Is Google Evil? by Maha Atal & Damian Kahya

Article and Photograph: Courtesy of NewStatesman

"The online search giant is the internet’s greatest success story. But as ever more data is amassed, concerns over how the company may use it grow."

"Records of Broughton in Buckinghamshire date back to the Domesday Book, the first medieval census - a comprehensive account of hitherto uncollected personal information. Nearly a millennium later, the online search giant Google was in the former village (now a suburb of Milton Keynes) updating records for its online mapping tool, Street View. A little after 9am on a Wednesday morning, an unmarked black Vauxhall Astra was spotted with a camera on a metre-high pole. People didn't like that "it could see over their garden walls", recalls the local councillor John Bint."

THE REST OF THE ARTICLE IS HERE.

Could TriMet's fat benefits sink the transit agency? by Anita Kissee

From KATU-TV 

PORTLAND, Ore. - You may have heard the radio ads calling out TriMet, which spends as much as $1,900 per employee, per month, just for health insurance benefits.

Radio Ad: "Free breast enhancement, fitness centers, eyeglasses, no co-pay -- and taxpayers are paying for all of it!"

That's enough to win the so called 'Golden Fleece Award' for wasting taxpayer money but you will be floored when you see the millions more TriMet is spending every year on people who don't even work there.

Over the last month, KATU investigated TriMet's union benefits package and we learned the same kind of deal that drove GM into bankruptcy is happening right here, even as the transit agency faces a $31 million budget deficit.

Click here for the link.