Bits Blog: Pinterest Allows Users to Opt-Out of Being Tracked

U.S. Border Agency Allows Others to Use Its Drones

The documents, which include flight logs over the last three years, were unearthed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation through a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

Agencies that have used the 10 Predator drones owned by the Customs and Border Protection Agency have deployed them to investigate fishing violations, search for missing persons and inspect levees along the Mississippi River, among other things.

Three years ago, the drones were used by other agencies 30 times; in 2012, that jumped to 250 times. How the agency stores and shares that data with other government agencies remains unclear.

Additionally, the agency, in a 2010 report to Congress included in the documents, raised the possibility of eventually equipping its drones with “nonlethal weapons” to “immobilize” people and vehicles trying to cross the border illegally. In a statement on Wednesday, the agency said it had “no plans to arm its unmanned aircraft systems with nonlethal weapons or weapons of any kind.”

It said the drones supported the agency’s border security mission and provided “an important surveillance and reconnaissance capability for interdiction agents on the ground and on the waterways.”

The drones, the agency said, “were designed with the ability to add new surveillance capabilities, accommodate technological developments, and ensure that our systems are equipped with the most advanced resources available.”

The specter of drones in American skies has been contentious, far more so than other common surveillance tools. Proponents of drones, including the military contractors who build many of them, say they can be useful for a variety of purposes, like monitoring crops and finding missing children, and a handful of police agencies have already bought small, lightweight unmanned vehicles that can fly for short bursts of time.

Skeptics say the use of drones raises the prospect of ubiquitous monitoring, especially by law enforcement, and several states have already proposed measures to restrict their use by police.

“What concerns me is the lack of clear, transparent rules for domestic drone use,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from Northern California, who recently introduced legislation to limit their use in domestic airspace. She said she was concerned about “the government’s increased interest in using drones for domestic surveillance and security, including the potential use of force. But the law today has weak requirements for individual privacy protection, transparency of drone use, and limitations on arming drones with weapons.”

Ms. Lofgren was co-sponsor of a bill in the House earlier this year that would among other things prohibit the use of firearms on drones in domestic airspace, though, not necessarily other weapons like tear gas or pellets.

The agency has used Predator drones, the same vehicles used overseas by the United States military, since 2005. Built by General Atomics, the drones weigh about 10,500 pounds and can fly for 20 hours nonstop. They are based in Arizona, Florida, North Dakota and Texas.

“C.B.P. needs to assure the public that it will not equip its Predators with any weapons — lethal or otherwise,” Jennifer Lynch wrote for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, based in San Francisco, in a blog post on Wednesday about the documents. “Without first addressing these issues, the agency — and Congress — should halt the expansion of C.B.P.’s Predator drone program.”

The flight logs provided by the agency show that it has become increasingly generous with its unmanned aerial vehicles. They have been used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the North Dakota Army National Guard, Texas Department of Public Safety and the United States Forest Service, among others.

The use of drones by the F.B.I. came to light only two weeks ago, when its director, Robert S. Mueller III, in response to a question, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that unmanned aerial vehicles were “very seldom used” by his agents. He went on to say the agency was developing guidelines on their appropriate use. An earlier information request filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation suggested that the F.B.I. had at least three drones in its possession as of 2011, when that request was filed.

The border agency said that when conducting joint operations with state, local and other federal agencies, its own privacy policies governed the use of data collected by the drones and “the live feed from any aircraft is encrypted and only accessible to those with specific clearance.”

An audit by the Department of Homeland Security last year criticized the border agency for failing to put in place enough resources to maintain its drones and coordinate their deployment. At the time, the agency recommended holding off on any further acquisitions.

Nonetheless, the border agency now stands to increase its fleet. The Senate immigration bill, passed last week, authorizes the agency to buy four additional drones, along with new radar equipment.

Other documents obtained earlier this year by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, based in Washington, had found that cameras attached to the Predators could distinguish between a human figure and a beast, but did not use facial recognition technology.

Privacy advocates worry about the prospect of law enforcement officials using drones to patrol particular areas for long stretches of time or to follow particular individuals without a warrant.

