Friday, November 1, 2013
The National Security Agency, in a mass email to press Oct. 31, presumably responding to a recent Washington Post report on the agency’s direct data monitoring of company’s like Google and Yahoo, goes all third-person self-referential on us: What NSA does is collect the communications of targets of …Thursday, October 31, 2013
States cite lack of federal progress in pursuit of privacy reformSpecial interest groups oppose federal privacy reform to prevent onerous new regulations. But this effort must, at some point, become counterproductive. A multitude of state-specific privacy frameworks that, by (federal) law, can’t …Thursday, October 31, 2013
Google “zealously” private about mystery bargeI thought this was interesting but not really worth mentioning here, until the Coast Guard visited, apparently, as USA Today reports, under a presumably Google-imposed gag order. I’m an avid Google user, incredibly open on the internet, and …Friday, October 11, 2013
One Google, two different privacy rulingsStanford researcher Jonathan Mayer, in an email to the Wall Street Journal’s Elizabeth Dwoskin and Rolfe Winkler: Courts are doing pretzel twists to slot modern electronic privacy issues into antiquated statutory schemes. Congress badly needs to update the …Thursday, August 15, 2013
Welcome to Google IslandIf you follow one link from my blog this week, make it the one above. It’s well-written and disturbingly possible-seeming.Monday, August 5, 2013
U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate AmericansJohn Shiffman and Kristina Cooke, reporting for Reuters Washington bureau: The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, …Monday, May 27, 2013
German railroad mulling anti-graffiti dronesWith US authorities pushing for easier backdoors into electronic communications systems, a network of anti-graffiti drones looks like a good front for general state-wide surveillance. The German privacy ethic runs deep, but it may provide an interesting …Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Obama May Back F.B.I. Plan to Wiretap Web UsersCharlie Savage of The New York Times: the new proposal focuses on strengthening wiretap orders issued by judges. Currently, such orders instruct recipients to provide technical assistance to law enforcement agencies, leaving wiggle room for companies …Monday, April 1, 2013
China is very serious about cyberespionageGoogle apologists like myself often answer concerns that the search-and-advertising giant can scan your email with something like “yes, but they’re doing it with robots and scrubbing it clean of all identifying information.” China, however, is not so …Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Actually, it’s not our data at allIt may illustrate your shopping habits and your life events, but the data about what you do online and with customer loyalty cards effectively belongs to the companies that sell it. And it makes them a lot of money. Don’t forget that.Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Harvard snooped on faculty emailIf you’re composing an email you don’t want someone to see, consider picking up the phone instead. Your assumptions about the privacy of email are inaccurate.Thursday, March 7, 2013
ECPA amendment would require warrant even for email older than 6 monthsReps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Ted Poe (R-Texas), and Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) are pushing an amendment to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act that would require a warrant for authorities to obtain any email, instead of …Saturday, February 23, 2013
Facebook is buying your loyalty card historyCotton Delo of Ad Age: The targeting would hypothetically enable Coca-Cola to target to teenagers who’ve bought soda in the last month, or Pampers to show ads to North Carolina residents who’ve recently bought baby products, since Facebook’s own array of …Tuesday, January 29, 2013
At Google, Constitution trumps statuteDavid Kravets quotes a Googler: “Google requires an ECPA search warrant for contents of Gmail and other services based on the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which prevents unreasonable search and seizure,” Chris Gaither, a Google spokesman, said. The …Monday, January 7, 2013
Keycard: A neat little Mac app that secures your computer by detecting the proximity of your mobile device - The Next WebMatt Brian writing at The Next Web: In our tests, I had mixed results. Initially, my iPhone continued to remain in range, meaning that if I was to walk around the office or …Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Government can still warrantlessly read older emailsThis is unfortunate. There are processes in place that are designed to ensure the preservation of various constitutional rights. The warrant process is one of the most important, and for many people email is far more ubiquitous than other forms of …Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Tor: An Anonymous, And Controversial, Way to Web-SurfTor gets a headline at WSJ.com.Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Federal Trade Commission to data brokers: Show us your dataJessica Guynn of the LA Times: The FTC wants to know what the brokers do with the information. It also wants to know if the data brokers let consumers review and correct their personal information or opt out from having their personal …Monday, December 3, 2012
Facebook Makes A Huge Data Grab By Aggressively Promoting Photo SyncJosh Constine at TechCrunch: There no big launch event yesterday because Facebook didn’t need one. In fact, it probably didn’t want one, considering it didn’t even notify bloggers like me as it usually does. This isn’t going to …Wednesday, November 28, 2012
NYPD subpoenas call logs of stolen cell phonesJoseph Goldstein, writing for the Times: Mr. Sussmann suggested that the Police Department could limit its subpoenas to phone calls beginning on the hour, not the day, of the theft, and ending as soon as the victim has transferred the number to a new …Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Grover Norquist on proposed update to Electronic Communications Privacy ActTwenty-plus years is a long time, and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act is overdue for an update. A summary of the state of things: Unfortunately these digital documents lack long-held privacy safeguards. Email saved …Monday, November 19, 2012
$22.5M FTC fine against Google for Safari trackingMichael Liedtke, writing for Associated Press: In the Safari case, Consumer Watchdog argued that the fine amounts to loose change for a company like Google, which generates about $22.5 million in revenue every four hours. It’s a very good deal for …Thursday, November 8, 2012
Twitter and Two-Factor AuthenticationTwo-factor authentication is a pain in the ass. Just ask my Google account or my Dropbox account. But it’s a no-brainer. Savvy users will flock to it, seeing the value in the headache. Less-than-savvy users don’t need to be forced into it, but Twitter is as good …Tuesday, October 23, 2012
FTC Publishes Facial Recognition GuidelinesCarl Franzen, of TPM Idea Lab: There are two cases where the FTC believes that companies need to get a consumer’s “affirmative express consent,” that is, an “opt-in,” before using information captured via facial recognition: When identifying anonymous …Monday, October 22, 2012
Sloppy SSL implementation begets Android app vulnerabilitiesDan Goodin at Ars Technica explains how researchers found that 8% of apps in a 13,500-app sample were susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. Hopefully developers will revisit their SSL implementations or, better yet, Google will update …Friday, October 12, 2012
Microsoft To Make Same Privacy Change Google Was Attacked For; No One Seems To CareThis is a good piece by Danny Sullivan of Marketing Land about the lack of coverage Microsoft’s privacy policy consolidation got this week compared to what Google got on a similar move earlier this year. Mr. …Thursday, October 11, 2012
Lawmakers blast advertisers for ignoring ‘Do Not Track’ on Microsoft’s ExplorerThe Digital Advertising Alliance, announcing they’ll ignore “do not track” browser headers: A ‘default on’ do-not-track mechanism offers consumers and businesses inconsistencies and confusion instead of …