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I'll use any excuse to break out this image again.

Aurich Lawson

You didn't think Facebook spent $2 billion on virtual reality company Oculus just to dip its feet into the next unproven frontier in video games, did you? No, the massive company has reconfirmed that it is interested in bringing its core social networking apps to VR in the future, to let users share 360 virtual views of what they're doing, for example.

At the Code/Media conference in California last night, Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox responded to a question about "the one thing you haven't accomplished yet that you'd really like to figure out," by saying "virtual reality is pretty cool; we're working on apps for VR."

To Cox, VR is just a more impressive, all-encompassing extension of the kind of experience sharing millions of users already do on Facebook. "You're just sending a photo, you're sending a video, you're sending a piece of text, you're sending an idea, you're sending a thought. [With VR], there's a version of the world where you're sending a fuller, immersive picture of what you're doing..."

Cox cited existing VR demos that put people in the seat of a Blue Angel jet fighter or a yurt in Mongolia as examples of the kind of 360 virtual experiences Facebook usersranging from everyday Joes to celebrities like Beyoncwill eventually be able to share with their friends on the platform. "You immediately understand... the first time you're in it, you realize you're looking at the future."

This "announcement" really isn't a surprise. When Facebook acquired Oculus nearly a year ago, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was effusive aboutpossibilities beyond the headset maker's initial gaming focus. "Imagine enjoying a courtside seat at a game, studying in a classroom with students and teachers all over the world, consulting with a doctor face to face, or going shopping in a virtual store where you can touch and explore the products you're interested in just by putting on goggles in your own home," Zuckerberg said at the time. Oculus' Brendan Iribe toutedthe ability to talk to a friend's virtual avatar "face to face," rather than in a 2D video window on a flat screen.

Executives from Oculus and Facebook have consistently said they expect virtual reality to be the next major computing platformmaybe even the final computing platform. Given that expectation, it would be a bit silly if Facebook wasn't working on some sort of VR extension for its social network. On the contrary, working on the assumption of a VR-dominated future, Facebook seems determined not to lag behind the crowd, as it did with underpowered mobile apps in the early wake of the smartphone revolution.

As for Facebook becoming a mandatory part of the end-user Oculus experience, the folks at Oculus have continually insisted that Facebook has been an extremely hands-off corporate owner. "I guarantee that you won't need to log into your Facebook account every time you wanna use the Oculus Rift," Oculus founder Palmer Luckey told a Reddit AMA shortly after the acquisition.

"The agreement with [Zuckerberg] was 'Use what services you want from Facebook. We're just here to help,'" Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe told Ars last summer. "If you don't want to use any, you don't have to, but there probably are some services that we provide, like payment services and all kinds of things that they have a really good platform for that we don't."

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Facebook in your face: Why social VR apps arent a surprise

Whether youre every other freelance blogger at your local coffee shop (latte in hand) or a small business owner struggling to keep the lights on, its certainly a question worth pondering. The answer to such a question, relayed to us by a faceless sea of gurus, experts and tech start-up superstars is a resounding Of course not, or at the very least, Well, I guess it depends.

Lets cut to the chase. Its hard to deny the notion that our social presence online has truly become an extension of ourselves off.Facebooks new policy allowing for Internet immortality further cements this reality. Our existence offline is becoming less removed from our existence online, meaning that if were making connections and doing business in the real world, the same rules should apply on the web, right?

Not necessarily.

Reality check. The anti-social movement has been brewing for quite some time, both in the face of business and our everyday lives. Take BJ Mendelson (the self proclaimed Mark Twain of Social Media) and his not-so-subtly-titled book titled Social Media is Bullsh*t. Mendelson asserts that social media is a vague cash-grab concept peddled by marketers with questionable credibility. Meanwhile, critics such as Sherry Turkle claim thatsociety at large is growing alone together in the face of the rapidly-changing technology at our fingertips.

Whos to say whether theyre right or wrong? Its certainly plausible that this anti-social movement was born out of cynicism from entrepreneurs who poured their precious time and money into social networking and saw nothing in return. Maybe they just dont get it. However, we should all take a step back and consider the following:

The caveat to the gloom and doom concerning social media, of course, is that not all industries are created equally. Maybe you really do just need to hit up your followers every now and then. Maybe that tweet or blog share really will lead to a sale or meaningful conversation. Theres no harm in making face and shaking hands.

Social media feels good. The shares. The likes. The metrics. Theyre fun, theyre sexy. Why would anyone want to give that up?

Yet ask yourself; what would it really mean for your company if you went ghost on the social channels? Sure, others might think of you as some sort of insane nomad, floating alone in the vast void of online commerce. But what would it really do to your bottom line? What else could you do with all of that time, energy and money?

Nobodys asking you to go it alone; however, maybe its time to rethink exactly what social means for you and your business.

Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com.

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Is Social Media a Waste of Time?

In an earlier post, co-blogger David Post pointed to a state trial court ruling in Montana, for which he was an expert for the defense, which concluded that the government needs a warrant under the Fourth Amendment and/or the Montana Constitution for a police officer to go undercover on Facebook as a teenage girl, friend a target, and have conversations with that target. Heres a different perspective on the case. To the extent the judge was relying on the Montana Constitution, the decision is plausible. On the other hand, the decision is plainly wrong if it was relying on the federal Fourth Amendment.

