Facebook is not just for keeping in touch with friends and family, sharing pictures, and status updates. Now it's a tool for catching wanted people.?
The Greene County Sheriff's Office is using the social media site to track down crime suspects. Sheriff's deputies are posting pictures of wanted people on Facebook and they are getting more tips than ever.
"We will post on Facebook to cast a larger net, especially with if there are suspects that could be outside of our jurisdiction," said Michael Martin, sheriff's deputy. He says since the sheriff's office started online it has made more arrests leading to convictions.?
The sheriff's office Facebook page has more than 900 likes, and even more people?are looking at the pictures. ?On April 28, the office posted a "People of Interest" album. Nineteen people shared it with their followers, meaning thousands could have seen the pictures.
"We found the results to be extraordinary," Martin said.?
Reporting a tip is always confidential. You can message, email, call or text the sheriff's office.?
Facebook has also been successful because of its real-time capabilities. Rather than somebody seeing a flyer on a wall days or weeks after an event, they will come across pictures faster - maybe even that exact hour or day - on Facebook.
Many details about us can be ? and often are ? tracked, collected, collated and analyzed. Companies mine personal information in the name of profit. Government authorities mine it in the name of security.
Big Data 2013
A special section on the business and culture of big data.
Privacy advocates say most Americans do not know they are being tracked. That is why, these experts argue, new laws and policies should be adopted to limit data collection, increase transparency and protect everyone?s privacy. Otherwise, some people will take steps to protect themselves and others won?t.
?Do we really want a cadre of people who protect themselves, a privacy elite? What does that make everyone else, easy pickings?? said Frank Pasquale, a professor at Seton Hall School of Law who is writing a book on technology called ?The Black Box Society.? ?I think self-help is a complete myth. There is no good self-defense.?
The only real way to avoid data profiling would be to go off the grid. No Internet. No mobile phones. No credit cards. Basically, none of the conveniences and connectivity of modern life. That isn?t an option for most of us. But there are ways to minimize our digital footprints and at least nominally impede government or commercial surveillance. Here are a few of them:
LOSE THE SMARTPHONE
Alexei Miagkov, a leading product engineer for Ghostery, a free browser extension that lets Internet users track and control third-party data collection, carries an old ?dumb phone,? the kind that can make calls, send text messages, take photos ? and that?s about it. Smartphones, he says, are de facto tracking devices.
?If you think about a smartphone, it?s a little computer in your pocket, and it?s always connected,? he said. Using a low-tech phone ?reduces my footprint, my privacy exposure, because I don?t have unknown third parties collecting my information.?
USE GHOST E-MAIL
Dan Auerbach, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group in San Francisco, uses a variety of e-mail addresses, some of them fake, to help obfuscate his online activities.
That is because companies can share people?s e-mail addresses, he says, allowing some analytics or marketing companies to connect the activities of a person who logs in with the same e-mail address across many sites. If users register for a service using addresses containing their real names or variations of their names, companies may be able to connect those address with those people?s identities.
?I think it?s common to be wary of giving out your personal information for every single service,? Mr. Auerbach said. ?If you are going to give me a sign-up form, I am going to give you a bogus answer back. I think that?s a perfectly legitimate thing to do.?
CRUSH THE COOKIES
When a person goes online, companies like ad networks and data brokers may use cookies ? bits of code ? and other techniques to track that user around the Web. Jonathan Mayer, a graduate student in computer science and law at Stanford, employs an arsenal of cookie countermeasures.
Mr. Mayer turns on private browsing mode, a setting that prevents the browser from storing information about Web sites visited during a particular online session. He has also installed free browser extensions, like Adblock Plus, that allow him to block ads and disable online tracking. These programs can also be used to disable buttons from social networks like Facebook and Google Plus, preventing the networks from following a user?s online activities from site to site.
?I don?t want companies I never heard of to know what I am doing on the Web,? Mr. Mayer said. Even with services he does use, he said, ?I would like not to have everything I look for be correlated, what articles I read, the videos I watch.?
USE MULTIPLE BROWSERS
To inhibit online trackers, Edward W. Felten, a professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton, uses three different browsers: Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox. He says he reserves one browser for e-mail, another for social networking and a third for general browsing. And never the three shall meet.
?To the extent that you as a consumer can frustrate the trackers,? Professor Felten said, ?you may reduce the amount of tracking going on.?
PAY CASH
Credit cards, debit cards, loyalty cards ? all leave digital trails that are easy to track. That may be fine with most people for most transactions, but experts like Professor Felten recommend that people pay cash for items they want to keep private, like health products.
?You can buy something with cash and without a loyalty card and it probably will not end up in a record,? he says.
Other experts recommend paying cash for products like alcohol, cigarettes, condoms or fast food.
