KitKat Puts GPS in Candy for Orwellian Contest
The somewhat sinister-sounding “We Will Find You” campaign will place a GPS-enabled bar inside four versions of Kit-Kats. Inside the wrapper, it would look exactly like a regular Kit-Kat, according to the York Press newspaper, in the town where Nestlé is based.
When the would-be snacker pulls a tab to open the wrapper, the GPS device will turn on, which will notify the company. Then a “prize team” will locate this person within 24 hours and hand him or her a check for £10,000 (about $16,000).
Nestlé said they devised the campaign to appeal to men, who presumably like GPS technology. It is backing the marketing blitz with TV ads and a smartphone campaign, wherein users are supposed to scan QR codes on Kit-Kat ads or use NFC-equipped phones to enter an online competition.
While Nestlé may be the first to do this with candy, they’re not the first to use GPS to track their customers. As Network World points out, multinational soap-and-ice-cream supplier Unilever added a GPS device to a box of laundry soap it sells in Brazil, and stalked 50 shoppers to their front doors to give them prizes.
(via Nestle Embeds GPS Trackers In Candy Bars To Hunt Down Eaters | Popular Science)
Government Standards Body, NIST, Wants to Post Your Biometrics to the Cloud
Anyone can tell you that the future of information is in Web-based services like the cloud. Who would’ve thought, though, that this would also apply to the biological information that identifies who you are?
The National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) developed a protocol for the capturing and storage of biometric information. Biometric authentication, otherwise know as ‘biometrics’, is used to identify people using iris scans, fingerprints and facial recognition.
The protocol would allow any Internet-enabled mobile device to access the information captured by sensors through a Web service, similar to the way Netflix streams movies to devices.
(via ReadWriteWeb ht infoneer-pulse)
![US Law Enforcement to Use Targeted Radiation Blasts to Conduct Warrantless Searches on Local Roads
Search technology used in Iraq and Afghanistan coming to an interstate near you.
American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents…
While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S. “This product is now the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever,” says Reiss.
Imagine the same controversial technology that is used in US airports now being used on the highway without notification.
The vans [are a] mobile version of the same scanning technique that’s riled privacy advocates as it’s been deployed in airports around the country.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) iscurrently suing the DHS to stop airport deployments of the backscatter scanners, which can reveal detailed images of human bodies…
“It’s no surprise that governments and vendors are very enthusiastic about [the vans],” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “But from a privacy perspective, it’s one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”
(via Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans - Forbes)
(ht boingboing)](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6l71mPTDJ1qgpcs1o1_400.png)
US Law Enforcement to Use Targeted Radiation Blasts to Conduct Warrantless Searches on Local Roads
Search technology used in Iraq and Afghanistan coming to an interstate near you.
American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents…
While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S. “This product is now the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever,” says Reiss.
Imagine the same controversial technology that is used in US airports now being used on the highway without notification.
The vans [are a] mobile version of the same scanning technique that’s riled privacy advocates as it’s been deployed in airports around the country.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) iscurrently suing the DHS to stop airport deployments of the backscatter scanners, which can reveal detailed images of human bodies…
“It’s no surprise that governments and vendors are very enthusiastic about [the vans],” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “But from a privacy perspective, it’s one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”
(via Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans - Forbes)
(ht boingboing)
Europe's Posited 'Right to Be Forgotten' Poses More Questions Than it Answers
The most colorful assertion of the EU legislation is the so-called “right to be forgotten.” Some question whether anyone really has the power to erase all traces of data, even if a user wants them to.
“[A]re we really responsible for going to find every cached copy that may have filtered out there?” Microsoft’s Ronald Zink wondered aloud. “What is the obligation beyond our set of properties? It’s hard to know how you would pull back all the copies of a given piece of content.” Zink has been making the rounds, also telling FT, for instance, that the proposals may be “too prescriptive.”
Others had wondered whether the “right to be forgotten” could be used as a form of censorship, if applied to members of the press. But Reding has since addressed that concern, stating, “The archives of a newspaper are a good example. It is clear that the right to be forgotten cannot amount to a right of the total erasure of history.” Data security is hugely important: too important not to legislate, while too important to rush into legislation. Perhaps it’s a good thing, then, that the EU’s legislative process reportedly might last up to two years.
