Policy wonk. Torontonian. Photographer. Not necessarily in that order.
Political Staffers Tried to Delete the Senate Scandal (and Other Bad Behaviour) from Wikipedia:
VICE Exclusive: Canadian political staffers are using their work time to delete large sections of Wikipedia articles in order to remove controversies, misinformation, and unpleasant truths.
Surprising? No. Sad? Kinda. Reason to ban House of Commons IP addresses from editing Wikipedia? Almost certainly.
…the New Zealand FOI regime probably fares the best, given its progressive openness and high level of political and official support, sustained by a wider pluralistic culture. The UK follows New Zealand, with reasonably high rates of disclosure, a strong Information Commissioner, single use of the veto, and some explicit political support. Third is Ireland and fourth Australia, both of which, despite high levels of use and disclosure, suffer from a high level of appeals, a lack of political support and consequent restrictive reform. Canada comes last as it has continually suffered from a combination of low use, low political support and a weak Information Commissioner since its inception.
Robert Hazell and Ben Worthy, “Assessing the performance of freedom of information”
The tax increase comes as airlines face increased volatility in jet-fuel prices because of the crisis in Iraq, and as they continue to adjust to the decline in the value of the Canadian dollar, which has also hit airlines because the price of fuel is measured in U.S. dollars.
Greg Keenan, “Airlines to fight ‘unbelievably punitive’ Ontario fuel tax”
Setting aside whether it’s even a good idea to raise this particular tax – I have some doubts – if you replaced ‘decline’ with ‘increase’ in the quotation it would mirror previous complaints from airlines about raising taxes in the 90s through to today.
Marco has a good piece that analyses the relative value of über-high-end headphones over just-high-end sets. He reaches the unsurprising conclusion that just-high-end is enough for most people. And, in what might surprise some people, that the most technically precise sets aren’t necessarily what you want to spend your money on.
Based on my own purchases of headphones and earphones over the past 5-7 years I definitely tend to agree with him: technically neutral can be super dull to listen to though, at the same time, overly unbalanced sound profiles just destroy the songs and sounds that people pipe into their ears.
The single most memorable thing about Posterous for me – and about as mediocre in opening beer as as their platform was for blogging!
At a more domestic level, UK communications providers are worried that they could be exposed to legal action because of the unlawful mass surveillance that they were party to – even though on the whole they wanted no part of it.
Well, more precisely, many comms providers wanted no part of it unless the government picked up all the costs (older readers familiar with US law may recall the CALEA legislation that forced communications companies to make their technology wiretap friendly – with much the same response from companies).
There is a view that if the liability for unlawful surveillance rested entirely with the government, there would be no appetite for this legislation. Britain long ago elevated its institutional vandalism of EU legal rights from a science to an art, and then to a sport.
Simon Davies, “ Britain takes the Uganda Road to legalise and extend state surveillance”
The importance of access to information is clearer when the right to freedom of expression is considered more narrowly. Suppose that our concern is with expression on a specific subject: for example, about government’s effectiveness in executing a policy. In some cases, government agencies may be informational monopolists: that is, they may have exclusive control over critical information required for intelligence discussion of the policy. If no right of access is recognized, the right to free expression is hollowed out. Citizens will have the right to say what they think, but what they think will not count for much, precisely because it is known to be grossly uninformed. A more sensible approach would be to treat government monopolists just as we treat private media monopolists, by curbing their monopoly power so that we may promote free expression.
Alasdair Roberts, “Structural Pluralism and the Right to Know”
Arguments about the right to information should be resolved by reference to its role in protecting the fundamental interests of citizens, and not by reference to the history or structural characteristics of the institution holding the contested information.
Alasdair Roberts, “Structural Pluralism and the Right to Know”
Crypto certificates impersonating Google and Yahoo pose threat to Windows users:
OS currently has no reliable way to detect bogus credentials released into the wild.
Yet another reason why (a) the certificate authority system is broken; (b) Microsoft is stuck trying to fix problems that it (partially) brings upon itself; © Chrome is arguably the most secure – if not privacy protective – of the major Web browsers.
The NSA’s Utah data centre, as taken by the EFF.
Excited Pixels