?Things that you reveal in transactions that you do with your name attached, you should assume people can make inferences and it can be difficult to predict what those inferences might be,? Professor Felten said. ?You might decide it?s O.K. and make peace with it. Or you might decide to pull back and be a little more cautious.?
In other words, that old countermeasure to flesh-and-blood busybodies espoused by Hester Prynne in ?The Scarlet Letter,? a sensation of 1850, remains good advice even in an era of Big Data.
?We must not always talk in the marketplace,? Hester Prynne said, ?of what happens to us in the forest.?
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) ? Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom said Thursday he was "in tears" after a European company deleted all the data it was hosting from his shuttered file-sharing site.
Netherlands-based LeaseWeb announced it had deleted all Megaupload files from 630 servers.
LeaseWeb said in a statement it hosted the data for over a year at its own expense without receiving any requests to access it or retain it before deciding the time had come to use the servers for other purposes.
But Dotcom said in a series of Twitter posts that his lawyers repeatedly asked LeaseWeb to keep the data pending U.S. court proceedings.
Dotcom said that millions of users' personal files had been lost in the "largest data massacre in the history of the Internet."
U.S. authorities shut down Megaupload last year and indicted Dotcom and other executives. Prosecutors accuse them of racketeering by facilitating massive copyright fraud. Dotcom says he's innocent and can't be held responsible for those who chose to use Megaupload to illegally download songs or movies.
LeaseWeb's deletions would mostly affect former Megaupload users in Europe. Other Megaupload files remain stored on U.S. servers.
U.S. attempts to extradite Dotcom from his home in New Zealand have been delayed as his complex legal case plays out. His extradition hearing is now scheduled for November.
Dotcom this year started a new site called Mega. The deletions do not affect that site.
June 18, 2013 ? Research from the University of Adelaide shows that iodized salt used in bread is not enough to provide healthy levels of iodine for pregnant women and their unborn children.
The study -- led by researchers from the University's Robinson Institute -- has prompted calls for pregnant women to keep taking iodine supplements.
Iodine deficiency is recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the most common preventable cause of brain damage in the world.
"Iodine is an essential element which is important for human brain development and thyroid function," says one of the lead authors of the study, Associate Professor Vicki Clifton from the University's Robinson Institute and the Lyell McEwin Hospital.
"In 2009, Australian bread producers began a mandatory program of iodine supplementation in bread to help provide a boost to iodine levels in the community. Our study was aimed at determining whether or not that was having a positive impact on iodine levels for pregnant women."
In the study, almost 200 South Australian women were tested throughout their pregnancy and six months after giving birth.
"We found that South Australian women are mildly iodine deficient. Despite the inclusion of iodized salt in bread, women who were not taking an iodine supplement during pregnancy were still suffering from iodine deficiency," Associate Professor Clifton says.
"Those women who were taking a supplement in addition to eating bread with iodized salt were receiving healthy levels of iodine, well within WHO guidelines."
This is the latest study to follow on from the pioneering work of the University's Emeritus Professor Basil Hetzel AC, who began researching iodine deficiency more than 50 years ago at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in collaboration with the Papua New Guinea Public Health Department.
His work revealed very low urine iodine levels and high rates of goitre were associated with a form of brain damage called 'cretinism'. Professor Hetzel showed that this brain damage could be prevented by correcting the severe iodine deficiency before pregnancy.
"There's a lot of work going on around the world to ensure that pregnant women are receiving enough iodine for the healthy development of their unborn babies," says Professor Hetzel, who is also a lead author on this current study.
"The message is simple: by taking iodine supplements, pregnant women will be able to prevent brain and organ development problems in their babies, and also maintain a healthy level of iodine for themselves."
Professor Hetzel says Australia continues to be a world leader in this field, "but there is still very little public understanding about the dangers of iodine deficiency."
The results of this study were published in the Nutrition Journal.
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) ? A woman has been sentenced to eight days in jail for stealing a former "American Idol" contestant's iPhone while the singer was performing at a California elementary school.
City News Service reports 47-year-old Bertha Alicia Avalos, of Santa Ana, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor theft charges Monday and was sentenced immediately.
Todrick Dramaul Hall reported his phone missing after a performance at Hazard Elementary School in Santa Ana.
Hall and a school security guard used the "Find My iPhone" feature on the device to track the phone to a grocery store where Avalos was shopping with her son, a student at the school.
Avalos gave the phone back to Hall. He wanted to press charges, so she was taken into custody later at her home.
Finally, after 14 long years CeeLo, Khujo, Big Gipp and T-Mo to reunite and set forth another Goodie Mob album! The quartet enlisted the vocal assistnce of Janelle Monae for their first single ?Special Education,? off the highly anticipated ?Age Against the Machine? due out August 27th.
