![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Stuff About Things
Oct. 26th, 2005 09:59 amI wanted to write a bit about my weekend and our wedding reception/halloween party before getting into weird news stuff, but the news waits for no man.
ITEM: Students told to take down blogs or face expulsion.
Article
Slashdot Thread
I hope there's a good computer person in that school who will instruct students in using anonymizer software so that they can create new blogs and start writing about the school big-time. They will have to be very careful to alias all class, teacher, and student names. The school has no right to censor the kid's speech in their home. It's arguable that their parents could at home, but it definitely isn't the school's place. I also found it interesting that they mention Xanga and MySpace, but not LJ or Blogspot. I'd like to see some comparison numbers between Xanga and LJ.
ITEM: FBI violates surveillance requirements. When you’re conducting surveillance in law enforcement, you’re required to provide reports to prosecuting attorneys and judges and superiors to make sure you’re not overstepping various guidelines, i.e. your wire tap order is current, you’re not surveilling targets that you can’t link back to your principle targets, etc. Basically there are rules for how you have to conduct your investigation, you aren’t allowed to go fishing for more targets or information.
The FBI’s power to conduct surveillance has greatly expanded thanks to the mis-named U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act and various expanded provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Turns out that the FBI has numerous administrative violations: continuing surveillance after expiration of warrants, not notifying Department of Justice when targets move between cities, illegal gathering of email, and also conducting non-consenting physical searches, though the article is a little vague on the last as so much information had been redacted.
EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, has sued DoJ/FBI under the FOIA Act for this information.
Anyway, the Washington Post article is here, the Slashdot thread here.
ITEM: This one I’m not going to directly reference the article, I’m just copying the blurb from Slashdot:
An anonymous reader writes "A new study shows that companies hire foreign workers for cheap labor, not skill." From the article:"When you look at computer job titles by state, California has one of the biggest differentials between OES salaries and H-1B salaries. The average salary for a programmer in California is $73,960, according to the OES. The average salary paid to an H-1B visa worker for the same job is $53,387; a difference of $20,573 ... H-1B visa workers were also concentrated at the bottom end of the wage scale, with the majority of H-1B visa workers in the 10-24 percentile range. 'That means the largest concentration of H-1B workers make less than [the] highest 75 percent of the U.S. wage earners,' the report notes.”
Not surprised in the least. There are positive reasons for off-shoring, it can be very beneficial to both corporations and the foreign countries, but the reality is that it’s not much more than the ability to expand corporate greed. These H1B visas are the same thing, a source of reasonably skilled cheap labor.
The Slashdot thread is here.
ITEM: There are no more items. I had something else to say, but need to get on the road and shoot up some film. Bad film! *BLAM!*
Have fun, Deb! :-)
ITEM: Students told to take down blogs or face expulsion.
Article
Slashdot Thread
I hope there's a good computer person in that school who will instruct students in using anonymizer software so that they can create new blogs and start writing about the school big-time. They will have to be very careful to alias all class, teacher, and student names. The school has no right to censor the kid's speech in their home. It's arguable that their parents could at home, but it definitely isn't the school's place. I also found it interesting that they mention Xanga and MySpace, but not LJ or Blogspot. I'd like to see some comparison numbers between Xanga and LJ.
ITEM: FBI violates surveillance requirements. When you’re conducting surveillance in law enforcement, you’re required to provide reports to prosecuting attorneys and judges and superiors to make sure you’re not overstepping various guidelines, i.e. your wire tap order is current, you’re not surveilling targets that you can’t link back to your principle targets, etc. Basically there are rules for how you have to conduct your investigation, you aren’t allowed to go fishing for more targets or information.
The FBI’s power to conduct surveillance has greatly expanded thanks to the mis-named U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act and various expanded provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Turns out that the FBI has numerous administrative violations: continuing surveillance after expiration of warrants, not notifying Department of Justice when targets move between cities, illegal gathering of email, and also conducting non-consenting physical searches, though the article is a little vague on the last as so much information had been redacted.
EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, has sued DoJ/FBI under the FOIA Act for this information.
Anyway, the Washington Post article is here, the Slashdot thread here.
ITEM: This one I’m not going to directly reference the article, I’m just copying the blurb from Slashdot:
An anonymous reader writes "A new study shows that companies hire foreign workers for cheap labor, not skill." From the article:"When you look at computer job titles by state, California has one of the biggest differentials between OES salaries and H-1B salaries. The average salary for a programmer in California is $73,960, according to the OES. The average salary paid to an H-1B visa worker for the same job is $53,387; a difference of $20,573 ... H-1B visa workers were also concentrated at the bottom end of the wage scale, with the majority of H-1B visa workers in the 10-24 percentile range. 'That means the largest concentration of H-1B workers make less than [the] highest 75 percent of the U.S. wage earners,' the report notes.”
Not surprised in the least. There are positive reasons for off-shoring, it can be very beneficial to both corporations and the foreign countries, but the reality is that it’s not much more than the ability to expand corporate greed. These H1B visas are the same thing, a source of reasonably skilled cheap labor.
The Slashdot thread is here.
ITEM: There are no more items. I had something else to say, but need to get on the road and shoot up some film. Bad film! *BLAM!*
Have fun, Deb! :-)