For purposes of the federal Fourth Amendment, the law is really clear: You give up your Fourth Amendment rights in what you knowingly disclose to another person such as an undercover officer or informant. If you communicate with a person in a Fourth Amendment protected space such as your home, you cant claim a Fourth Amendment violation in what you shared with the person if they violated your confidences and happen to be (or are working with) law enforcement. See, e.g., United States v. White, 401 U.S. 745 (1971); Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293 (1966); Lewis v. United States, 385 U.S. 206 (1966); Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323 (1966); Lopez v. United States, 373 U.S. 427 (1963); On Lee v. United States, 343 U.S. 747 (1952).

As I explained in a forthcoming article, this legal rule was originally the point of the subjective expectation of privacy test of Katz, the thought being that you did not manifest your privacy rights in what you disclosed to another even in Fourth Amendment protected space. The Supreme Court later moved the principle over to the objective expectation of privacy test instead, where it announced the idea as the so-called third-party doctrine: [T]he Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed. United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 443 (1976).

Those principles are directly applicable in the Montana decision. The defendant, Windham, thought he was communicating with a 16-year old girl named Tammy Andrews. It turned out that Andrews was actually an adult police officer, proof that on the Internet nobody knows youre a cop. The government is trying to use what the officer saw as Tammy Andrews in communication with Windham, which is only what Windham knowingly reveled to Andrews. From a standpoint of the federal Fourth Amendment, its a trivial case. Theres no plausible argument for Fourth Amendment protection.

Importantly, though, that doesnt mean that the result is wrong. It may just be correct as to the Montana Constitution instead of the Fourth Amendment. State courts can interpret the state constitution more broadly than the federal Fourth Amendment And in State v. Goetz, 345 Mont. 421 (2008), the Montana Supreme Court held that the state constitution requires a warrant when an undercover agent wants to record a one-on-one conversation with a target, even though the Fourth Amendment doesnt require that. Under Goetz, theres at least a plausible argument that either the use of the undercover, or at least the recording of the communications, required a warrant under the state constitution.

Its not a slam dunk, though, for two reasons. First, the focus in Goetz seems to be the recording of the communication without the targets consent. Facebook communications are inherently recorded in the sense that this is how Facebook works. In analogous contexts, some state courts have held that a target consents to recording when they use messaging services that necessarily record their messages.

Second, it might matter that the defendant in this case was in Germany at the time these communications ensued. Assume theres a requirement of a warrant under the Montana Constitution for communications that occur inside Montana. If an undercover officer in Montana has communications with a target in Germany, does the Montana Constitution require the same warrant? Is the search occurring in Germany for purposes of the state constitution, and if so can a Montana court issue a warrant for a search there? Or does the search occur in Montana for state constitutional purposes because the recording occurred there? Im not sure.

However a court should resolve these questions, though, this is an argument only about the state constitution rather than the Fourth Amendment. Under the Supremacy Clause, the ruling would apply to state officers but not federal officers.

Finally, in the comment threads to Davids post, several commenters raised the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. If the government thinks its a crime to violate Terms of Service on Facebook, which was the DOJ position in the Lori Drew case, why doesnt that forbid the governments procedure here as a matter of federal law? I think there are three independent reasons. First, an exception to the CFAA expressly exempts law enforcement investigations, see 18 U.S.C. 1030(f), so this wouldnt violate the CFAA even if you believe that TOS violations generally violate the CFAA. Second, there is no federal suppression remedy for statutory violations absent a clear directive of Congress, of which there is none here. And third, even though DOJ argued that the TOS violations in Drew violated the CFAA, the DOJ was wrong, as the district court recognized in tossing the convictions.

Orin Kerr is the Fred C. Stevenson Research Professor at The George Washington University Law School, where he has taught since 2001. He teaches and writes in the area of criminal procedure and computer crime law.

The rest is here:
Volokh Conspiracy: Undercover Facebook investigations and the federal/state divide a response to David Post

No fewer than 20 states in the country rejected autonomy for local governments in the fourth amendment to the 1999 Constitution (as amended), passed by the Senate on Wednesday.

Our correspondent, who obtained a copy of the report of the Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution submitted by Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu on the floor of the senate, noted that 20 states voted against local government autonomy while 16 states voted in support.

The 20 states who voted against are: Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Borno, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Ekiti, Enugu, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kwara, Lagos, Ondo, Osun, Rivers, Taraba, Yobe and Zamfara.

States who gave the yes votes are: Adamawa, Anambra, Abia, Bauchi, Benue, Edo, Gombe, Imo, Kebbi, Kogi, Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun, Oyo, Plateau and Sokoto states.

The proposed amendments which was rejected had stated that a local government council not democratically elected shall not be recognised by all authorities and persons and shall not be entitled to any revenue allocation from the Federation Account or the state government.

It shall not also exercise any function exercisable by a local government council under this Constitution or any law for the time being in force; and shall stand dissolved at the expiration of a period of four years, commencing from the date the members of the council were sworn in.

The report also indicated that the National Assembly has also empowered the Independent National Electoral Commission to deregister political parties.

It also made provision for independent candidates in elections.

The extant electoral law stipulates that candidates for elections must be sponsored by political parties. Section 177 has been altered, by inserting a new paragraph that a candidate must be sponsored by political party or he is an independent candidate.

It was further observed that the lawmakers inserted section 225A, which states that INEC can deregister political parties if there is a breach of any of the requirements for registration.

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Constitution review: 20 states reject LG autonomy

Ex-NSA chief linked to alleged coup plot
Sen. Antonio Trillanes involves former National Security Adviser (NSA) Norberto Gonzales in the coup attempt against President Aquino. Subscribe to ABS-CBN News channel!

By: ABS-CBN News

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Ex-NSA chief linked to alleged coup plot - Video