law - Leonid Mamchenkov

Police enforce new drink and speeding regulations

THE POLICE have started issuing on-the-spot fines for speeding and drinking offences this week implementing a law that empowers the police to immediately punish offenders, the head of traffic police Demetris Demetriou said yesterday.

“Now we’ve got immediate sentences rather than sentences in court after two years,” Demetriou said.

For drinking under the influence of alcohol, the police will issue on-the-spot fines and/or penalty points to anyone whose breath test registers up to 70 micrograms per 100 ml. The limit is 22mg/dL.

The fines are €100 for up to 35mg/dL; €200 and two penalty points for between 36mg/dL and 55mg/dL; €300 and three penalty points for between 56 mg/dL and 70mg/dL.

Anyone reading over 70mg/dL will go to court and could get six penalty points, a fine of up to €400 and at least €150, and/or a jail sentence.

Drivers will also be issued on-the-spot fines and will be punished with €1.0 for each kilometre per hour when they have exceeded the limit by up to 30 per cent.

When driving between 31 per cent and 50 per cent faster than the limit, drivers will pay €2.0 per km/h and two penalty points.

Driving between 51 per cent and 75 per cent faster than the limit is punishable costs €3.0 per km/h and three penalty points.

Debunking “If you have nothing to hide …” argument

I am quite a publicly open person. There are very few things about me, which are not published online or which I am not open to discuss with strangers. So one could say that I am not much concerned about my privacy. Given that, and the recent advance in technology – photo and video cameras, storage space, centralized database, and search – I do often say that the privacy is dead. Some people hate it, some people like it, yet others are neutral. But I see it more as a fact, rather than a distant future possibility. And that often gets me into discussions about privacy with people who fill different.

Since I don’t really care much about it, I might have used the “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” argument. Not because I strongly believe it, but because I think this is the case most of the time. Today I came across an article that provides a few reasons for why that is a dangerous argument to use. And I have to say that it made me think and agree with a few points that it raises.

It’s not you who determine if you have something to fear: You may consider yourself law-abidingly white as snow, and it won’t matter a bit. What does matter is whether you set off the red flags in the mostly-automated surveillance, where bureaucrats look at your life in microscopic detail through a long paper tube to search for patterns. When you stop your car at the main prostitution street for two hours every Friday night, the Social Services Authority will draw certain conclusions from that data point, and won’t care about the fact that you help your elderly grandmother – who lives there – with her weekly groceries. When you frequently stop at a certain bar on your way driving home from work, the Department of Driving Licenses will draw certain conclusions as to your eligibility for future driving licenses – regardless of the fact that you think they serve the world’s best reindeer meatballs in that bar, and never had had a single beer there. People will stop thinking in terms of what is legal, and start acting in self-censorship to avoid being red-flagged, out of pure self-preservation.

I still think that the privacy is dead. And it’s still not a big issue for me. But I do understand people who worry about it a bit better now.

When Art, Apple and the Secret Service Collide: ‘People Staring at Computers’

This is a rather lengthy story, but it touches on many different topics – art, privacy, Apple, law, government, and more. And even though it is long, it is very well written and is absolutely worth the time.

Later that year I worked with interactive artist Theo Watson on an extension of “Important Things,” called “Happy Things,” which took a screenshot every time you smiled, and uploaded it to the web. We got pictures from all around the world, with people smiling at everything, from cat memes to the Wikipedia article for Nicholas Cage.

Sometimes this kind of work is associated with “human-computer interaction,” but this term makes it sound like we’re interacting with computers, when in fact, most of the time, we’re interacting with each other. I like to think of it as “computer-mediated interaction.”

In mid-May, 2011, I took a timelapse using my laptop’s webcam to get a feeling for how I looked at the computer. After a few days of recording, I watched the video.

I was completely stunned.

There was no expression on my face. Even though I spend most of my day talking to and collaborating with other people online, from my face you can see no trace of this.

The Most Important Tech Company You’ve Never Heard Of

Information about every cell phone in the country is in a Neustar database. Which is why it’s kind of weird that 400 or so companies trust them to deal with law enforcement surveillance requests.

Moscow bans gay parades for 100 years

Ria Novosti reports:

The Moscow City Court upheld on Thursday a district court’s decision to ban gay parades in Moscow for the next 100 years, Gayrussia.ru reported.

And people are saying there is no common sense left in Russian government. There you go, proven wrong. Well done, your honor.