A federal judge in Detroit ruled today that the Bush administration’s eavesdropping program is illegal and unconstitutional. I'll leave analysis of Judge Taylor's reasoning to the experts (Jack Balkin, Orin Kerr, Dan Solove, Eugene Volokh, for starters). But I certainly…
Read More Federal Judge Orders End to Warrantless Wiretapping
The Electronic Frontier Foundation provides these tips to help keep your search history anonymous: How can you help prevent damaging privacy invasions like AOL's data leak? Along with spreading the word about this debacle, you can take steps to protect…
Nicholas Carr has posted a thoughtful essay on "The Great Unread", describing the relationship between the powerful and the powerless in the blogosphere: What we tell ourselves about the blogosphere - that it's open and democratic and egalitarian, that it…
In a quick follow-up to this speculation about Google using Gmail photos to build a facial recognition database, Google just announced they acquired Neven Vision, a company that develops technology to detect and recognize objects and persons in images. While…
The Register warns that Amazon.com is planning to create the "world's biggest personal data stash." Their source is this Seattle Post Intelligencer report on the detailed patent application Amazon filed with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: Amazon.com is developing…
Read More Amazon Plans “World’s Biggest Personal Data Stash”
The Google Operating System blog reports that when uploading pictures for your contacts, Gmail will ask you to crop the picture, to separate the face of the person. The result? Google has a database of multiple images for a lot…
From the EFF: AOL's data leak is a disaster, but there may be some silver lining. By putting the spotlight on the dangers of Internet companies storing massive amounts of private information, the data leak could spur better business practices…
Why was the AOL data dump wrong? "Because it hurts people. It makes them feel defensive about their own thoughts and ideas," says Mary Hodder. She's right.
Declan McCullagh at CNet has posted many more, often disturbing, profiles of users gleaned from the AOL search data leak. Examples include: Based on the number of local searches, AOL user 1515830 appears to be a resident of [personal information…
Registration is now open for the "Identity and Identification in a Networked World" multidisciplinary graduate student symposium, September 29-30, 2006 at the NYU School of Law. Twenty graduate students from across North America and Europe will share their exciting research…
Read More Registration Open: Identity and Identification in a Networked World
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