A couple cannot agree what color to paint the kitchen. Two cubicle-mates are arguing over a radio station. A teenager wants a later curfew, but mom and dad say no.
Neither side wants to give in. What now?
Two local entrepreneurs have the answer: let the court of popular opinion make the call.
Kevin Wielgus of Carol Stream and Angelo Rago of DesPlaines, both 36, are the co-founders of JabberJury, an online community that allows users to air and settle conflicts using a jury of their peers and the world at large.
Unlike real court proceedings, JabberJuryâs resolution process is designed to be fun.
âItâs human nature to eavesdrop on the couple arguing one table over at a restaurant,â Rago said. âEvery good story has a hero, a villain and a conflict. And we all have an opinion.â
Parties who want to strengthen their case can invite witnesses and submit evidence, just like in a real trial. JabberJurors can use all this support to better decide who they think is right or wrong.
Users who post a case and win or vote for a side and win or even invite friends to become JabberJurors can earn Jabbies, a virtual online currency, which can be redeemed for prizes.
Participants also can choose to donate their winnings to various charities.
Wielgus and Rago came up with the idea for JabberJury one night after Rago had an argument with his former girlfriend, which Wielgus and his wife witnessed.
Ragoâs girlfriend began sending him numerous text messages, criticizing his behavior.
Rago was frustrated, figuring she was telling her friends about the situation and they were unfairly passing judgment on him.
âAngelo said, âI bet if we ask everybody in this bar theyâd agree Iâm right if they heard both sides of the story,ââ Wielgus recalls. âHe said, âThere has to be a way to ask everybody.ââ
Both Wielgus and Rago, friends since 2002, realized with the rise of social media there was a way.
âIt went on from there,â Wielgus said. âAngelo and I talked more in the next two weeks than we did in the last two years.â
The duo hope the site will be fully up and running in the next few weeks.
âHopefully in time for all of your Christmas arguments,â Wielgus said.
The privacy wagon is back in town, and justifiably irate and alarmed souls are jumping aboard, in protest against Google’s spy car as the latest in a seemingly endless stream of high-tech transgressions. Understanding this takes some unpacking.
If you’re lucky, you might have encountered a Google spy car — used to eavesdrop on your Wi-Fi signals. Google uses a variety of makes and models (in some places even bicycles). The spy car spotter should look for a sinister and obvious protruding mast — usually sticking squarely from the roof — sporting goofy lenses and antennas. Those interested might want to browse the collection of unfortunate burglars and surprised dogs who have encountered the spy car on its appointed rounds.
Google’s spying on Wi-Fi, brought to light when Google admitted it, has it facing investigations both in the United States and overseas, including a new investigation by the US Federal Communications Commission launched this month. The fracas came about because Google’s aim was to count and identify Wi-Fi signals the way you might when you open a laptop in a new location and see a list of what networks are available. But Google didn’t stop at counting Wi-Fi networks. Instead it apparently tapped some of them, too, capturing what is called “payload data.” Not content with watching the signals go by, it saved them. It’s even had the guts to claim that it has accidentally been saving them (“Quite simply, it was a mistake,” Google says). But Google’s interest in your wireless signals is well-founded in its corporate strategy.
Open your smartphone and you may be pleased to find that its mapping application now fixes your location quite accurately. Just a short year or two ago the GPS signals used by these devices were painfully inaccurate — particularly in the canyons of cities where we tend to want them most. Then came the remarkable insight (from companies like Loki) that when people buy Wi-Fi access points at Radio Shack and install them in their houses, they don’t move them around very often, or turn them off. Each Wi-Fi access point, it turns out, has a unique number that it broadcasts continuously in something called a beacon. The beacon, aptly named, flashes out with the regularity of a lighthouse.
Google wants to trawl the streets for Wi-Fi signals because if it can find these beacons and organize them, then the next time you drive by that same beacon it can guess where you are: Your phone in a pinch may use the pattern of Wi-Fi beacons near you as its local aid to navigation. All this works only if, in advance, Google has provided a proper chart.
Domestic Wi-Fi networks are very common — 86% of all Americans have one (according to the Pew Internet American Life Project) — and so they constitute a basis for more effective location-based services, notably, marketing and advertising. Location-based services are ablaze as corporations in many industries seek to turn your smartphone into a sales device.
Back to privacy, which of course in this context merits vigilant attention. “Privacy,” however, is not an adequate intellectual container for what’s happening with Google’s spy cars and with ubiquitous tracking software which, as the Wall Street Journal revealed in an invaluable investigation, is placed on web-surfers’ computers routinely by such sites as Dictionary.com and…Google.
What’s happening as each of these pinprick invasions accumulate and ramify is actually the reconstruction of the greater political economy, into what Robins and Webster decades back called “cybernetic capitalism.” Instead of probabilistic forecasts about media use and buying habits, real-time data based on records of individual behavior are increasingly the foundation for feedback into the corporate economy. Where gaps and uncertainties exist new forms of surveillance and tracking are generated. Google spy cars are one such initiative.
