Archive for the ‘Can’ Category
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. federal agents have been given new powers to seize travelers’ laptops and other electronic devices at the border and hold them for unspecified periods the Washington Post reported on Friday.
Under recently disclosed Department of Homeland Security policies, such seizures may be carried out without suspicion of wrongdoing, the newspaper said, quoting policies issued on July 16 by two DHS agencies.
Agents are empowered to share the contents of seized computers with other agencies and private entities for data decryption and other reasons, the newspaper said.
DHS officials said the policies applied to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens, and were needed to prevent terrorism.
The measures have long been in place but were only disclosed in July, under pressure from civil liberties and business travel groups acting on reports that increasing numbers of international travelers had had their laptops, cellphones and other digital devices removed and examined.
The policies cover hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes — as well as books, pamphlets and other written materials, the report said.
Can Facebook Build a Better Passport? – Bits – Technology – New York Times Blog
Posted on: May 10, 2008
It didn’t take long for Facebook to react to the announcement by MySpace Thursday that it would enable other Web sites to tap into information about its users and their friends.
Facebook’s announcement, in a blog post Friday afternoon, is a bit sketchy on the details and has all the appearance of being rushed to match MySpace. Still, what the company calls Facebook Connect offers many of the same capabilities and a few more, too.
As I wrote yesterday, there is a big shift in how the social networks are thinking about how they relate to other sites and developers. In the first round, the social networks invited others to make their sites better — widgets on MySpace pages, applications on Facebook. Now the social networks are becoming even more extroverted: They are offering to use the information they have about users to make other sites better, too.
MySpace, and now Facebook, will let users who have created profiles on their sites — with photos, favorite bands and so on — use that information to fill out profiles on other sites. Since every site seems to encourage users to create a profile to describe themselves, this can help them avoid copying the same information over and over again.
Facebook Connect adds another feature (which I’m sure MySpace will copy): Web sites will be able to let users log in and create accounts with their Facebook names and passwords.
This is similar to what Microsoft tried and failed to build with its Passport system. AOL tried, too, and no one noticed enough to remember that it failed as well. More recently, there has been a movement towards a standard known as OpenID to allow people to log in to one site with an ID issued by another. But so far, it is too complex to use and hasn’t gotten much traction.
Online Programs That Let Parents Track Grades in Real Time Are Popular but Can Raise Stress – New York Times
Posted on: May 4, 2008
Getty Images(woman) and Iconica/Getty Images(students); Illustration by The New York Time
ON school days at 2 p.m., Nicole Dobbins walks into her home office in Alpharetta, Ga., logs on to ParentConnect, and reads updated reports on her three children. Then she rushes up the block to meet the fourth and sixth graders’ buses.
But in the thump and tumble of backpacks and the gobbling of snacks, Mrs. Dobbins refrains from the traditional after-school interrogation: Did you cut math class? What did you get on your language arts test?
Thanks to ParentConnect, she already knows the answers. And her children know she knows. So she cuts to the chase: “Tell me about this grade,” she will say.
When her ninth grader gets home at 6 p.m., there may well be ParentConnect printouts on his bedroom desk with poor grades highlighted in yellow by his mother. She will expect an explanation. He will be braced for a punishment.
“He knows I’m going to look at ParentConnect every day and we will address it,” Mrs. Dobbins said.
A profusion of online programs that can track a student’s daily progress, including class attendance, missed assignments and grades on homework, quizzes and tests, is changing the nature of communication between parents and children, families and teachers. With names like Edline, ParentConnect, Pinnacle Internet Viewer and PowerSchool, the software is used by thousands of schools, kindergarten through 12th grade. PowerSchool alone is used by 10,100 schools in 49 states.
Although a few programs have been available for a decade, schools have been using them more in recent years as federal reporting requirements have expanded and home computers have become more common. Citing studies showing that parental involvement can have a positive effect on a child’s academic performance, educators praise the programs’ capacity to engage parents.
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