I spent over 11 years of my life in the British world; six years in South Africa and five years in Australia and Scotland. What I came to love most about this world was British and Australian television. It is gutsy, tells it like it is, does not care who it makes mad, and has wonderful acting and writing. I made an amazing discovery on Netflix last night. It is a British crime series called The Fall. It is filmed in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The principal star is Gillian Anderson (Agent Scully of the X-Files.) Gillian plays a senior police inspector trying to catch a serial killer who strikes at young women. The scripts are brilliant. The cinematography is incredible. Gillian and the rest of the cast do a great job. I'm sure that actual police people will look at the show and say to themselves: Oh my God that's the way it really is!" It also has some really great erotic moments including a sex scene that Gillian was involved in with most of her clothes on. This series will keep you glued to the edge of your chair and constantly fascinated. I recommend it.
Life takes us in many strange directions and wonderful discoveries. It never turns out the way we thought it would.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Jack's Africa: Isabel dos Santos - Forbes
Jack's Africa: Isabel dos Santos - Forbes: Isabel dos Santos - Forbes : 'via Blog this'
The US Authorities Request Facebook Data Covering 20,000-21,000 Individuals During The First 6 Months of 2013
August 27, 2013 7:07 pm
US tops league of governments probing Facebook users
Facebook received more demands from the US government for information about its users than from all other countries combined, the social network said on Tuesday.
The publication of Facebook’s first transparency report follows weeks of disclosures about US intelligence agencies’ Prism programme and other data-gathering techniques that have raised questions about the scale and legality of online surveillance conducted in the name of national security.
ON THIS STORY
- US military mined Twitter to track threats
- Edward Luce Obama has hurt himself and business
- Lex Social media – not clicking
ON THIS TOPIC
- Facebook trials mobile payment feature
- Mobile ads favour coexistence, not disruption
- Fears allayed over techs’ mobile skills
- Facebook and Twitter target TV spending
IN TECHNOLOGY
Facebook’s data aligns with similar disclosures byGoogle and Twitter that suggest the US makes much more frequent demands for personal information about the people using these sites than other countries.
The 11,000 to 12,000 user data requests thatFacebook received from the US authorities in the first six months of 2013, covering 20,000 to 21,000 individuals, marks a 20 per cent increase in the number of requests over the second half of last year.
That compares with Google’s 8,438 US requests in the second half of last year, relating to 14,791 accounts, about 40 per cent of its total.
Facebook said it complied with 79 per cent of the latest requests for information such as names, IP addresses and account contents. It did not provide additional details about what information it gave to the US government but said that the “vast majority” involved criminal cases, rather than national security matters.
After the US, governments requesting the most data from Facebook included India, with 3,245, Germany, Italy and France. It handed over more than two-thirds of the 2,337 accounts about which the UK government demanded details.
“We have stringent processes in place to handle all government data requests,” Colin Stretch, Facebook’s general counsel said, repeating his call for “greater transparency” from the authorities in these situations.
“We scrutinise each request for legal sufficiency under our terms and the strict letter of the law, and require a detailed description of the legal and factual bases for each request. We fight many of these requests, pushing back when we find legal deficiencies and narrowing the scope of overly broad or vague requests.”
Privacy International “commended” Facebook for the disclosure, which it said had been a “long time coming”, but noted that leaks from the US intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden suggested that governments were collecting user data from telecoms networks and other means that may not require web companies’ co-operation.
“The usefulness of transparency reports hinges on governments abiding by the rule of law,” Privacy International said.
“We now know that these reports only provide a limited picture of what is going on, and it is time that governments allow companies to speak more freely regarding the orders they receive.”
Facebook said the report “contains the total number of requests we’ve received from each government, including both criminal and national security requests”, and that it would publish regular updates to the figures.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013. You may share using our article tools.
Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
Post your own comment
Sorted by newest first | Sort by oldest first
Multimedia
Tools
- Portfolio
- Topics
- FT Lexicon
- FT clippings
- Currency converter
- MBA rankings
- Newslines
- Today's newspaper
- FT press cuttings
- FT ebooks
- FT ePaper
- Economic calendar
Updates
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Jack's South America: The Stage Is Set For Another Argentina Default
Jack's South America: The Stage Is Set For Another Argentina Default: August 23, 2013 6:39 pm Argentina loses appeal of ruling forcing it to pay bondholders By Benedict Mander in Caracas and Robin Wigg...
Friday, August 23, 2013
My Son Pedro's Christmas Gift
E SHIPPING
My son is 46 years of age and a Ph.D in Zoology. He is a researcher at a major Canadian university. He also comes from Rio de Janeiro.
EBAY is truly amazing in the massive variety of things that one can find there. I stumbled onto a real treasure and decided it was the perfect gift for my son.
It is a model of a Varig Airlines DC-10 that flew in the 1970's through the 1990's. I flew on this plane and airline from 1975 to 1980. It truly was the golden age of international passenger service for Varig.
I was employed by Occidental Petroleum all of those years ago. I was quite fortunate to be allowed to fly first class. The flight went from Miami to Panama City and onto Rio de Janeiro.
The minute that one sat down in their first class seat, the stewardess was right there offering a glass of expensive Moet Brut Champagne. One's glass was constantly kept full. After taxi and lift off, a cart came around with very expensive whiskeys from all over the world. When it came time for the dinner service, one's table was deployed and an expensive table clothe placed over it. A beautiful napkin and real silver eating utensils followed. A very impressive menu was presented with a wide choice of gourmet meals. A chef prepared food for each passenger. Another cart came around loaded with superb wines from all over the world. When one finished the gourmet dinner, another cart came around with desserts and expensive after dinner drinks. This was all washed down with very tasty coffee. Today only heads of states get such royal treatment. It will be a wonderful reminder to him of a golden age that is now gone.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
PS For criminal cases the FBI do request regular federal court warrants. If it is for vaguely defined intelligence gathering it is laughable to presume that so many hoops must be jumped to hobble the efficiency.