Bozeman, Montana city job candidates required to share all email and social networking passwords.

“Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,” the City form states. There are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, their user names and log-in information and their passwords.

Why anyone would want to work for the city of Bozeman after being notified of this requirement is beyond me.  Pathetic.

More here.

UK Local Goverment Association head-Stop spying for trivial offenses. Sir Simon Milton-No.

There has been growing anger about the methods used by councils to probe minor crimes, such as dog fouling.

The powers were introduced under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act as part of the Government’s anti-terror drive but it is claimed some councils are abusing the powers.

This really shouldn’t be shocking. The government pushes intrusive legislation under the guise of society’s protection and people comply. And your freedoms get chipped away little by little…..

It’s for your safety. Does anyone actually still believe that?

Actual headline: Pirate Bay bitchslaps Swedish law with SSL

Sweden just passed a controversial law allowing all communications going out of the country will be tapped, and that information can be shared with agencies outside of the Swedish government, including the U.S. National Security Agency. I’m sure this is done under the veil of making everyone “safe.”

Original story

The Pirate Bay plans to offer encryption services to people who use the BitTorrent tracker site in a direct attempt to combat a new controversial snoop law passed in Sweden last week.

Peter Sunde, who is one of the men behind the notorious tracker site, said in a blog post yesterday:

“Many people have asked me what we’re planning to do – and the answer is ‘A lot!’. We’re going to help out in any way we can with fighting the law,” he said. “This week we’re going to add SSL to The Pirate Bay. We’re also going to help out making a website about easy encryption – both for your hard drives and your net traffic.”

Sunde said that The Pirate Bay also plans to lower the price for a system that runs VPN-tunnels and that it will be opened up for international use too.

He also called for ISPs to boycott Sweden. “More stuff is planned – together with other people that work against the law we’ve talked about asking the international ISPs to block traffic to Sweden,” Sunde said.

“Yes, that’s right! We want Sweden to be banned from the internet. The ISPs need to block Sweden in order to protect their own customers integrity since everything they do on Swedish ISPs networks will be logged and searched.”

The Pirate Bay, which isn’t located in Sweden, hopes that wrapping SSL security around its site will add a layer of protection for anxious Swedes worried about having their internet activities snooped on.

Sweden’s parliament ushered in its contentious wiretapping law last Thursday after the proposal was amended earlier that day.

Under the new law, all communication across Swedish borders will be tapped, and information can also be traded with international security agencies, such as America’s National Security Agency.

On Friday Sweden’s Pirate Party, which strongly defends the BitTorrent site, said it will take Sweden to the European Court of Human Rights because the law is a clear breach of the European Convention for the Bay bitchslaps Swedish law with SSL

New NYC police camera can identify a face 2 miles away

An ubertech “verti-bird,” as Fox News is calling it, is flying over the skies of Manhattan allowing police to see and recognize a face from two miles away, peer inside a building from three to four miles away, and track a suspect car from 12 miles away.

Well, I’m sure it’ll only be used for legitimate law enforcement purposes, of course. I’d imagine there are legitimate uses for it….but for some reason, I can see this going bad. More from Wired.com.

UK to U.S.-“Your Patriot Act is is pathetic. This is how it’s done.”

The UK already has the most surveillance cameras of any European country. Contrary to what the government repeatedly said, the installation of such cameras, at an investment of over 3 billion pounds (nearly 6 million U.S. dollars), has failed miserably to cut down on crime

Naturally, the UK wants to take surveillance to an entirely new level. This is a common response when a government program fails-simply funnel more money and time into it. It’s for your safety, afterall.

So, now some in the UK government are proposing a massive government run database that will track every phone call and email a person makes, as well as the time he or she spends on the internet. All in the name of making its citizens safer.

Read more here.

What’s also sad is that here in the U.S. more and more metropolitan areas will continue to put up these ineffective and expensive cameras and most people will buy into it because it give them the illusion of safety.

And as a matter of perspective, a scene from “V is for Vendetta”