A student (thanks, Gui!) pointed me to this Financial Times story about how Google Earth is fueling the push towards a more egalitarian society now that poorer citizens can spy on the massive and extravagant properties of the wealthier class:…
Category: Issues
Google Now Gets Purchasing Data, Too
With their recent push to get the citizens of Planet Google to start using Google Checkout, Google's growing infrastructure of dataveillance now includes purchasing data. From Google Checkout's privacy policy: Registration information - When you sign up for Google Checkout,…
YouTube and Shifting Norms of Public/Private
The theory of “privacy as contextual integrity" provides the tools for considering how the introduction of new technologies/practices within a particular context might disrupt norms of information flow, potentially threatening values of privacy, autonomy, or liberty. It is especially useful…
Tracking Devices on Milwaukee Police Cars Blocked
GPS systems installed on Milwaukee Police squad cars to help dispatchers track officers' whereabouts have recently been found covered with foil, rendering them useless and the cars invisible to monitoring. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports: A Milwaukee police captain was…
In Love with Geotagging
The New York Times recently extolled the virtues of using GPS in digital cameras and camera cellphones to "geotag" photos with the location at which they were taken: ...advocates of geotagging, like Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of the photo-sharing Web site…
Cellphone Surveillance
There has been a spurt of media attention paid to the privacy and surveillance concerns of GPS enabled cellphones: GPS Surveillance Creeps into Daily Life (New Standard) Cellphone as Tracker: X Marks Your Doubts (New York Times) Phone service allows…
With ID swipe, Big Brother bellies up to the bar
New Jersey's Star Ledger reports on the rising practice of electronically scanning drivers licenses at bars and liquor stores: It's College Night at KatManDu, a popular Trenton nightclub, and the late-arriving crowd is predictably young. Bouncers pat down male patrons…
The Disciplinary Gaze of Web Search Engines
Blogging has been light (again), as I've been preparing for my final conference trip. This time, I'm in San Antonio, TX for the 92nd Annual Convention of the National Communication Association. I'm presenting on an amazing panel titled "Visualizing Security:…
Intel Drafts Privacy License for Mobile Device Software
On the heels of Microsoft's recent release of privacy guidelines for software developers, here's an excellent example of another company working with privacy scholars to try to protect end-user privacy when using location-based mobile devices. From ComptuerWorld: Intel Drafts Privacy…
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SEM on Search & Consumer Privacy
Gord Hotchkiss, the president of a search engine marketing firm, writes what at first appears to be a thoughtful and reflective essay on how the rise of behavioral targeting within the search engine advertising market (his bread and butter): The…
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