Issues – Page 63 – MichaelZimmer.org

CDT: Stronger Laws Needed to Protect Privacy

Posted by Michael Zimmeron March 4, 2006in Information Law & Policy, Privacy, Values In Design

A new report by the Center for Democracy & Technology details a widening gap between the technology that collects sensitive personal data and the laws designed to protect that data against government misuse. The National Security Agency's domestic spying program,…

Panoptic sorting…with a twist of lime

Posted by Michael Zimmeron March 4, 2006in Internet, Privacy

In his disucssion of the rise of everyday surveillance, Oscar Gandy describes systems that enable "panoptic sorting," discriminatory technologies which surveil all information about an individual’s status and behavior to use in the profiling and categorization of a person’s potential…

John Sexton’s Wikipedia Article

Posted by Michael Zimmeron March 2, 2006in Information Ethics, Internet

I was quoted in today's Washington Square News about recent edits to NYU President John Sexton's article on Wikipedia. Since the recent labor disupte with the Graduate Student Organizing Committee, various additions were made to Sexton's page that, IMO, violated…

Google moving search records out of China

Posted by Michael Zimmeron March 2, 2006in Information Ethics, Search Engines1 Comment

At Monday's panel on “The Ethics and Politics of Search Engines”, Peter Norvig, Google's director of research, stated that Google is moving the databases they keep of Chinese searches outside of the country in order to prevent China's government from…

NYT: US Looking for New Ways to Mine Your Data

Posted by Michael Zimmeron February 25, 2006in Internet, Privacy, Values In Design

Today's New York Times features the article "Taking Spying to Higher Level, Agencies Look for More Ways to Mine Data," which focuses on government meetings with venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, hoping to find or develop advanced technologies…

Poll: 60% Oppose Companies Permanently Storing Users’ Search Behaviors

Posted by Michael Zimmeron February 23, 2006in Privacy, Search Engines

A University of Connecticut Poll on Government Investigation of Internet Search Engines reveals that 60% of respondents oppose search engine companies permanently storing users’ search information. Additionally, 0nly 13% feel “extremely” or “very” confident that the search behavior collected will…

Federal Court: Financial Institution Has No Duty To Encrypt Customer Databases

Posted by Michael Zimmeron February 21, 2006in Information Law & Policy, Internet, Privacy

Bruce Schneier reports that a Federal Court has ruled that a financial institution has no duty to encrypt customer databases under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley statute. From the article:In a legal decision that could have broad implications for financial institutions, a court…

Amateur Data Mining: The Case of the Lost (Stolen) Camera

Posted by Michael Zimmeron February 21, 2006in Internet, Privacy

I've blogged about the concerns with commercial data aggregation, the power of data mining, and about how "security via obscurity" no longer applies when databases are online and searchable. Here's a case showing just how easy it can be for…

Thoughts on “growing anti-Google sentiment and what is fueling it”

Posted by Michael Zimmeron February 20, 2006in Information Ethics, Internet, Search Engines, Values In Design3 Comments

I recently received a request from a journalism graduate student to comment on a story about "growing anti-Google sentiment and what is fueling it" and about "how Google's principles have changed, and how the public is reacting to this switch."…

Protect Your Regime with iRepress

Posted by Michael Zimmeron February 18, 2006in Information Ethics, Internet, Search Engines, Values In Design

Mark Fiore's latest cartoon satirizes the activities of US search engine companies contributing to the Great Firewall of China: "Protect Your Regime with iRepress - with Powerful Democracy Filtering!"