Supply chains that deliver everyday products to our fridges and tables can link unsuspecting consumers to labour and human rights abuses. Supply chain transparency is a better answer to the issue of worker abuse than “cracking down” on visas, which can make workers more vulnerable to exploitation.
In the space of a few years, concepts like meta-data and surveillance drones have become commonplace in news reports and public debate. While many of us are justifiably worried about information technology and privacy violations, we ourselves contribute to these observational practices on a daily basis. Facilitated by technological advances, it has become possible to monitor nearly every kind of human experience. Self-surveillance might well be the last piece in the puzzle.
Continue reading Digital Panopticism: Self-Discipline in the Information Age
Cloud storage services have become an integral part of nearly everyone’s digital filing system. It’s great to be able to access your documents anytime and anywhere, while also having a back up in case your hardware fails. With the proliferation of cloud storages services many people will use a host of them, whether it is Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, SkyDrive or Evernote. As a result it has become increasingly difficult to organise your files across these systems.
Continue reading Indexing and Searching Multiple Cloud Storage Services Across Different Platforms
“Time is running out to clear your browsing history before Google’s new privacy policies come into force!” Countless blogs and websites rang the warning bell on Google’s latest evil ploy to gather every single piece of information on individuals using their services. The URL to Google’s web history was eagerly re-tweeted and visited, in what seemed to be a true online civil action against the violation of privacy. But to what extend is the latest online privacy outrage justifiable?
Although the Google web history madness seemed to constitute a moment of communal outrage, I am quite certain that only a relatively small number of the stupendous amount of individuals that use the Google search engine on a daily basis are aware of this matter at all. I am also fairly certain that a substantial amount of the people that re-tweeted and spread the news about Google web history did so simply because of the appeal of the header “Clear your Google Web History before the big privacy change!” Continue reading Online Privacy: Terms and Conditions in Five Bullet Points Please