“The danger comes from dragnet surveillance,” is how Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington, described it. He called himself mostly a champion of drone technology, but with safeguards to protect privacy.

“By dragnet I mean indiscriminate,” he said, “not in a particular situation, but just to buzz around looking for suspicious activity, which is exactly what they do on border.”

Judge Allows Pilot Program Using Smartphone Apps to Hail Yellow Taxis

Last month, the justice, Carol E. Huff, issued a temporary restraining order on the plan, granting a short-term victory to the livery and black-car operators who sued the city. The plaintiffs argued, among other points, that the city’s plan would allow drivers to more easily refuse fares and that it discriminated unfairly against older riders who did not use smartphones.

They also said that allowing the use of the apps would violate the city’s longstanding ban on prearranged rides in yellow taxis, giving rise to the same problems wrought by radio communication in yellow taxis more than 25 years ago. In 1985, the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission ruled that medallion taxis would be barred from using two-way radio communication to arrange passenger pickups.

In her decision, Justice Huff wrote that the circumstances were not necessarily analogous.

“Petitioners have not demonstrated that the 1985 radio-dispatch situation with taxis is sufficiently comparable to the proposed e-hail program,” she wrote, “so that the same problems of taxi unavailability and passenger discrimination are destined to occur.”

At a moment when several pillars of the Bloomberg administration’s taxi policy have been threatened by unresolved lawsuits — including its Taxi of Tomorrow plan and efforts to expand street-hailing service outside Manhattan — Tuesday’s decision delivered a much-desired victory for the city.

“The market will ultimately decide which apps rise or fall, and we have an obligation to give the riding public that choice,” David S. Yassky, the city’s taxi commissioner, said in a statement. “Thanks to today’s ruling, they have that choice.”

Randy M. Mastro, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs, which include the Livery Roundtable and the Black Car Assistance Corporation, called the ruling “so fundamentally wrong in so many respects that we are contemplating an appeal.”

Smartphone apps are in wide use already for livery and black-car operators. In December, the commission voted to approve a pilot program for the apps in yellow cabs, after several board members appeared poised to oppose a proposed permanent rule change.

Before the vote, as app companies like Uber and Hailo sought to enter the yellow taxi market, the city was criticized for its reluctance to embrace the new technology immediately. Officials said at the time that they could not allow the apps until contracts with payment processors had expired.

On Tuesday, Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive — who once noted that New York City contrasted with “more innovation-friendly cities” like Boston and Toronto — praised the Bloomberg administration as “forward-looking, tech-friendly and visionary.”

Bits: Netflix Allows Americans to Share Viewing Choices with Facebook Friends

Netflix

You no longer have to ask your friends what they are watching on Netflix. Instead, you can now simply peer over their digital shoulder.

Netflix announced Wednesday that it will begin offering United States customers the ability to connect their Netflix account to Facebook to see what their friends are watching on the video rental service. They will also be able to share their own favorite videos.

In a blog post on the company’s Web site, Cameron Johnson, director of product innovation at Netflix, said that the latest sharing feature would offer two main views: customers’ favorite videos and those that they have recently watched on the service.

“You’ll see what titles your friends have watched in a new “Watched by your friends” row and what they have rated four or five stars in a new “Friends’ Favorites” row,” Mr. Johnson wrote. “Your friends will also be able to see what you watch and rate highly.”

For people worried that a secret show will appear in their Facebook timeline for all to see, Netflix gives people explicit options to decide what they share to Facebook.

“You are in control of what gets shared. You can choose not to share a specific title by clicking the “Don’t Share This” button in the player,” Mr. Johnson wrote.

The sharing feature has been available in other countries for some time. But before Netflix could enable it in the United States, the company had to persuade Congress to amend a 1988 law, called the Video Privacy Protection Act, that prohibited video service providers from sharing customers’ viewing history without their consent.

It’s unclear whether American consumers really want to see what their inflated social networks are watching on television. Although the idea sounds great, if your Aunt Mildred is watching World War I documentaries, and your nephew Luca is watching SpongeBob SquarePants, your social feed might not be very useful.

But investors thought the news was great for Netflix, sending the company’s shares up 7 percent in midday trading on Wednesday.