I bet you keep your cell phone number private right? Or at least you think you do! It looks like anyone could find out any cell phone number and corresponding address and make an inappropriate visit to your house with a bullhorn and a message.

That’s what John Hargrave did! He went to Verizon’s CEO, Mr. Ivan Seidenberg, and called him out to tell him how important privacy should be. Nobody wants a freak with a bullhorn showing up.

The video is hilarious but I can’t but wonder about Seidenberg whereabouts. What if he wasn’t home? Well at least YouTube can show him what happened.

What do you think? Is your privacy safe?

via Zug

Here’s some disturbing piece of news or better yet, ab unconfirmed rumor. It looks like BlackBerry owners in the UAE have received a performance enhancement patch from Etisalat, their official carrier. Said patch is apparently something else! It’s a spyware that will ultimately give Etisalat access to its customers’ messages and maybe more. Well that’s not nice now, is it?

Like I said, there’s nothing official so far but Etisalat customers have noticed reduced performance and battery life in their phones which was weird considering that the patch should have improved the overall performance. According to Nigel Gourlay the patch originates from a surveillance company, the SS8, and it can be activated at any time Etisalat chooses to. Besides text messages, the spyware can also monitor emails. Fortunately this whole surveillance thing can’t be handled by Etisalat’s network just yet. It looks like a 100,000 BlackBerry phones trying to connect to the registration server for the phone caused the battery and performance failure and thus the potential spyware was discovered. If you own an Etisalat Berry you should get rid of that patch somehow as you definitely deserve your privacy. What will Etisalat have to say about all this?

via Register

For those of you unaware of the Pirate Party, then let me present it to you. The Pirate Party is a real party in Sweden, founded in 2006, and it tries to offer a different view on copyright, patents, privacy online and in day to day life and transparency. Since 2006 it grew more and more and now it has scored a really impressive victory in the European Union parliament elections. The party gained 7.1% of the Swedish votes which translate into at least one seat in the future European parliament and possibly one more.

Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge had this to say about the outcome:

We’ve felt the wind blow in our sails. We’ve seen the polls prior to the election. But to stand here, today, and see the figures coming up on that screen… What do you want me to say? I’ll say anything

Together, we have today changed the landscape of European politics. No matter how this night ends, we have changed it. This feels wonderful. The citizens have understood it’s time to make a difference. The older politicians have taken apart young peoples’ lifestyle, bit by bit. We do not accept that the authorities’ mass-surveillance.

How will a couple of voices influence current worldwide political trends? How will that influence the European policy on downloads and privacy? We will just have to wait and see.

via torrentfreak