Quickly, as I'm rushing out the door to teach: Google has announced it will (reluctantly) shorten the amount of time it holds fully-identifiable information, and will “anonymize” search records after 9 months, rather than the current 18 months. This is…
Category: Issues
Archival Ethics with Changing Practices: The Impact of Technology
Reporting again from the SAA conference, I attended an excellent panel this morning on "Archival Ethics with Changing Practices: The Impact of Technology" (program; wiki page), featuring some excellent presentations on the way new information technology is spurring new ethical…
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Values in Design: Defining a Privacy-Aware Model for Web Access to Archives
I'm spending the next few days at the 72nd Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists in San Francisco, and I'm looking forward to learning more about many of the ethical and policy issues confronted by archivists in an…
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Update on Local Library SSN Practices
While I never received a reply to my letter to the Shorewood, Wisconsin Public Library regarding its requiring I provide my social security number to obtain a library card, I do have anecdotal evidence that the library might have changed…
Seeking References on Cellphone Surveillance
This post is a bleg: I've been asked to film an interview that will accompany the DVD bonus material for the forthcoming (Steven Spielberg produced) action/thriller movie "Eagle Eye," which features sophisticated surveillance technologies as one of its plot devices.…
Cuil not so Cool
Following up on the experience of others (here, here, and here), I've run some test searches of my own on the hot new Cuil search engine. The results were not cool. I performed three different kinds of searchs: information-seeking, navigational,…
New “Cuil” Search Engines Decides User Logs Aren’t Necessary
Some former Googlers have launched a rival search engine named for the Gaelic word for knolwedge, Cuil. Cuil (pronounced like "cool"), which claims to have an index three times the size as Google and ten times as Microsoft, aims to…
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Local Library uses RFID to Manage Materials, but Privacy Concerns Abound
Continuing the theme of privacy issues related to my new home library system (and I still haven't received any reply from the Shorewood Public Library regarding their collection of patron social security numbers), the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that the…
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Visibility of Googe’s Privacy Policy Depends on Where you Live
Following up on Google's recent decision (over the 4th of July holiday weekend) to sneak a link to its privacy policy onto its homepage and SERPs, Ted Byfield did a quick analysis of the realative visbility of the privacy policy…
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A Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video
A group of legal, cultural, and social scholars have published a "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video", providing an important framework to help address the growing challenge of allowing fair use of online content in the…
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