?I don?t wear the clothes you wear, I?m just different I don?t care,? sings Monae over the upbeat tune. Even though we wish Janelle Monae would sing about something different for once, like love perhaps, we can?t deny how much we?re feeling the track!
Hit the play button below:
Like HelloBeautiful on Facebook to stay on top of your favorite black celebrities:
MUST READ: PRESS PLAY: Janelle Monae & Erykah Badu Freeze Themselves In ?Q.U.E.E.N? Video
MUST READ: Janelle Monae Covers ESSENCE Magazine: ?The Tuxedo Will Out Live Us All?
MIT and UC Berkeley launch energy-efficiency research projectPublic release date: 18-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Pamela Tom ptom@haas.berkeley.edu 510-642-2734 University of California - Berkeley Haas School of Business
The E2e Project aims to give decision-makers real-world evidence on the most cost-effective ways to reduce energy and emissions
BERKELEY, CA and CAMBRIDGE, MA Energy efficiency promises to cut emissions, reduce dependence on foreign fuel, and mitigate climate change. As such, governments around the world are spending tens of billions of dollars to support energy-efficiency regulations, technologies and policies.
But are these programs realizing their potential? Researchers from the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business have collaborated to find out.
The researchers' energy-efficiency research project, dubbed "E2e," is a new interdisciplinary effort that aims to evaluate and improve energy-efficiency policies and technologies. Its goal is to support and conduct rigorous and objective research, communicate the results and give decision-makers the real-world analysis they need to make smart choices.
The E2e Project is a joint initiative of the Energy Institute at Haas and MIT's Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR), an affiliate of MITEI two recognized leaders in energy research.
The project's name, E2e, captures its mission, the researchers say: to find the best way to go from using a large amount of energy ("E") to a small amount of energy ("e"), by bringing together a range of experts from engineers to economists from MIT and UC Berkeley. This collaboration, the researchers say, uniquely positions the E2e Project to leverage cutting-edge scientific and economic insights on energy efficiency.
"Cutting energy has lots of potential to help us save money and fight climate change," says Michael Greenstone, MIT's 3M Professor of Environmental Economics and a member of MITEI's Energy Council. "It's critical to find the local, national and global policies with the biggest bang for the buck to use governments', industry's and consumers' money wisely while slowing climate change."
Greenstone is leading the project with Christopher Knittel, co-director of CEEPR, and Catherine Wolfram, associate professor and co-director of the Energy Institute at Haas.
"When deciding on the best energy measures to implement, decision-makers should compare model predictions to actual consumer behaviors. That's where this project comes in," Wolfram says. "The E2e Project is focused on singling out the best products and approaches by using real experiments centered on real buying habits. It will provide valuable guidance to government and industry leaders, as well as consumers."
The group's motivations for studying energy efficiency are derived, in part, from the McKinsey Curve a cost curve that shows that abating emissions actually pays for itself.
"Our goal is to better understand what the costs and benefits of energy-efficient investments are where the low-hanging fruit is, as well as how high that fruit is up the tree," says Knittel, MIT's William Barton Rogers Professor of Energy Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. "The McKinsey curve would suggest the fruit's already on the ground. If this is true, we want to figure out why no one is picking it up."
Former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz, a member of the E2e advisory board, says, "I like the saying 'A penny saved is a penny earned,' which rings true from the standpoint of energy. Energy that is used efficiently not only reduces costs, but is also the cleanest energy around. The E2e Project will allow us to better understand which energy-efficiency programs save the most pennies."
Shultz is a distinguished fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, where he leads the Energy Policy Task Force. The board also includes MIT Institute Professor John Deutch, former undersecretary of the Department of Energy; Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School and President Obama's former director of regulatory affairs; Susan Tierney, managing principal at Analysis Group and a former Department of Energy official; and Dan Yates, CEO and founder of Opower.
The E2e Project seeks to answer questions such as: Are consumers and businesses bypassing profitable opportunities to reduce their energy consumption? What are the most effective ways to encourage individuals and businesses to invest in energy efficiency? Are current energy-efficiency programs providing the most savings?
The project's first experiments are already underway. For example, the team is tracking consumers' vehicle purchasing decisions to discover if better information about a car's fuel economy will influence consumers to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles. If so, emphasizing the calculated fuel savings in the vehicle information presented to consumers may be productive.
Other initial projects include evaluating the Federal Weatherization Assistance Program, and determining why households invest in energy efficiency and the returns to those investments.