The forms of power and social control that are being established aren’t captured by the idea that it’s merely about the invasion of individual privacy. Why then should the infringement-of-privacy theme demonstrably possess such power to galvanize political opposition and public concern?
One little-noticed factor may pertain to pornography — with which the Internet is awash. Although it is extremely difficult to measure, by some reports more than 1 in 3 Internet users are seeking adult content. These users may be particularly concerned about revealing their surfing habits.
Google is explicit that its mission is to organize all of the world’s information. But much of that information is being created, today, for the first time — and Google is a big part of that story. The surprise is that Google has been at least partly checked by accusations that it has been reading our email — since its business for some years has been reading our email. But behind this there are, we have suggested, deeper issues.
NORRISTOWN â Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman is investigating allegations that two of the county commissionersâ meetings at an East Norriton restaurant may have violated the stateâs Sunshine Act.
Commissioner Chairman James R. Matthews and Joseph Hoeffel have admitted meeting at area restaurants for the past two years with county Solicitor Barry Miller and Deputy Chief Operating Officer Jim Maza, and The Times Herald, who had a general assignment reporter eavesdrop on them at two morning meetings at Jem Restaurant, suspected the two commissioners violated the state Sunshine Act by allegedly discussing county business there.
Having two of the three commissioners present at the restaurant constitutes a quorum, and when public officials discuss government business outside the public eye, the Sunshine law applies, according to Pennsylvania Newspaper Associationâs media law council Melissa Melewsky.
Once elected in 2007, Hoeffel and Matthews formed a political alliance against Commissioner Bruce L. Castor Jr., who has never attended â and is unwelcome â at the Tuesday morning restaurant gatherings.
When questioned by Times Heraldâs Montgomery County Courthouse reporter at Wednesdayâs commissioners meeting about rendezvouses at the Swede Road eatery, Matthews and Hoeffel claimed no county matters were discussed, and insisted the breakfasts were purely social get-togethers.
On Thursday, a day after The Times Herald published articles alleging the breakfast meetings were unlawful, Hoeffel met with reporters in his office to dispel any notion that he violated the Sunshine law.
Hoeffel claimed he didnât discuss, deliberate or decide any county government business at morning meetings he attended at Jem Restaurant with Matthews in recent weeks.
In October and November, the newspaper reporter sat near Matthews, Hoeffel and the other staffers and took notes while they discussed a variety of government business.
Hoeffel, a former congressman, said he, Matthews, Miller and Maza, who were unacquainted when the commissioners took office in 2008, began meeting together to âdevelop a level of trustâ among themselves. Previously, the officials met at Rayâs Diner in East Norriton.
âI Just think the (Times Herald) story misses the facts and frankly is a bit of gotcha journalism, that I think is unfortunate,â he said. âItâs my belief the Times Herald reporter who eavesdropped on the (Jem) meetings didnât clearly hear what she claimed, didnât understand what she was hearing, and thinks that any discussion among the four of us is a violation of the Sunshine Act. Thatâs not true.â
On Thursday, Hoeffel repeatedly emphasized that neither he nor Matthews deliberated or decided how they would vote on any issues before the board, but when asked if it was okay to discuss government business at the restaurant with Matthews, he claimed Miller and Maza did most of the talking at the breakfast meetings.
âI think Miller and Maza did the discussing,â Hoeffel said. âI might have reacted to something they said, and what Iâm saying to you is that Matthews and I donât deliberate at those breakfasts.â
During the Jem gatherings, Hoeffel said when the other staffers have talked about official business, âI react, I comment, I might say something to Maza or Miller, but we donât deliberate on that issue.â
The recent news reports in the Times Herald and other media outlets detailing allegedly secret meetings between two of the three commissioners, in which they were reportedly discussing county business in advance of their public meetings to the exclusion of the other member of the board, present sufficient detail to warrant a criminal investigation, according to Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman.
In 2008, Ferman created the Public Corruption Unit, which has the full power of the DAâs Office to investigate corruption utilizing an Investigating Grand Jury, immunity, informants and wiretaps.
âWhile it is generally not our practice to announce investigations, the level of public awareness about these allegations involving the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners has reached the point that we felt it necessary to confirm the existence of the investigation,â she wrote in an e-mail message to the newspaper Thursday evening. âWe will follow the evidence wherever it leads. The public must have confidence that law enforcement will never turn a blind eye to crime or corruption of its government, no matter who is involved and no matter the magnitude of the alleged violation. No one is above the law.
U.S. diplomats have largely ignored a directive from Washington urging them to collect personal and technical information about their foreign counterparts that could be used for spying, former senior State Department officials say.
The directive, disclosed Sunday in secret cables released by the WikiLeaks website, asked State Department officers based abroad to gather foreign diplomats’ credit card, cellphone and frequent flier numbers, as well as information on their Internet identities and telecommunications systems. The National Security Agency routinely uses such information to track movements of subjects and eavesdrop on their communications.
