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BetaNews.Com (4 non lus)

Policing Twitter -- can the existing legal system cope with the technological age?

Publié: janvier 26, 2014, 8:00pm CET par Mark Wilson

Twitter is rarely out of the headlines, but this week two legal cases surrounding the social network slash micro-blogging service brought it to attention for slightly different reasons than normal. On one side of the Atlantic a couple fell foul of the law for using Twitter to make threats to a feminist campaigner, while on the other a celebrity managed to avoid prosecution for libel after managing to plead ignorance about the falsity of a claim made online.

For a court case victory, it was announced in a very restrained, quiet way... particularly when you consider that the victor was none other than Courtney Love. The celebratory tweet reads simply "I can't thank you enough Dongell Lawrence Finney LLP, the most incredible law firm on the planet. We won this epic battle. #justiceprevails", and the decision to use Twitter was slightly ironic considering the fact that the court case stemmed from a previous tweet made by Ms. Love.

Ms. Love had posted a tweet suggesting that her former lawyer had been "bought off". Rhonda Holmes took exception to this and tried to sue Love for $8 million on the basis of harm caused to her reputation. There were several mitigating factors for the judge to consider, perhaps the most important of which is that Love apparently posted the tweet under the impression that it was a private rather than public message. The second is that Love deleted the tweet as soon as she realized that it was in fact public.

The third factor is that Love believed what she tweeted to be true -- although this in itself cannot be used as a libel defence. The speed with which the offending tweet was deleted dramatically reduced the number of people able to view the statement. Ultimately, a jury at Los Angeles County Superior Court decided that Holmes had not been defamed and Love won the case. Questions have since been asked about whether tweets should be treated as opinion rather than a statement of fact, and afforded greater freedom of speech status.

Meanwhile in the UK, two people have been jailed after using Twitter to make violent and sexual threats to a feminist campaigner who has been calling for the images of more women to appear on bank notes. The man and woman from the North East of England eventually pleaded guilty to "improper use of a communications network" -- a law that can be used to cover menacing, threatening, obscene and indecent messages, with the interesting note that it is "irrelevant whether [such a message] was received" (sending being the crime). Could this have been tackled with another law rather than one specific to a communication network? Simply making a threat would be enough to warrant prosecution. Shouting a threat does not result in an "improper use of a voice" prosecution.

So what does all of this demonstrate? Perhaps the first thing that's clear is that laws have not been able to evolve quickly enough to take into account the ever-changing face of technology. Does it matter that these cases stem from statements made online -- is it really any different to statements made through other mediums? The immediacy of the internet means the impact can not only be greater, but also felt sooner. At the same time, it is much easier and faster for mistakes to be rectified when necessary -- something that is very different from the case of libellous statements printed in newspapers.

It is probably fair to say that few people fully think through the implications of what they publish online (comments posted in response to this and other articles could be used as the basis for a libel case, for instance) -- and even fewer would regard using Twitter as "publishing" in the traditional sense. But does this matter? Ignorance of the law can rarely be used to avoid conviction, and while there may not always be a specific law that covers every possible eventuality online, there are certainly laws that can be bent to fit. Is this good enough, or should new laws be drafted to ensure that there is no room for confusion? As ever, the international nature of the internet presents the biggest obstacle. Which country's law takes priority when there is a disagreement between what is on the two statutes of nations involved in a case?

Image Credit: carol.anne / Shutterstock
British school children subjected to NSA-style surveillance

Publié: janvier 26, 2014, 5:39pm CET par Mark Wilson

The idea of being monitored, spied upon, surveilled, call it what you will, is something we are gradually becoming used to. CCTV cameras abound, we now know that our private communication could be intercepted at any time, and god only knows what else is going on unbeknownst to us. The plots of Person of Interest look positively tame compared to what is actually happening. Look, a whole introductory paragraph about modern-day surveillance and not one reference to Big Brother, 1984 or George Orwell. Oh ... damn.

But it seems that it is not just potential terrorists, criminals and other ne'er do wells who might feel concerned about who is reading their emails and monitoring their online activity. Hundreds of schools up and down the UK are actively monitoring the online communication of pupils using methods not too far removed from those employed by the NSA on a global scale.

The monitoring is performed using software from Impero Solutions, enabling schools to very closely monitor how pupils are using the school network. Many schools have implemented policies that place restrictions on the types of websites that can be accessed from school computers, but the latest techniques go even further. The e-safety feature of Impero Solutions Education Pro package constantly monitors network communication for a customizable list of keywords. This enables schools to be on the lookout for problems with bullying, but also to monitor students who might be at risk of self-harming or committing suicide. The same software has also been used in the US to help combat gangs.

