Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'

When the government gathers or analyzes personal information, many people say they're not worried. "I've got nothing to hide," they declare. "Only if you're doing something wrong should you worry, and then you don't deserve to keep it private."

The nothing-to-hide argument pervades discussions about privacy. The data-security expert Bruce Schneier calls it the "most common retort against privacy advocates." The legal scholar Geoffrey Stone refers to it as an "all-too-common refrain." In its most compelling form, it is an argument that the privacy interest is generally minimal, thus making the contest with security concerns a foreordained victory for security.

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn declared, "Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is." Likewise, in Friedrich Dürrenmatt's novella "Traps," which involves a seemingly innocent man put on trial by a group of retired lawyers in a mock-trial game, the man inquires what his crime shall be. "An altogether minor matter," replies the prosecutor. "A crime can always be found."

One can usually think of something that even the most open person would want to hide. As a commenter to my blog post noted, "If you have nothing to hide, then that quite literally means you are willing to let me photograph you naked? And I get full rights to that photograph—so I can show it to your neighbors?" The Canadian privacy expert David Flaherty expresses a similar idea when he argues: "There is no sentient human being in the Western world who has little or no regard for his or her personal privacy; those who would attempt such claims cannot withstand even a few minutes' questioning about intimate aspects of their lives without capitulating to the intrusiveness of certain subject matters."

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Exellent Android App For Audio Recording

Check out iRig Recorder. It is a powerful and yet very flexible free audio recording app for Android. It is a professional recording tool with intuitive and practical editing functions and lets you export your recordings according to your need.

Friday, July 26, 2013

How to Open Samsung Galaxy S4 Back Cover

A video demonstrating how you can easily remove the back cover from the Samsung Galaxy S4.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Privacy and facial recognition

As photos flood the Web and photo recognition technology becomes more widespread and precise, are we approaching an unsettling tipping point?

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

How much data is there in the world today?

Answer: Data is exploding, growing 10X every five years. In 2008, IDC projected that over 800 Exabytes (one million terabytes) of digital content existed in the world and that by 2020 that number is projected to grow over 35,000 Exabytes.