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The head of Apple on Wednesday endorsed tough privacy laws for both Europe and the U.S. and renewed the technology giant’s commitment to protecting personal data, which he warned was being “weaponized” against users. Speaking at an international conference on data privacy, Apple CEO Tim Cook applauded European Union authorities for bringing in a strict new data privacy law in May and said the iPhone maker supports a U.S. federal privacy law . Cook’s speech, along with video comments from Google and Facebook top bosses, in the European Union’s home base in Brussels, underscores how the U.S. tech giants are...

Been getting a lot of emails lately indicating that certain sites are 'updating their privacy laws' in order to be in compliance with new European privacy law. Anyone else been getting a lot of these emails lately? The Websites I'm getting them from I believe mostly are US based sites which makes me curious about why they are updating their policies to comply with the EU privacy laws?

Stratumseind in Eindhoven is one of the busiest nightlife streets in the Netherlands. On a Saturday night, bars are packed, music blares through the street, laughter and drunken shouting bounces off the walls. As the night progresses, the ground becomes littered with empty shot bottles, energy drink cans, cigarette butts and broken glass. It’s no surprise that the place is also known for its frequent fights. To change that image, Stratumseind has become one of the “smartest” streets in the Netherlands. Lamp-posts have been fitted with wifi-trackers, cameras and 64 microphones that can detect aggressive behaviour and alert police officers...

I must start out with a confession: When it comes to technology, I’m what you might call a troglodyte. I don’t own a Kindle or an iPad or an iPhone or a Blackberry. I don’t have an avatar or even voicemail. I don’t text. I don’t reject technology altogether: I do have a typewriter—an electric one, with a ball. But I do think that technology can be a dangerous thing because it changes the way we do things and the way we think about things; and sometimes it changes our own perception of who we are and what we’re about....

Private Medical Information Will Eventually Be Made Available To Government Bureaucrats In Charge Of Health Care If anyone has time to go through the more than 2,700 pages in the Senate version of the current health care reform bill, there are some aspects of this legislation that should send a chill down the spine of any American. But, for a moment, let's take time to review how medical records have been shared in the past. Whenever you saw a new physician, one of the first things they needed was your past medical history, specifically related to what a doctor might...

View video at link below--satirical look at the White Hhouse " Fishy email" and Axelrod email controversy http://www.pjtv.com/video/Specials/_____Silencing_Dissent%3F_There%27s_an_App_for_That/2319/

Here is video of Fox News Reporter Major Garrett talking about the White House responding to his questions concerning unsolicited emails citizens have been receiving from the White House. Garrett asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about it on Thursday, who would not answer Garrett's questions and treated Garrett rudely. Garrett reports that the White House released a statement saying that the White House does not send emails to people who have not requested that they receive messages. But they did blame "third party" organizations for sending emails to the White House which may have been added to the White House...

BRUSSELS, Belgium - A report by an EU panel released Thursday said the bank data transfer agency SWIFT broke European privacy laws by handing over personal data to U.S. authorities for use in anti-terror investigations. The Belgian-based company, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, "committed violations of data protection laws" by secretly transferring data to the United States, without properly informing Belgian authorities, the EU's data protection panel said. The panel's report calls on SWIFT, financial institutions and EU authorities to "take the necessary measures" to end the transfer, which it said contradicts Belgian and EU data protection rules....

Tommy Thompson Gets Chip Implant Implanted microchips are getting a plug from a heavy hitter - former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. Thompson plans to promote a product made by his new company � a medical info chip � by having one implanted in his arm. "It doesn't cause any pain," Thompson told Paul Bedard, who writes the Washington Whispers column in U.S. News & World Report. The chip is made by Florida-based VeriChip, which recently added Thompson to its board of directors. The rice-size chip contains a 16-digit identification code that can be scanned at hospitals and...

CLAYTON, Mo. -- Hookers are using the Internet to keep tabs on undercover cops. Police departments have used computers for years, but now the oldest profession is going high-tech. St. Louis County vice-squad commander Rick Battelle said he was shocked to find his cell-phone number listed on a hookers-only Web site. Undercover police use mobile phones to set up sting operations. But some of those phone numbers were listed in the database. The hookers' computer files also included the names used by undercover officers and details about their unmarked cars. St. Louis area officers discovered the hookers' Internet database on...

"Sexually Inclusive Christians" Celebrate Victories, Push for More Mark Tooley August 22, 2003 When arguing for church acceptance of homosexuality, most advocates talk about monogamy. But others are bolder. “I am a strong ally of those in healthy, polyamorous relationships,” declared Debra Kolodny. She argued that having multiple sexual partners can be “holy.” Kolodyn was leading a workshop at the WOW (Witness Our Welcome) 2003 convention, an ecumenical gathering for “sexually and gender inclusive Christians.” Hundreds of homosexual, bisexual, and heterosexual people gathered under the “queer” banner in Philadelphia August 14-17 to urge religious acceptance of non-traditional sexual behaviors. According...

