Another slick animation outlining the threats of our growing surveillance society: Big Brother State (YouTube version here) [via Jeremy Hunsinger]
Category: Privacy
Justice Department Says F.B.I. Misused Patriot Act
In what should not come as that big of a surprise, AP reports: The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, a Justice Department…
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All Eyes On You: Cellphone cameras & cyber-shaming
The Montreal Gazette has a feature story on how the combination of cellphone cameras and the World Wide Web has resulting in the rise of "cyber-shaming" - a new kind of public shaming for wrongdoers, from litterbugs and bad drivers…
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Judge Restricts New York Police Surveillance of Public Spaces
A federal judge ruled that the police must stop the routine videotaping of people at public gatherings. Reversing (and clarifying) an earlier ruling, the judge stated that such public surveillance is allowable only if there was an indication that unlawful…
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House Introduces Privacy Bill Foursome…With One Runt in the Litter
27B Stroke 6 outlines four important pieces of privacy-protecting legislation that have either been recently introduced or received new life in the Democratically-controlled House of Representatives: * The Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act, introduced by Dingell and…
Read More House Introduces Privacy Bill Foursome…With One Runt in the Litter
University Professor Chastised For Using Tor
Here's a chilling first-person account of a university professor who was asked to stop using the anonymizing network software, Tor. University IT and campus security staffers came knocking on Prof. Paul Cesarini's door asking why he was using Tor, and…
Cellphone Cameras That Zoom…What would Warren & Brandeis Think?
MIT's Technology Review has a brief article about advances in zoom technology for cellphone cameras. This adds a new dimension to the privacy and surveillance threats cellphone cameras pose. We experienced a major advancement in camera zoom technology around the…
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Another Court Ruling on GPS Tracking without Warrant
Two years ago I blogged about a very chilling precedent from an upstate New York federal judge who ruled that police can secretly attach Global Positioning System (GPS) devices to a suspect’s vehicle without a warrant, stating that suspects had…
Read More Another Court Ruling on GPS Tracking without Warrant
TiVo and User Privacy
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that TiVo is collecting and selling data on what parts of broadcasts people are rewinding for review and what commercials they are skipping. Dubbed "StopWatch," this data-collection practice reflects the growing ease with which various…
Google’s Master Plan (Video)
Here's a slick video by some German students about privacy concerns with Google's ability to collect personal information. Little heavy on conspiracy theories (Google DNA?), and totally lacking in any theoretical analysis (that's what my dissertation is for), but nice…
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