###
More information: e2e.haas.berkeley.edu or e2e.mit.edu
The E2e Project was funded with a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
RELATED LINKS:
MIT Energy Initiative: http://mitei.mit.edu/
Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research: http://web.mit.edu/ceepr/www/
University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business: http://haas.berkeley.edu/
Energy Institute at Haas: http://ei.haas.berkeley.edu/
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
MIT and UC Berkeley launch energy-efficiency research projectPublic release date: 18-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Pamela Tom ptom@haas.berkeley.edu 510-642-2734 University of California - Berkeley Haas School of Business
The E2e Project aims to give decision-makers real-world evidence on the most cost-effective ways to reduce energy and emissions
BERKELEY, CA and CAMBRIDGE, MA Energy efficiency promises to cut emissions, reduce dependence on foreign fuel, and mitigate climate change. As such, governments around the world are spending tens of billions of dollars to support energy-efficiency regulations, technologies and policies.
But are these programs realizing their potential? Researchers from the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business have collaborated to find out.
The researchers' energy-efficiency research project, dubbed "E2e," is a new interdisciplinary effort that aims to evaluate and improve energy-efficiency policies and technologies. Its goal is to support and conduct rigorous and objective research, communicate the results and give decision-makers the real-world analysis they need to make smart choices.
The E2e Project is a joint initiative of the Energy Institute at Haas and MIT's Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR), an affiliate of MITEI two recognized leaders in energy research.
The project's name, E2e, captures its mission, the researchers say: to find the best way to go from using a large amount of energy ("E") to a small amount of energy ("e"), by bringing together a range of experts from engineers to economists from MIT and UC Berkeley. This collaboration, the researchers say, uniquely positions the E2e Project to leverage cutting-edge scientific and economic insights on energy efficiency.
"Cutting energy has lots of potential to help us save money and fight climate change," says Michael Greenstone, MIT's 3M Professor of Environmental Economics and a member of MITEI's Energy Council. "It's critical to find the local, national and global policies with the biggest bang for the buck to use governments', industry's and consumers' money wisely while slowing climate change."
Greenstone is leading the project with Christopher Knittel, co-director of CEEPR, and Catherine Wolfram, associate professor and co-director of the Energy Institute at Haas.
"When deciding on the best energy measures to implement, decision-makers should compare model predictions to actual consumer behaviors. That's where this project comes in," Wolfram says. "The E2e Project is focused on singling out the best products and approaches by using real experiments centered on real buying habits. It will provide valuable guidance to government and industry leaders, as well as consumers."
The group's motivations for studying energy efficiency are derived, in part, from the McKinsey Curve a cost curve that shows that abating emissions actually pays for itself.
"Our goal is to better understand what the costs and benefits of energy-efficient investments are where the low-hanging fruit is, as well as how high that fruit is up the tree," says Knittel, MIT's William Barton Rogers Professor of Energy Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. "The McKinsey curve would suggest the fruit's already on the ground. If this is true, we want to figure out why no one is picking it up."
Former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz, a member of the E2e advisory board, says, "I like the saying 'A penny saved is a penny earned,' which rings true from the standpoint of energy. Energy that is used efficiently not only reduces costs, but is also the cleanest energy around. The E2e Project will allow us to better understand which energy-efficiency programs save the most pennies."
Shultz is a distinguished fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, where he leads the Energy Policy Task Force. The board also includes MIT Institute Professor John Deutch, former undersecretary of the Department of Energy; Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School and President Obama's former director of regulatory affairs; Susan Tierney, managing principal at Analysis Group and a former Department of Energy official; and Dan Yates, CEO and founder of Opower.
The E2e Project seeks to answer questions such as: Are consumers and businesses bypassing profitable opportunities to reduce their energy consumption? What are the most effective ways to encourage individuals and businesses to invest in energy efficiency? Are current energy-efficiency programs providing the most savings?
The project's first experiments are already underway. For example, the team is tracking consumers' vehicle purchasing decisions to discover if better information about a car's fuel economy will influence consumers to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles. If so, emphasizing the calculated fuel savings in the vehicle information presented to consumers may be productive.
Other initial projects include evaluating the Federal Weatherization Assistance Program, and determining why households invest in energy efficiency and the returns to those investments.
###
More information: e2e.haas.berkeley.edu or e2e.mit.edu
The E2e Project was funded with a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
RELATED LINKS:
MIT Energy Initiative: http://mitei.mit.edu/
Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research: http://web.mit.edu/ceepr/www/
University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business: http://haas.berkeley.edu/
Energy Institute at Haas: http://ei.haas.berkeley.edu/
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_u3J8tyeYgwrKnIiiVqg7zf9pGxCL3_M1I7uXna1rHvASqA8N7COm8PNNbuKSX173FK7m9yhKsCLG00BvhUo1qQ1ETMEugYg4GMu0czrR0=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 18-Jun-2013
Share ]