Cables containing the guidance were sent in 2008 and 2009, and have raised eyebrows among U.S. analysts and foreign diplomats. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, whose organization was among the targets, said this week, “I do not believe that anybody would be happy when somebody knows that he or she is under watch by somebody.”
Obama administration officials have denied that diplomats engaged in espionage, but they have not disputed the authenticity of the cables. Washington sought the information as part of a “National Humint Collection Directive.” “Humint” is an abbreviation for “human intelligence.”
Former diplomats say the directive was treated the way satellite offices the world over often treat missives from headquarters they deem misguided: It was rarely if ever followed.
“No one ever reads the Humint tasking reporting,” said a former diplomat who did not want to speak for attribution about a sensitive matter. “Probably if an adult pair of eyes had looked at it, they’d say, ‘Wait a minute, we’re not going to get anyone’s frequent flier number. Give me a break.’ “
The guidance was written by the CIA, the former official said, but was sent under Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s name because the CIA and other agencies cannot direct State Department embassy personnel.
Two senior U.S. officials confirmed this account, but would not do so on the record because the Obama administration does not want to respond to individual leaked cables.
Diplomats frequently pass information to colleagues in the intelligence community, said veteran envoy Christopher Hill, who was U.S. ambassador to Iraq from early 2009 until August. But Hill said he never heard of anyone gathering the kinds of technical data spelled out in the WikiLeaks cables.
“The relationship a U.S. diplomat might have with a foreign contact is a very sensitive one, which no one would want to jeopardize by the sort of data fishing described in WikiLeaks,” Hill said.
The State Department has publicly acknowledged collecting information for U.S. intelligence agencies. Last year, Philip Goldberg, who heads the department’s intelligence bureau, said in written answers for his Senate confirmation that State “cooperates with all elements of the Humint enterprise ⊠to ensure that Foreign Service posts and reporting officers know what the Humint collection requirements are.”
Goldberg did not respond to an interview request. Briefing reporters this week, State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley called the human intelligence directives a “wish list” prepared “outside the Department of State.”
Although CIA officers frequently work undercover as diplomats, actual Foreign Service officers don’t want to be perceived as spies, said Greg Thielmann, who served as a senior staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee after a 25-year stint as a Foreign Service officer.
“We relied on relations based on trust and discretion for our reporting,” he said, “so it just was not in our interest to be snooping around people’s desks, reading things upside down, and eliciting that kind of personal data.”
The most detailed intelligence collection instructions came in a cable asking U.S. diplomats posted all over the world to gather information on United Nations officials. The cable sought “biometric data,” which can mean fingerprints, and the “current technical specifications” of telecommunications infrastructure “used by top officials and their support staffs.”
Spying has been directed at the U.N. before. In 2004, a member of the British Parliament revealed that U.S. and British officials had access to transcripts of conversations by then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Zalmay Khalilzad, who was U.S. ambassador to the U.N. late in the George W. Bush administration, said he never received a directive to collect intelligence.
“The collection of this sort of sensitive information is an appropriate responsibility of the intelligence community,” not diplomats, he said.
The private press in this country has always been criticised for a number of perceived misdemeanours.
Prominent critics of the local media, a majority of whom are in the current government usually claim the private press is hell-bent on portraying the country in a bad light. Our critics say we are not patriotic because we tend to concentrate on ‘negative’ news. We are said to be paranoid and spreading that paranoia to the rest of the nation.
However, we have not been apologetic about our specific role, as a watchdog in this country. Since the advent of the Khama presidency, media reports have shown a worrying pattern of a public under siege. Citizens of this country have complained of an intrusive security apparatus that seeks to clandestinely monitor them. We have carried these stories. We have championed the cause of civil liberties in this country. Everyone from individuals to politicians across the political divide have expressed this concern.
We know that there are legal avenues that have to be taken by security institutions in case they need to place a suspect under surveillance. It is a well-laid out procedure. Officers have to go to court to apply for permission.
They have to explain to a judge why they have to be given permission to violate the rights of a targeted individual. Members of Parliament, following rising public outrage at the increasing illegal tapping of phones, sought to get answers from Ramadeluka Seretse when he was minister in charge of security. Both Seretse and even President Ian Khama always argue that Batswana, who think they are under surveillance by intelligence operatives are paranoid.
As far as Khama and Seretse are concerned, there is no illegal tapping of phones by law enforcement officers. We in the media, with a much more accurate check on the pulse of public concerns, knew better. Early this week, a court heard testimony about government’s attempts to buy phone-tapping equipment. It has been alleged the police sought to clandestinely eavesdrop on peoples’ communication through mobile phones using the equipment. So Batswana were right all along? We want to urge those in leadership positions to attempt as much as they can to be as honest to the public as possible. After all they are nothing but servants of the public who put them in those positions in the first place.
