairman and publisher, Pinch Sulzberger, already trotted out Pulitzers earlier in the program?
Yes, yes, and yes. But Robinson was talking about money this time. Data mining, she told the crowd, would be used “to determine hidden patterns of uses to our website.” This was just one of the many futuristic projects in the works by the newspaper company’s research and development department. Heck, she added, the R&D department, when it was founded several years back, was “a concept unique in the industry.”
These days, of course, all media outlets—not just the Times—are trying to bulk up their online presence, and many are desperately attempting to learn more about their readers’ habits and then target ads to them. The old-line newspaper companies in particular are under immense pressure to figure out how to make double-digit leaps in profits annually—something they didn’t have to worry about doing before websites spirited away huge chunks of newspapers’ classified advertisers.
Not that anyone would confuse an old-line media company like the Times with a modern data expert like Google, but Sulzberger himself made kind of a comparison earlier in the stockholders’ meeting. Morgan Stanley and other investors have ragged on the Times for having a two-tiered stock structure that protects the powerful voting shares from falling into the “wrong” hands. Sulzberger reminded the crowd that Google stock, that most coveted of Wall Street delicacies, also comes in two tiers.
Category: Electronic Rights
Red Tape for Tourists visiting the US
America is rated the world’s most unfriendly destination for foreign travellers in a recent global poll. The War on Terror (which includes a $15 billion fingerprinting program that humiliates every visitor to America’s shores and has yet to catch a single terrorist) has destroyed America’s tourist industry, killing $94 billion worth of tourist trade, and 194,000 American jobs.
There’s something to this challenging issue. A driver on Hong Kong told me recently that passengers destined for most countries, other than the USA can check in (and check luggage) downtown, then take the train to the airport and go right to the gate. The security “friction” does have significant costs all around.
“My National Security Letter Gag Order”
The Justice Department’s inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue “national security letters.” It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision — demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval — to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me.
Crossing the Border
It was that last bit. The customs agent wanted to know “is that your employers laptop” – nope, it is mine. “Do you do work on it, business work?”. Well, I read email, browse the web, have all of my presentations on it, use it to present, run Oracle on it, demonstrate with it. “So, it is your companies laptop then?”. Nope, it is mine.
They scribbled someone on the immigration form, handed it to me and said “have a nice trip”. I head out of baggage claim – but instead of being told to go right (to freedom), I’m directed to the left – to additional scrutiny. No worries – nothing to be found, no problem.
Not Linking to the Sources?
When the inspector general of the US Department of Justice issues a special report, it tends to make news. The latest report, a dissection of the FBI’s use of “national security letters” under the Patriot Act, is no exception. References to this report are everywhere in the news today. But links to the report are less plentiful.
More on the Battle Over Real ID
Senator Susan Collins, a Republican of Maine, is the author of the latest effort to sell reluctant states on the REAL ID Act, the 2005 measure which would coerce states into issuing nationally standardized driver’s licenses and require them to enter information about their drivers in nationally accessible databases.
Despite Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff’s public insistence that the Act needs to be implemented rapidly, the administration, and Mr. Chertoff himself, appear happy to avoid an immediate confrontation with the states and to go along with Ms. Collins’ sales tactic. The Maine Senator introduced a bill, and pressed it as an amendment on the Senate floor, to extend the deadline for state compliance with the REAL ID Act, allowing companies in favor of the measure time to work in state capitols to calm the burgeoning rebellion.
Sen. Collins’ counter-rebellion role is laden with irony. The revolt, after all, started in her own New England state. In late January, George Smith, executive director of the Maine Sportsmen’s Alliance, stood to denounce the REAL ID Act at a community forum in Augusta. A Norman Rockwell painting come to life with the directness and accent of a lifelong Mainer, he said: “They had their Boston Tea Party. Let’s have a REAL ID Party!”
The next day, the Maine House and Senate passed a resolution to reject REAL ID by overwhelming margins.
More on Real ID, which both Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl supported….
2 States Opt out of Real Id; Where’s Wisconsin?
Idaho opted out of Real ID today, becoming the second state to say
“no thanks,” along with Maine. And there are a lot of other states
moving in the same direction (we have a map that tracks them online
at http://www.realnightmare.org/news/105/).
Senator’s Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl supported the National ID (Real ID) legislation. Related: Nathan Cochrane on becoming an unperson. Bruce Schneier has more.
Chinese Dissident’s Wife to Sue Yahoo
Speaking with VOA’s Mandarin Service Wednesday after arriving in Washington, Yu Ling said Chinese police arrested her husband, Wang Xiaoning, partly because Yahoo’s Hong Kong office gave Chinese authorities information about his e-mail accounts.
Yu Ling said she has come to the United States to sue the company for damages and to demand an apology.
Last year, Yahoo provided the Chinese with information about Shi Tao, a journalist who emailed to Western news outlets details of China’s plans to handle the 15th anniversary of Tiananmen Square.
We Can’t Tell You, It’s a Secret”
At GITA, Dr. Bill Gail of Microsoft’s Virtual Earth team addressed a question as to working with highly sensititve imagery of perhaps a national security concern and whether they might be asked to black out areas on Virtual Earth. Google had been asked to do this previously for certain areas and Microsoft wanted to preempt such situations. Gail said that Microsoft has sat down with various government agencies to ask them about these potential conflict areas that they thought might be blacked out if asked to do so. Their answer was, “it’s a secret, we can’t tell you.”
PicSecret
PicSecret allows you to send secret messages disguised as ordinary pictures. You can learn more about it here.