I'm pleased to announce that the publication of The Next Digital Decade: Essays on the Future of the Internet—a unique collaboration among 26 thought leaders on Internet law, philosophy, policy and economics from a wide variety of perspectives. I feel…
Read More The Next Digital Decade: Essays on the Future of the Internet
Last week I attended Internet Research 11.0: Sustainability, Participation, Action, the 11th annual conference for the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), in Gothenburg, Sweden. This is the conference I look forward to the most each year, thanks to the steady…
Read More Debrief: Internet Research 11.0 Conference (Gothenburg, Sweden)
A few days ago I blogged about how I was able to check my wife into a local liquor store using Facebook Places without her permission, despite Facebook's insistence that "No one can be checked in to a location without their explicit permission". This check-in has remained visible in my news feed, and depending on my privacy settings, may be viewable by any logged in Facebook user. Presumably there also is a database at Facebook that contains a record of my checking-in my wife into this location. Again, all without my wife's explicit consent to participating in this new "feature". Now, four days later, my wife had a chance to react to the notification she received from Facebook regarding my tagging her, and I thought I'd share a few more reactions to her attempt to opt-out of Places altogether.
It was confirmed last week that Google is acquiring Like.com, a visual search engine that focuses on helping people shop for clothing and accessories online. While most stories are spinning this as Google's attempt to improve its product search engine…
Read More Google Acquires Like.com, and its Facial Recognition Technology
Facebook has finally launched its location-based service: Places. Places allows Facebook users to "check in" wherever they are using a mobile device, and let's their friends know where they are at the moment. Facebook has tried to do a better job addressing privacy with Places compared to previous launches of new "features". Particularly, Facebook brags that "no location information is associated with a person unless he or she explicitly chooses to become part of location sharing. No one can be checked in to a location without their explicit permission." But as I've played around with the service, I've uncovered a problem with Facebook's assertion that "no one can be checked in to a location without their explicit permission."
On Wednesday, July 21, 2010, I will be presenting in front of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP), part of the Office for Human Research Protections in the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). My presentation will focus on how Web 2.0 tools, environments, and experiences are creating new conceptual gaps in our understanding of privacy, anonymity/identifiability, consent, and harm.
Recently we learned that Google's Street View vehicles gathered people's private communications on their home WiFi networks as they drove by snapping photos. Initially, Google denied it was collecting or storing any payload data, but later admitted that it had, in…
Read More Google on Wi-Fi Privacy Invasions: “No Harm, No Foul”
Please join us for the UW-Milwaukee Center for International Education's 2010 conference, "Law and Disciplinarity: Thinking Beyond Borders," which will take place on April 23-24 at UWM's Hefter Conference Center. Registration is free and open to the public. Law and…
Read More Law and Disciplinarity: Thinking Beyond Borders (UW-Milwaukee, April 23-24)
I am pleased to announce that I've joined a diverse coalition of privacy groups, think tanks, technology companies, and fellow academics in an effort to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to better reflect the realities of modern communication…
Read More Digital Due Process: Modernizing Surveillance Laws for the Internet Age
Facebook recently announced a variety of proposed changes to its Privacy Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. The changes to these governing documents point to the following matters, each with its own unique privacy implications: hints of a new location-based service, clarifying that sharing with "Everyone" means everyone, and, most notably, that Facebook may share your visible data directly with certain third party websites. This final point has gotten significant attention, but would like to point out a few aspects of Facebook's new language that reveals -- yet again -- that Facebook simply fails to understand the nature of privacy, especially in our online information ecosystem.
MichaelZimmer.org 
You must be logged in to post a comment.