Left-wing "comedian" Al Franken got tripped up by some big fat lies this week. He's sorry he got caught, but smugly silent about making fun of countless American kids who have taken abstinence vows.Thanks to Court TV's Smoking Gun Web site (www.thesmokinggun.com), we now know that the Saturday Night Live leftover abused his position as an "academic fellow" (now that's funny) at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy in a puerile attempt to trick Attorney General John Ashcroft into publicly sharing his personal experience with abstinence.Franken urged Ashcroft to share...

When an Oak Creek woman found her 14-year-old daughter nude in the woman's bed with a 14-year-old boy, the teens didn't strike her as being overly concerned. "They both freely admitted that their intention was to 'have sex,' " records quote the woman as saying. They "were confrontational and remorseless." The teens even "challenged" the woman to call police. So she did. Now, the couple's would-be sexual encounter in October has both of them facing serious criminal charges. Their case takes a course through the intersection of morals and law, a bustling crossroads at a time when sexuality has become...

TEN YEARS AGO, I WAS ARRESTED AT MY HOME IN BEVERLY HILLS for pandering, which the dictionary defines as acting as "a go-between in sexual intrigue." In other words, I was a madam. After a jury convicted me of three counts of pandering, the verdicts were thrown out, but the government didn't give up. It made me the Al Capone of prostitution. I spent three years in a federal penitentiary in Dublin, Calif., for conspiracy, tax evasion, and money laundering. But it was the sex that got me in trouble. When I was a Hollywood madam, I had between 20...

<p>Aug. 18 issue — Like many teenage girls in Minneapolis, 17-year-old Stacey liked to hang out after school at the Mall of America, Minnesota’s vast shopping megaplex. Cute, blond and chatty, she flirted with boys and tried on the latest Gap fashions. One day last summer, Stacey, which isn’t her real name, says she was approached by a man who told her how pretty she was, and asked if he could buy her some clothes. “He was an older guy, dressed really well,” she recalls. “He said he just wanted to see me in the clothes.” Stacey agreed, and went home that night with a $250 outfit.</p>

<p>NEW YORK, Aug. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Over the last year, local and federal law-enforcement officials say they have noted a marked increase in teen prostitution in cities across the country, reports Assistant Editor Suzanne Smalley in the August 18 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, August 11).</p> <p>Law-enforcement agencies and advocacy groups that work with teen prostitutes say they are increasingly alarmed by the trend lines: the kids are getting younger; according to the FBI, the average age of a new recruit is just 13; some are as young as 9. And, while the vast majority of teen prostitutes today are runaways, illegal immigrants and children of poor urban areas, experts say a growing number now come from middle-class homes.</p>

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.A German man who confessed to killing and eating a man he met through a website for cannibals has been charged with murder, prosecutors have said. The 41-year-old suspect, identified as Armin M, is alleged to have killed the 43-year-old victim in March 2001 in the town of Rotenburg in central Germany, after meeting him through the site. He then carved up and froze portions of the man's flesh, later eating some of it, prosecutors allege. The crime was apparently carried out with the victim's full consent, however state prosecutor Hans-Manfred Jung...

COLUMBUS, Ohio July 17 — A state appeals court on Thursday dismissed the guilty plea of a man imprisoned for writing fictitious stories of child torture and molestation. Lawyers specializing in the First Amendment believe Brian Dalton was the first person in the United States successfully prosecuted for child pornography that involved fictional writings, not images. The 10th Ohio District Court of Appeals in Columbus ruled that Dalton received ineffective legal assistance. Dalton had argued that his former lawyer didn't inform him of the legal implications of a guilty plea or ask for an immediate dismissal on First Amendment grounds....

'Booze It & Lose It' Yields 1,137 DWI Arrests in Second Week; Lawler Family to Recall Kill Devil Hills Tragedy at Outer Banks Event 7/9/03 5:00:00 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor Contact: Jill Warren Lucas of the Governor's Highway Safety Program, 919-733-3083, (cell: 919-291-6729), jwlucas@dot.state.nc.us News Advisory: What: "Booze It & Lose It" Press Event When: 10:30 a.m. Thursday, July 10 Where: Wright Brothers National Memorial, Kill Devil Hills A Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer's patrol car was damaged in a hit-and-run crash caused by an impaired driver following a "Booze It & Lose It" enforcement event. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg...

Is It A Fundamental Constitutional Right To Have Sex With Children, Too? By Lowell Phillips Tuesday July 8, 2003 Toogood Reports "This is a glorious and beautiful time to be queer." Don't start hammering out the hate mail just yet. Those aren't my words, but those of a bona fide "gay rights" activist. Amid the orgy of celebration (pun intended) following the Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, striking down sodomy laws, Molly McKay, spokeswoman for Marriage Equality California proclaimed, "This month has been filled with hope... This is a glorious and beautiful time to be queer." Few...