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New Google Doodle to Mark Perseid Meteor Shower

Amplify’d from www.telegraph.co.uk
Google Perseid; New Google Doodle to mark Perseid meteor shower

Stargazers have been told to head to the Midlands and the north of England to see the shower at its brightest, and the best display of “shooting stars” is expected to occur between 2am and 4am.

The meteor shower occurs every year when the Earth passes through debris left by the Swift-Tuttle comet. Astronomers estimate that at its peak, around 100 meteors and hour will whizz through the Earth’s atmosphere, lighting up the sky.

Read more at www.telegraph.co.uk
 

The image shows houses silhouetted against the night sky, with meteors streaking through the air, leaving a trail of bright light.

Clicking on the link takes web surfers through to a Google results page for searches about the Perseid meteor shower, which will still be visible across the United Kingdom this evening.

U.S. Web-Tracking Plan Stirs Privacy Fears

Amplify’d from www.washingtonpost.com

The Obama administration is proposing to scale back a long-standing ban on tracking how people use government Internet sites with “cookies” and other technologies, raising alarms among privacy groups.

A two-week public comment period ended Monday on a proposal by the White House Office of Management and Budget to end a ban on federal Internet sites using such technologies and replace it with other privacy safeguards. The current prohibition, in place since 2000, can be waived if an agency head cites a “compelling need.”

Supporters of a change say social networking and similar services, which often take advantage of the tracking technologies, have transformed how people communicate over the Internet, and Obama’s aides say those services can make government more transparent and increase public involvement.

Some privacy groups say the proposal amounts to a “massive” and unexplained shift in government policyRead more at www.washingtonpost.com
 

In a statement Monday, American Civil Liberties Union spokesman Michael Macleod-Ball said the move could “allow the mass collection of personal information of every user of a federal government website.”

Even groups that support updating the policy question whether the administration is seeking changes at the request of private companies, such as online search giant Google, as the industry’s economic clout and influence in Washington have grown rapidly.

Two prominent technology policy advocacy groups, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and Electronic Frontier Foundation, cited the terms of a Feb. 19 contract with Google, in which a unnamed federal agency explicitly carved out an exemption from the ban so that the agency could use Google’s YouTube video player.

Contract Terms

The terms of the contract, negotiated through the General Services Administration, “expressly waives those rules or guidelines as they may apply to Google.” The contract was obtained by EPIC through a Freedom of Information Act request.

“Our primary concern is that the GSA has failed to protect the privacy rights of U.S. citizens,” EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said. “The expectation is they should be complying with the government regulations, not that the government should change its regulations to accommodate these companies.”

Cindy Cohn, legal director for Electronic Frontier Foundation, called the contract “troubling.”

“It appears that these companies are forcing the government to lower the privacy protections that the government had promised the American people,” Cohn said. “The government should be requiring companies to raise the level of privacy protection if they want government contracts.”

The episode recalls a dispute in January when critics complained that a redesigned White House Web site featured embedded Google YouTube videos — depicting events such as the president’s weekly address — that used tracking cookies. The White House and Google later reassured users that they had stopped collecting data.