After being neck deep in privacy and data protection legislations, I finally think I can start bloggin’ again. The last few weeks have been quite busy that saw me shuffling pages of privacy acts, defining processes and trying to make world a better place in general.
Monthly Archive for June, 2007
The much knowledgeable computer hardware geek Chris has written a blog post on Google and Privacy. A subject that has taken up most of my free time for the last few weeks. A subject that I have been most inclined to write about, but never actually got down to scribble something. A subject that I have worked on for the last few years. So now that I have something to rant about, I’ll let my thoughts flow. The article discusses Google owned applications such as Gmail, Adsense and Gtalk etc more from a ‘single point of failure’ perspective than from the privacy angle. Privacy breach is not limited to someone getting into your account and stealing away your information. Privacy breach is misusing Google for google-hacks and collecting, processing and disseminating personally identifiable information without consent. Being a techie or geek helps you being safe on public networks such as Internet. It protects you from virus, trojans and known malicious activities on the Internet. It helps you filter between legitimate emails and phishing attacks. But does it help you protect your privacy to a safe limit? The answer from my experience is NO. Continue reading ‘Google & Privacy’
Not many people are happy with Google Maps Street View’s street level cameras that show pictures of people at various locations. The pictures were clearly taken without the consent of the subject, and hence have raised eyebrows in many of the privacy conscious countries such as EU Union, UK and Australia.
After almost a week long jing bang in Rajasthan Gujjars finally thought it was enough. The community called off their protest after meeting with the chief minister. In today’s age when every multinational company is trying to set up a base in Gurgaon, such protests obviously demonstrate the fragile socio-political conditions and discourage these companies. It’s high time that the Haryana government steps in and shows some responsibility for handling such situations in future.
Some long time ago, my friend and I started on a journey for which we were excited as hell. The first few hours were dreamy real, with things suddenly turning out to be of magnificent proportions. I didn’t really realize what I was going for as I walked through the long long terminal at the Bangkok airport. All I knew was that life was about to change after we catch another long flight. And soon when the dreamy real world melted like ice cream candy revealing the stick inside, I was teaching myself the definition of struggle. The dream of being in a developed country with everything perfect (sort of) transformed into a battle of mind, body and the pocket. Days were spent looking through the real estate catalogs in search of a house good enough to fit us. Nights were spent in pursuit of a job to pay us. And the life continued. We got a house, each of us got a job for ourselves and things improved (sort of). But there was always a fight somewhere. Today the guy with who I started out the journey with finally got a resident status. For over two years that he studied, taught, tutored, drove, washed, studied and passed few exams, his efforts were finally redeemed today. So today when I go out, I will have a beer for him, and will raise a toast to his endurance. Cheers mate!
I am Sumeet,an information security enthusiast, crazy about Coffee, iPod, everything mac, travelling, consuming rss and eating. I work for a large consulting firm where I usually rant about security best practices.