Brett Jackson

Today I updated to iOS 7 beta 4, but upon updating it I had no signal, and the iPhone would only display "Searching..." instead of the usual five dots. I tried everything to fix it, but finally resorted to downgrading to iOS 6.1.4.

I decided to use autocomplete in my recent Rails project. I thought this would be easy and there would be a gem for it. Yes, and no. The standard seems to be rails3-jquery-autocomplete. The result is easy to use but an absolute disaster in terms of appearance when used with Bootstrap. The internet seemed to be of little help to finding a solution so I set out on writing my own. I was adding a Vendor, which would be autocompleted, to a new Item.

My first order of business was writing a method for retrieving suggestions, which surprisingly was the easiest part. I had originally simply made the method in Item, but found that strong parameters caused this to be prohibitive as there was no item parameter. Instead, I created a new Suggestions controller.

  The fuzzy_search method relies on the Textacular gem which allows for partial searches.

Then, to render it in JSON, the page jbuilder file looks like:

The JSON output and route will look like:

I had to use typeahead.js, instead of the typeahead packaged with Bootstrap, which are two very different things and the one packaged with Bootstrap will be deprecated in version 3.

My form looked like:

The collection_select field is unnecessary and was only there for debugging. Essentially, my setup works by registering an onSelected event-listener that is called once an item is chosen, and passes that datum to the function, which sets the value of a hidden vendor_id field that is set as the datum's id field. 

Make sure to download and include typeahead.js in your assets.

When finished it looked like:

The result of Edward Snowden's leak of materials detailing data collection activities of the NSA has resulted in much uncertainty and concern for privacy. What is certain, is that the surveillance activities of the NSA are unconstitutional by the standards in which data is communicated in present day. Many have pointed to the Supreme Court case, Smith v. Maryland in creating an interpretation of the Fourth Amendment that is certainly not in line with the Founders' intentions had they knowledge of the technologies in use today.

This case holds, in a nutshell, that metadata is not entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy. The SCOTUS decision was that a pen register, an instrument installed at a telephone exchange that records the the numbers dialed by customers, could be searched by law enforcement authorities without a warrant. This decision was made on the basis that "petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the telephone company." The numbers he dialed were not considered to have a reasonable expectation of privacy. In 1979 when the case was decided, wouldn't the American people still consider that an unreasonable invasion of privacy? Today, it is even more so. Effectively, this decision makes collection of metadata, phone records (which often include location information), URLs, and other data used for the purpose of describing the data it contains (its format, size, destination, author, etc.), legal without a court warrant.

Are the subject and "To" lines of your emails private? Are the websites you visit private? The fact that you have to provide a URL to properly retrieve the information you wish to retrieve does surrender your right to keeping that information free from government intrusion. The FBI has to have a warrant to search your browsing history on your computer, why shouldn't the FBI be required to have a warrant to search it in your ISP's routing logs?

Not only does this decision create a dangerous intrusion of privacy, it can disrupt business activities. Many APIs require a "key," like a password, to be in the URL of requests made. Should the NSA have access to your passwords? 

Although we cannot affect an immediate change, you can take steps to protect yourself from undue surveillance. To protect your web browsing activities, you can use Tor, a proxy that reroutes your request through a network of computers. Information sent through the Tor Network is encrypted as to prevent snooping by intermediaries, and it is nearly impossible to determine who accessed what through the Tor Network.

Email communications can also be encrypted through a free, open-source technology known as OpenPGP. A simple Google search will reveal information that can help you to set it up. You can make calls through VoIP technologies, such as Viber, which is free on iPhone, Android, and Blackberry. Viber collects the some of the same type of call data records that telephone service providers collect, but it is much less likely that it will be collected en masse by government agencies. Their privacy policy states that they do not record calls, and it is very unlikely that it will be recorded. I am actually creating an alternative to Viber that uses public key encryption and does not keep logs, enabling no government collection of data, and complete security as to the contents of your call.