The software can be tweaked as required, but it looks out for obvious keywords as well as slang and acronyms that might be used to try to disguise threats. We're all aware of text speak like PMSL, LOL and BRB, but this is a constantly evolving lexicon that can include terms such as DIRL meaning die in real life, and other such bleak phrases. As pointed out by the Guardian the software can be tailored as required, but can be on the watch for seemingly innocent words such as Bio-oil which could be indicative of self-harm -- this is a product traditionally used to treat post-pregnancy stretch marks, but has found a new market more recently.

While there are probably few pupils who are particularly welcoming of the monitoring, it is clearly something that has value. Being able to look out for tell-tale signs that a depressed student may be on the brink of taking things too far is something that has simply not been available to previous generations. In a sense it is a microcosm of the NSA's activities, but this use of technology is likely to be viewed rather more favourably than indiscriminate global web surveillance.

As is so often the case, context it everything. Looking at how technology can be used to help protect children and ease social problems just goes to show that surveillance is not necessarily a bad thing -- but it is open to abuse and needs to be monitored. Which raises the question ... who watches the watchers?

Image Credit: Tatyana Vyc / Shutterstock
ImDisk Toolkit adds dynamic RAM disks

Publié: janvier 26, 2014, 8:23am CET par Mike Williams

Setting up a RAM disk can be a quick and easy way to speed up some programs, but it also has a very obvious down side. Any RAM you allocate to a virtual drive is no longer available to Windows and the rest of your system, which may reduce performance in other situations.

While this kind of trade-off sounds inevitable, the latest ImDisk Toolkit shows it doesn’t have to be that way. New dynamic memory management support means that RAM disks will only consume the memory they actually need. If you’ve a 512MB RAM disk with 10MB of files, say, then memory consumption will be only a fraction above 10MB: the remaining 500MB will be available for other applications.

There’s a down side to this flexibility, of course. If memory is being freed up to give back to the system, then it must also be reallocated as necessary later, perhaps with some performance impact (especially if other RAM is sent to the paging file).

The developer notes that the new feature is "experimental", too, and may contain some bugs.

If you’d like to create a new and more intelligent RAM disk for yourself, though, it’s very straightforward: install the toolkit, launch RamDisk Configuration, set its size and other details as before, and check the "Allocate Memory Dynamically" box.

We tried this and it appeared to work well. Watching RamDyn.exe in Task Manager showed RAM being allocated as required, then freed up three minutes after files have been removed: it’s all very smooth.

If you’re interested in RAM disks but have been put off by the idea of permanently losing a large block of memory, then, ImDisk Toolkit’s new technology should prove interesting. Just keep in mind that it may not be reliable yet, so play around for a few days before using the program for any serious work.
PngOptimizer compresses PNG files without affecting image quality

Publié: janvier 26, 2014, 8:19am CET par Mike Williams

Save an image as a PNG file and you can be sure it’ll be compressed to a significant degree -- but there could be scope for reducing the file size even further. You don’t have to resize the image, cut the number of colors or do anything to affect image quality, either. It’s just a matter of using PngOptimizer to rewrite your files in a more efficient way.

The program arrives as a single 246KB executable, and its interface is as basic as that size suggests. There’s just a window, with no toolbar or menus: you drag and drop your target onto PngOptimizer, and they’re automatically analyzed, optimized and saved.

To test its effectiveness, we pointed the program at our usual 50 test PNG web graphics. These were real life images which we’d taken from actual websites, so you might reasonably expect them to be optimized already. And yet, PngOptimizer managed to cut their size by an average of 40 percent, similar to what we’d expect from leading competitors like FileOptimizer and PngGauntlet.

Web graphics are relatively small and easy to optimize, so we also tried the program with 25 digital photos of around 8MB each. Unsurprisingly, this saw our savings fall to around 4 percent per file. Still, even this represents something like 320KB for every image, which could speed transfer times and save you a worthwhile amount of storage space.

Despite its very basic appearance, PngOptimizer does also have a few useful settings available. Right-click the program window, select PNG Options, and you’ll be able to configure exactly what’s stripped out of an image, and what is kept.

On balance, we still prefer some the competing tools. FileOptimizer can compress more file types, for example, while PngGauntlet provides additional low-level control over the compression process. PngOptimizer is a likable program, though, compact and easy to use, and if you’re new to PNG compression then it’s a great way to get started.