Category «Privacy»

E-Mail Self Defense

“Bulk surveillance violates our fundamental rights and makes free speech risky. This guide will teach you a basic surveillance self-defense skill: email encryption. Once you’ve finished, you’ll be able to send and receive emails that are coded to make sure that a surveillance agent or thief can’t intercept your email and read it. Even if you …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Mail, Free Speech, Government Documents, Internet, Legal Research, Patriot Act, Privacy

EFF – New Gmail data shows the rise of backbone email encryption

“For the past few years, EFF has been working on promoting the universal use of encryption for Internet protocols. We started by pushing major sites to switch from HTTP to HTTPS, and gave individual users ways to pull things along. Last November, we launched our Encrypt the Web Scorecard, which in addition to Web encryption, added a second focus on …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Mail, E-Records, Government Documents, Internet, Privacy

FTC Testifies on Geolocation Privacy

“The Federal Trade Commission testified before Congress on the Commission’s efforts to address the privacy concerns raised by the tracking of information about consumers’ location, as well as proposed legislation to protect the privacy of geolocation data. Delivering testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee for Privacy, Technology and the Law, Jessica Rich, Director of the FTC …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Cybercrime, E-Government, E-Mail, Government Documents, Privacy

New GAO Reports – VA Real Property, Consumer’s Data Location, DHS Intelligence Analysis, Education Grants and Promotion, Maritime Security

VA REAL PROPERTY: Action Needed to Improve the Leasing of Outpatient Clinics, GAO-14-300: Published: Apr 30, 2014. Publicly Released: Jun 3, 2014. CONSUMERS’ LOCATION DATA: Companies Take Steps to Protect Privacy, but Practices Are Inconsistent, and Risks May Not be Clear to Consumers, GAO-14-649T: Published: Jun 4, 2014. Publicly Released: Jun 4, 2014. DHS INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS: Additional Actions Needed to Address Analytic …

Subjects: Education, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Privacy

Secret Service seeks software to monitor current and historical social media data

Via NextGov: “The Secret Service is purchasing software to watch users of social networks in real time, according to contract documents. In a work order posted on Monday, the agency details information the tool will collect — ranging from emotions of Internet users to old Twitter messages. Its capabilities will include “sentiment analysis,” “influencer identification,” “access to historical Twitter data,” “ability to detect …

Subjects: Blogs, Civil Liberties, Defense, E-Government, Internet, Privacy

New on LLRX – World leading online privacy law library gets big increase in capacity

Via LLRX – World leading online privacy law library gets big increase in capacity The International Privacy Law Library on WorldLII has been expanded. The Library’s 32 databases include about 3,600 decisions of 13 privacy and data protection authorities, from New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Australia, Korea, Macau, Mauritius, the United States and …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy

NYT – N.S.A. Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images

By JAMES RISEN and LAURA POITRAS “The National Security Agency is harvesting huge numbers of images of people from communications that it intercepts through its global surveillance operations for use in sophisticated facial recognition programs, according to top-secret documents. The spy agency’s reliance on facial recognition technology has grown significantly over the last four years as the agency has turned to new …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Records, Government Documents, Internet, Legal Research, Patriot Act, Privacy

Report – Half of American Adults Data Hacked So far This Year

EPIC:  “A new report finds that 432 million online accounts in the US have been hacked this year, concerning about 110 million Americans. In the last year, 70 million Target customers, 33 million Adobe users, 4.6 million Snapchat users, and potentially all 148 million eBay users had their personal information exposed by database breaches. Earlier this month, the President’s science advisors found …

Subjects: Cybercrime, E-Commerce, E-Mail, Government Documents, Privacy

New federal database will track Americans’ credit ratings, other financial information

Washington Examiner, Richard Pollock: “As many as 227 million Americans may be compelled to disclose intimate details of their families and financial lives — including their Social Security numbers — in a new national database being assembled by two federal agencies. The Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau posted an April 16 Federal Register notice of an expansion of their joint National …

Subjects: E-Government, Economy, Financial System, Government Documents, Privacy

Free Speech Groups Issue New Guide to International “Necessary & Proportionate Principles”

News release: “As the global debate over the intelligence programs revealed by Edward Snowden approaches its first anniversary, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and ARTICLE 19 today published a new legal analysis of the Necessary & Proportionate Principles, a guiding framework for countries to apply international human rights law to communications surveillance. Currently, there are few legal …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, EU Data Protection, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Legal Research, Patriot Act, Privacy