New York subpoenas Facebook over user safety

State's attorney general says Facebook ignored complaints about sexual predators


How many of you know someone that is underage and use Facebook? I bet, over half of you do. It is one of the biggest growing online social networks. It is met to be for college students, but there are many users that are young and vulnerable to sexual predators. Facebook has apparently done nothing to make sure that children and young teens are not solicited by pediphiles. It also, contains many graphic pornographic images and videos readily at anyone who uses the network's disposal.
The attorney general of New York (Andrew Cuomo) and other law enforcement officials have been conducting investigations on these claims. They posed as children from ages 12 to 14 and made accounts. During their investigation they found that Facebook did not have any type of indentifying information to set up these accounts. They also were solicited by a number of adults thinking they were children. They found tons of pornographic images and videos that anyone could view, that had an account. Nobody has been able to get any comments from Facebook.
When they tried to contact Facebook posing as children that had been solicited by online predators and the parents of the children they recieve little response. When they did respond they took very long to do so. Once, they responded they took some of the images off the site, but did nothing about various pornography that was being hosted by users of the site or children being solicited by pedophiles.
Andrew Cuomo has issued a subpoena requiring Facebook to turn in all complaints that have been made about the material and solicitation of children. They also must now respond to these issues as well by law. Those of you who have children can image how important it is to take action against this issue. They could be the ones that are actually being solicited by sexual predators on Facebook, or looking at the junk the users put up there. And, if your a legitamate Facebook user that is of age, you will probably see more restrictions on what you can post and what is allowed to be in your profile. You may also have to provide credentials verifying your identity. Like in many cases there are going to be restrictions set, because people are not being responsible and abusing the site.

Judge Rules Against Parts of the Patriot Act

The government’s second attempt to rewrite the U.S. Constitution has failed. U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero has ruled against the rewritten USA Patriot Act, saying that it "offends the fundamental constitutional principles of checks and balances and separation of powers." The main area of concern is that the FBI is allowed to demand private customer records from businesses, without a court order, which is required for searches done by the United States government. This completely bypasses the judiciary branch of the government and is absolutely unconstitutional.
In an investigative situation, the government can order NSLs or national security letters which is an investigative tool that is used by the FBI to get businesses to turn over private customer information. The most controversial and sought after private customer information would be that of Internet service providers, telephone companies, and public libraries. Not only will the businesses have to turnover the private information but they would have “the right to remain silent” about informing their customers that it was turning over records to the government. The FBI is arguing that phone or Internet records are "relevant to an authorized investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities." That might be so but that is not a good enough reason to change the very values that this country was founded upon. Has anybody in the Executive Branch of the government even read the Constitution? Apparently they have not.
For more information, check out the original article by clicking this hyper link http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20624404/wid/11915829

Software companies can call software whatever they what.

What is wrong with calling “spyware” spyware? Absolutely nothing, according to the Communications Decency Act section 230. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act states that “no service provider is liable for a good faith attempt to restrict access to something it deems objectionable.

Many security companies are being sued for just for that reason, calling certain pieces of software “spyware”. The companies that are creating this “spyware” are suing security companies for blocking or restricting access to their software, arguing that it is NOT spyware. However, if the service provider (Security Company) feels that the software is objectionable, then they can call the software whatever they what and get away with it.

Go to: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070830/003443.shtml to read the whole article.