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News release: “The Federal Trade Commission released a staff report Facing Facts: Best Practices for Common Uses of Facial Recognition Technologies for the increasing number of companies using facial recognition technologies, to help them protect consumers privacy as they use the technologies to create innovative new commercial products and services…Facial recognition also has raised a …
TSA Removes X-Ray Body Scanners From Major Airports: “The replacement machines, known as millimeter-wave scanners, rely on low-energy radio waves similar to those used in cell phones. The machines detect potential threats automatically and quickly using a computer program. They display a generic cartoon image of a person’s body, mitigating privacy concerns…Here’s a side-by-side comparison …
News release: “The Federal Trade Commission today issued the National Do Not Call Registry Data Book for Fiscal Year 2012. The FTCs National Do Not Call Registry lets consumers choose not to receive telemarketing calls. In its fourth year of publication, the Data Book contains a wealth of information about the Registry for FY 2012 …
EPIC: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation has exempted the FBI Data Warehouse System, from important Privacy Act safeguards. The database ingests troves of personally identifiable information including race, birthdate, biometric information, social security numbers, and financial information from various government agencies. The database contains information on a surprisingly broad category of individuals, including “subjects, suspects, …
Mobile Device Location Data – Additional Federal Actions Could Help Protect Consumer Privacy, GAO-12-903, Sep 11, 2012 “Using several methods of varying precision, mobile industry companies collect location data and use or share that data to provide users with location-based services, offer improved services, and increase revenue through targeted advertising. Location-based services provide consumers access …
Hoofnagle, Chris Jay, Urban, Jennifer M. and Li, Su, Privacy and Modern Advertising: Most US Internet Users Want ‘Do Not Track’ to Stop Collection of Data about their Online Activities (October 8, 2012). Amsterdam Privacy Conference, 2012. Available at SSRN. Most Americans have not heard of ‘Do Not Track,’ a proposal to allow Internet users …
Public Intelligence: “The following is an instruction accompanying DHS Policy Directive 110-01 Privacy Policy for Operational Use of Social Media that was enacted in June 2012. The policy directive itself is only three pages and provides little information, whereas this instruction for the policy is ten pages and includes rules for compliance with the directive. …
“Through a Freedom of Information Act request to the Federal Trade Commission, EPIC has obtained Google’s initial privacy assessment. The assessment was required by a settlement between Google and the FTC that followed from a 2010 complaint filed by EPIC over Google Buzz. The FTC has withheld from public disclosure information about the audit process, …
Naomi Gilens: “Justice Department documents released today by the ACLU reveal that federal law enforcement agencies are increasingly monitoring Americans electronic communications, and doing so without warrants, sufficient oversight, or meaningful accountability. The documents, handed over by the government only after months of litigation, are the attorney generals 2010 and 2011 reports on the use …
EFF: “Weve been seeing a range of reports about Facebook partnering up with marketing company Datalogix to assess whether users go to stores in the physical world and buy the products they saw in Facebook advertisements. A lot of the reports arent getting into the nitty gritty of what data is actually shared between Facebook …
News release: “Seven rent-to-own companies and a software design firm have agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they spied on consumers using computers that consumers rented from them, capturing screenshots of confidential and personal information, logging their computer keystrokes, and in some cases taking webcam pictures of people in their homes, all without …
Airport Body Scanners: The Role of Advanced Imaging Technology in Airline Passenger Screening. Bart Elias, Specialist in Aviation Policy, September 20, 2012 “Responding to the need to reliably detect explosives, bomb-making components, and other potential security threats concealed by airline passengers, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has focused on the deployment of whole body scanners …
