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From Reuters: “The U.S. Senate voted on Thursday to cut off funding for a widely criticized computer-surveillance program that would comb travel records, credit-card bills and other private records to sniff out suspected terrorists. In a military spending bill it passed unanimously, the Senate forbade the Defense Department to spend any portion of its $369 …
Tech Guide: Keeping The Government Happy: “As tough new privacy protections are put in place, lessons are emerging about savvy ways to keep regulators at bay.” Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) National Do Not Call Registry
According to an article in today’s Wired: “Southeast Airlines said it plans to install digital video cameras throughout the cabins of its planes to record the faces and activities of its passengers at all times, as a precaution against terrorism and other safety threats. In addition, the charter airline, based in Largo, Florida, will store …
The FTC’s Do Not Call Registry has garnered considerable press and more than 25 million registrants. A recent survey from Insight Express indicates that consumers are eager for a similar program to address spam: “83 percent of consumers said that the government should roll out a similar ‘do not spam’ list that they can use …
Three Things You Don’t Want to Know About Your Personal Information: “Online merchants are frantically sucking up every scrap of information they can get about consumers, but consumers know next to nothing about what happens to that information.” Also see New Annenberg Report Examines Americans’ Understanding of Online Privacy. Yahoo! and Your Personal Information: “Yahoo’s …
From FCW.com: “The State Department is developing a passport that contains biometric technology to authenticate the identities of U.S. citizens who travel abroad.” Also see, Vendors boost biometrics for homeland. “In a trusted traveler program, such as one proposed as part of the Transportation Security Administration’s Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS) II, a passenger …
Social Security Numbers: Ensuring the Integrity of the SSN, by Barbara D. Bovbjerg, director, education, workforce, and income security issues, before the Subcommittee on Social Security, House Committee on Ways and Means. GAO-03-941T, July 10. Highlights.
Video Surveillance: Information on Law Enforcement’s Use of Closed-Circuit Television to Monitor Selected Federal Property in Washington, D.C. GAO-03-748, June 27. Highlights.
Picking Up the Pieces: “People perceive it (the paper shredder) as an almost perfect device,” said Jack Brassil, a researcher for Hewlett-Packard who has worked on making shredded documents traceable. If people put a document through a shredder, “they assume that it’s fundamentally unrecoverable,” he said. “And that’s clearly not true.” For more detailed documentation, …
Shooting Ourselves in the Foot – Grandiose Schemes for Electronic Eavesdropping May Hurt More Than They Help, by Robert X. Cringely.
‘Partial’ Information Awareness is an article published on January 9, 2003, authored by Wayne Crews, director of technology studies at the Cato Institute. He states: “It’s one thing to give up privacy for security if there’s no other choice. With TIA we may be sacrificing privacy for no security benefit at all. And potential unintended …
From Secrecy News: in a July 14 statement, the White House “urges the Senate to remove the provision (from the 2004 Defense Appropriations Act) that prohibits any research and development for the Terrorism Information Awareness Program. This provision would deny an important potential tool in the war on terrorism.” See my related posting, Total Information …
