The Center for Information Policy Leadership recently published a nice framework (PDF) for creating a multi layered privacy notice, whose benefits they outline in the introductory paragraph: Experts agree that good privacy begins with effective transparency. Transparency requires privacy notices…
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FBI’s DCSNet Electronic Surveillance System Exposed
From Wired's Ryan Singel: The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act.…
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Google to Blur Personal Data on Street View Upon Request — But Requesting Remains Difficult
Given the obvious privacy concerns with Google's Street View imaging system (as well as Microsoft's Windows Live Local Virtual Earth), you would think providers of such services would make it easy for privacy-threatening content to be flagged and removed. While…
Does the EU Data Retention Directive Apply to Search Query Data?
I am unable to reconcile an inconsistency between the common appeal search engines make that data retention laws require them to store user search query histories, and what these laws (where enacted) actually require. For example, this post at Google's…
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41% of Facebook Users Share Personal Information with a Frog
You can file this in the "altogether not that surprising" category: The IT security firm Sophos has conducted a little experiment to see how easily it might be to obtain personal information from Facebook users. They created a fabricated Facebook…
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Perspective: Companies need guidance to face censors abroad
John Palfrey and Jonathan Zittrain have published a wonderful opinion piece at CNet about how Internet companies struggle with certain "gray zones" of complicity with oppressive regimes and their desire to filter and censor Web content. They try to provide…
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San Francisco’s Wi-Fi Plan on November Ballot Proposal
Even while Earthlink seems to be stepping away from municipal wi-fi projects, San Francisco is introducing a non-binding ballot proposal to gauge citizen interest in blanketing the city in Google/Earthlink hotspots. Nathan Weinberg dug up a copy of the ballot…
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PETs are Dead; Long Live PETs!
An anonymous post at the On The Identity Trail project’s blog, blog*on*nymity titled PETs are Dead; Long Live PETs! calls for increased attention by privacy advocates for technological solutions to privacy problems: Privacy advocates tend to react to information privacy…
CNet: How Search Engines Rate on Privacy
I'm under deadline pressure currently, so very quickly: Declan McCullagh and Elinor Mills at CNet have surveyed the major search engine providers about their privacy practices related to retention of user data and behavioral targeting. Full story here, and the…
Google Tests New Ad-Serving System with Privacy Protections (but if a tree falls in the woods with no one around…)
Google is testing new ad-serving technology with added privacy protections: In our ad-serving tests, we're introducing an opt-out mechanism so people can opt out of the test ad-serving cookie if they wish. In addition, we’re going to experiment with ways…
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