Lifehacker links to a useful tool for obfuscating personal data entered in (non-vital) registration forms online, the False Identity Generator: The False Identity Generator is a simple, web-based tool that generates a random first and last name, a valid city,…
Category: Internet
Mine Data Not Details
Wired News is carrying an AP report of the workshop on the Data Surveillance and Privacy Protection I attended at Harvard University’s Center for Research on Computation and Society a few weeks ago, where a common theme was coming up…
Balkin: The Public Private “Handshake” and the National Surveillance State
My greatest concern about the collection of personal information by search engines, web 2.0 services, transportation systems and the like isn't that certain individual companies happen to own a slice of my data, nor that these slices are increasingly being…
Read More Balkin: The Public Private “Handshake” and the National Surveillance State
Google Joins NSA’s Other Northwest Neighbors
The NY Times reports that Google has built a "computing center as big as two football fields, with twin cooling plants protruding four stories into the sky" on the Oregon-Washington border. Yahoo and Microsoft both have large processing centers about…
Obfuscation as a Solution to Web 2.0 Data-Mining Threat
Alice Marwick provides useful thoughts on the privacy and data-mining issues surrounding the sharing of personal data on Web 2.0 apps. She shares three common "solutions" to the "problem" of teenagers' divulgence of personal information: 1. Young people should stop…
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Does Using Skype Authorize NSA Spying?
A Skype user over at Grain of Salt has discovered an interesting caveat in the "To whom does Skype transfer Your personal information?" section of their privacy policy: Except as provided below, Skype shall not sell, rent, trade or otherwise…
Don’t be Hypocritical: Google Upset at MSFT’s Default Browser
According to the New York Times, Google has been expressing concerns about the fact that Internet Explorer 7’s search box will ship with Microsoft’s MSN Search as the default search engine: Google, which only recently began beefing up its lobbying…
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Advertisers Data-Mining on MySpace
Chris Hoofnagle is attending the Ad:Tech San Francisco conferences on new advertising technologies, where he has found "several trends that have serious privacy implications." Among these is the gathering data from social networking sites like Friendster and Myspace for marketing…
Jack Balkin: What is Access to Knowledge?
Jack Balkin has posted his opening remarks at the Access to Knowledge conference at Yale Law School. In them, he makes three points about the theory of access to knowledge: First, Access to Knowledge is a demand of justice. Second,…
Access to Knowledge
This weekend I will be attending an international conference on Access to Knowledge hosted by the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. From their site: In the digital era, most multinational corporations and policymakers are of the view that…
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