A new survey shows that data retention laws influence the actual behavior of citizens in Germany. 11% had already abstained from single telecommunication acts, 52% would not use phone or e-mail for confidential contacts.

The problem with surveillance is not primarily that some bored officer might learn about some embarrassing private detail (although this is a problem as well). The fundamental problem with surveillance is that it changes people. People under surveillance behave differently than people who are not monitored - differently than free people.

Local mirror of Forsa Institute data retention study

'The German hacker group Chaos Computer Club today sued the German State of Hessen to prevent the use of electronic voting machines (Google translation) in the upcoming elections on January 27. This comes as a follow-up to the Dutch initiative 'We don't trust voting machines,' which succeeded in banning the same type of voting machines in the Netherlands.'

Middle school math teachers in the United States are not as well prepared to teach this subject compared to teachers in five other countries, something that could negatively affect the U.S. as it continues to compete on an international scale.

The findings of this new Michigan State University study, Mathematics Teaching in the 21st Century (MT21), were presented today at a press conference at the National Press Club.

"Our future teachers are getting weak training mathematically and are just not prepared to teach the demanding mathematics curriculum we need for middle schools if we hope to compete internationally," said William Schmidt, MSU Distinguished Professor of counseling, educational psychology and special education, who directed the study.

MT21 studied how well a sample of universities and teacher-training institutions prepare middle school math teachers in the U.S., South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Bulgaria and Mexico. Specifically, 2,627 future teachers were surveyed about their preparation, knowledge and beliefs in this area.

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Compared to the other countries, the U.S. future teachers ranked from the middle to the bottom on MT21 measures of math knowledge.

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Taiwanese and South Korean future teachers typically covered about 80 percent or more of advanced math topics in their training, while those in Mexico and the U.S. covered less than 50 percent.

Most Americans look at Mexico as worse off in an academic sense, but according to this, we're just as bad at them when it comes to teaching math to school children.