Category «Privacy»

Florida Court Determines Unlawful Use of Spyware

Florida’s Fifth District Court of Appeal decision, O’Brien v. O’Brien, filed February 11, 2005, addressed the issue of a wife’s use of spyware to intercept her husband’s communications with another woman. The court affirmed the trial court’s finding that the electronic communications were illegally obtained. Related reference: 2004 Florida Statutes, Chapter 934, Security of Communications, …

Subjects: Courts, Legal Research, Privacy

Reasonable Notice and Search Act

S. 316: A bill to limit authority to delay notice of search warrants (By Sen. Russell Feingold [D-WI]) Introduced Feb 8, 2005. Related references: “The Reasonable Notice and Search Act revises the Patriot Act authority to delay notice of the execution of search warrants – so-called “sneak and peak” provisions – and requires the Attorney …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Legislation, Patriot Act, Privacy

Library, Bookseller, and Personal Records Privacy Act

S. 317: A bill to protect privacy by limiting the access of the Government to library, bookseller, and other personal records for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes. Introduced (By Sen. Russell Feingold [D-WI]), Feb 8, 2005. Related reference: Feingold Introduces Bills To Protect Civil Liberties – “The Library, Bookseller and Personal Records Privacy Act will …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Legislation, Libraries, Privacy

Real ID Act Passes House By Wide Margin

As a follow-up to my February 9 posting, Controversy Surrounds Real ID Act, yesterday evening the House passed the bill (96% of Republicans supporting, 78% of Democrats opposing), which “Prohibits Federal agencies from accepting State issued driver’s licenses or identification cards unless such documents are determined by the Secretary to meet minimum security requirements.” These …

Subjects: Congress, Legislation, Privacy

Controversy Surrounds Real ID Act

Press release: Sensenbrenner Introduces Terrorist Travel Legislation – Real ID Act Includes Provisions Dropped from 9/11 Legislation PFAW Opposes REAL ID Act H.R. 418: To establish and rapidly implement regulations for State driver’s license and identification. To establish and rapidly implement regulations for State driver’s license and identification document security standards, to prevent terrorists from …

Subjects: Congress, Legislation, Privacy

FCC Publishes List of Domains To Protect Cell Phones From Spam

FCC press release: “On February 7, with the cooperation of wireless carriers, the Commission published on its Web site a list of mail domain names used to send messages to wireless service. This list is to protect cellular and wireless consumers from unwanted commercial electronic mail messages by alerting marketers to which Internet domain names …

Subjects: E-Mail, Privacy, Wireless Web

Advocacy Group Releases New Privacy Tool for System Administrators

From the EFF press release: “Today the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released logfinder, a software tool to help people reduce the unnecessary collection of personal information about computer users…Such data tells a lot about a user’s browsing and email habits and…must be turned over to government entities with court orders and can be subpoenaed by …

Subjects: Privacy

Homeland Security Dept. Issues Annual Privacy Report to Congress

Via EPIC, news of the availability of the Department of Homeland Security Privacy Report to Congress, April 2003-June 2004 (112 pages, PDF): “This Report on Department of Homeland Security privacy activities…demonstrates that, through the establishment and functionality of the operations of the DHS Privacy Office, we are working to “operationalize” privacy awareness and best practices …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Government, Government Documents, Privacy

Privacy Act of 2005

S.116, Privacy Act of 2005. Introduced in Senate on January 24, 2005, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) “The Privacy Act – A comprehensive bill that would set a national standard for protecting personal information such as Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses, and medical and financial data, including information collected both online and offline. Modeled on California’s …

Subjects: Congress, ID Theft, Legislation, Privacy