Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of People For Internet Responsibility, has written an open letter to Google outlining "Concepts for a Google Privacy Initiative." Highlights include: Increasingly, Internet users are becoming highly sensitized to both perceived and real risks to their privacy…
Read More Lauren Weinstein: Concepts for a Google Privacy Initiative
CIO.com features this column about how the reach of search engines shatters the myth of "security through obscurity": A month or so ago, I was on the phone with Leonard Fuld, who’s known for his work in competitive intelligence, about…
University of Colorado police have posted online pictures of 150 people (Internet Archive page) smoking pot on the "420" day celebration and are offering a $50 reward for anyone who can identify them. An interesting plea for peer-based surveillance and…
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…
I found this commentary about reports that Microsoft and Yahoo are building massive data storage facilities near a large NSA data-mining facility in rural Washington, and thought I should reproduce it in its entirety. It is simultaneously funny and scary:Microsoft,…
With tools like Google Toolbar, Google Analytics, Web Accelerator, Adsense and Adwords, Google has a variety of means of collecting information about where users browse (with Toolbar & Accelerator, they can track your browsing off of Google properties as well).…
This San Francisco Chronicle article notes that the Google municipal wi-fi service will require users to create a Google account and log on to access the free service. While (savvy) users can create anonymous accounts, requiring a login makes it…
Read More Google Wi-Fi requries Google Account; Info Held 6 Months
Following up on these privacy concerns with municipal wi-fi programs, I am beginning to wonder to what extent the providers of muni-wi-fi (such as Google) might be considered "state agents" when it comes to the collecting of personal information via…
Susan Crawford has an excellent post that expresses much more intelligently what I've been thinking about lately regarding some of the privacy implications of social networks and other online information services, noting how "social networks are rich minefields for privacy…
Chris Hoofnagle points to a very important article in the Nation by Jeff Chester discussing the privacy costs of many of the proposals for municipal wi-fi, including Google's plan for San Francisco. The benefits of muni-wi-fi are great, but proposals…
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