Locating Personal Info Online
Naked in Cyberspace, How To Find Personal Information Online, 2nd Edition, reviewed by Stephen Lafferty.
Category «Privacy»
Alaska Resolution Opposes Patriot Act Surveillance
The Alaska legislature passed House Joint Resolution 22 stating “it is the policy of the State of Alaska to oppose any portion of the USA Patriot Act that would violate the rights and liberties guaranteed equally under the state and federal constitutions.” According to the ACLU, “Alaska’s resolution is the 114th of its kind to …
Gov’t Surveillance Projects Proceed Unmonitored
Experts Say Technology Is Widely Disseminated Inside and Outside Military – “Congressional efforts to rein in a Pentagon surveillance project may be ineffective because new surveillance technology is being widely disseminated both inside and outside of the military and other less visible federal offices are pursuing similar research, industry executives and computer scientists say.”
More on the DARPA Surveillance Program
From AP: Pentagon readies massive spy system, “To thwart terrorists, the Pentagon is developing a computer surveillance system that would give U.S. agents fingertip access to government and commercial records from around the world that could fill the Library of Congress more than 50 times.”
Gov’t Surveillance Programs in Spotlight
Today’s Wall Street Journal article, Data Collection Is Up Sharply Following 9/11 (subscription req’d), documents examples of the rapid acceleration and increasing sophistication of text mining programs created by private contractors to populate huge, searchable database systems. Used on both a state and federal level, these systems, which are increasingly linked via network applications, are …
Digital Rights Management: For Better Or For Worse?
Mark Stamp provides a thorough, enlightening commentary on DRM, examining applications, value and the associated controversy on the topic as it impacts commercial and consumer users in the areas of privacy and copyright.
Oregon Net Filter Bill Controversy
The USA Today reported on the status of Oregon House Bill 3101 which would eliminate state funding for libraries that refuse to install net filters for public access use of the Internet. Apparently “legislative counsel said it (the bill) is unconstitutional,” placing at least a temporary hold on this legislative initiative.
FTC Testimony on Fair Credit Reporting Act
From the FTC press release: Prepared Statement of the Federal Trade Commission on The Fair Credit Reporting Act, Presented by J. Howard Beales, III, Director, Bureau of Consumer Protection, Before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate: Text of Commission Testimony [PDF 64KB].
New Pentagon Data Mining Program
Noah Shachtman’s Wired article reveals plans for a huge new database project, purportedly under development, called LifeLog (from DARPA, sponsors of the Total Information Awareness System, renamed the Terrorism Awareness Information Program), comprised of information compiled “by tracking where people go and what they see.” In an associated reference, on May 16 I posted information …
Total Information Awareness Becomes Total Terrorism Awareness
Big news day concerning DARPA’s Total Information Awareness Program, which according to this press release, is now called the Terrorism Awareness Information Program. This change coincides with the agency’s report to Congress delivered today, with links to associated documents as follows: Guide to the Report to Congress download Executive Summary (6 pages, 30Kb, pdf) download …
EFF Files Brief in Verzion/RIAA Privacy Case
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), joined by “45 organizations (including the American Library Association) – 27 consumer and privacy groups and 18 ISPs and ISP associations,” filed a 35 page brief (pdf) on May 16 with the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, suporting Verizon’s continued refusal to reveal the name of a customer who …
Freeware Anti-Spam Program
From InfoWorld, a review of an open source anti-spam application that may be useful to a wide user community. “SpamBayes knows spam – Outlook add-in really works to block spam, and it’s free.” For more information, see the SpamBayes website, and this technical background document.
