MIT policy requires that the Committee on the Use of Humans in Experimental Studies (COUHES) approve all such experiments. The experiments described are "opt-in" with "informed consent" when carried out at MIT. No one is required to participate. Yet I agree that carrying out such experiments in corporate settings (including MIT) are fraught with concerns. That said, this is a future that is already here. Your laptop and phone have live microphones and cameras, and phones report their geographic position to carriers, where the logs are recorded in corporate databases for months or years, and can be subpeonaed (hopefully with probable cause, as is the case in Massachusetts state courts, but not in FBI National Security Letters). Don't shoot the messenger (MIT students). They are just adapting to the reality that we grownups have constructed for them. The law doesn't provide for any of the desired privacy rights. If you carry a phone or corporate laptop, and it turns on its microphone based on a remote command from either the NSA or a botnet, *it is not illegal*. The phone company owns the phone, your employer owns the laptop, and the legal precedents are not in the users' favor. In the case of corporate laptops, it is claimed that corporations are REQUIRED to monitor and record employee communications, because of precedents that hold them liable for sexual and racial harassment. In the case of private cellphones, you don't hold the radio license or the software license. The carrier does, and under NSL regime today, it can be required to capture and search - without any requirement to notify you. So, you are screwed. I wish that were not the case, myself. But don't assume *anyone* in the US Gov't, including your Senators and Representatives, will come to your aid. If you live in Massachusetts, your state might. But in other states, you are on your own. ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE