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From MSN Money, two articles that address the conflicts inherent in current and proposed state and federal privacy legislation focused on the distribution of personal financial data. Congress ready to undo state privacy laws. See H.R. 2622, to amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The top 10 states for protecting privacy
Hearing Before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate on “P****graphy, Technology, and Process: Problems and Solutions on Peer-to-Peer Networks.” September 9, 2003. [this site provides links to all available testimony] In particular, see the testimony of William Barr, Exec. VP and General Counsel, Verizon Communications(who served as Attorney General of the United States …
From PCWorld.com, this article has some useful information about malicious applications that can bypass your firewall and clutter your computer screen with unwanted ads and plug-ins. Suggested solutions include the use of programs, available in free and fee versions, that identify and delete stealthware (including Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-aware 6).
Via the EFF, as provided by Ira P. Rothken: “A lawsuit was filed today on behalf of the general public of the State of California against the RIAA for unfair, deceptive, and unlawful business practices regarding its “Clean Slate” program. This lawsuit below seeks a remedy to stop the RIAA from engaging in unlawful, misleading, …
According to a WSJ article today, the RIAA contends that the target of its current spate of 261 lawsuits, filed around the country, are individuals who have compiled substantial libraries of pirated music, comprising 1,000 or more songs, which were then made available via file sharing programs such as Kazaa and Grokster. The RIAA has …
Sen. Norm Coleman, who has taken an active interest in the agressive efforts by the music industry to prevent music downloading, issued a statement on September 8 responding to the RIAA’s amnesty program, which said in part: “The newly proposed “amnesty” is clearly a strategy by the industry to address some of the concerns I …
A committee of the Society of American Archivists, in conjunction with various associations representing imaging services providers, are evaluating new standards for a modified form of PDF, called PDF-A (for Portable Document Format Archive), which they propose as an option for the long-term storage of electronic documents.
Continuity and Change in Support for Civil Liberties after the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks, (47 pages, pdf) is the second part of a national survey (by Michigan State University), conducted between January and May 2003, which queried the same group of 679 individuals as the first survey undertaken in the months immediately after the 9/11 attacks. …
The Alias Among Us: The Homeland Security and Terrorism from Document Fraud, Identity Theft and Social Security Number Misuse, Senate Finance Committee Hearing, September 9, 2003 (this site provides links to testimony by seven witnesses as well as committee members). From GCN.com’s coverage of this hearing: “the General Accounting Offices Robert J. Cramer (Managing Director, …
Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS II), to be implemented by the summer of 2004, is the focus of several recent articles and notices: From the Washington Post, Fliers to Be Rated for Risk Level – New System Will Scrutinize Each Passenger, Assign Color Code Opinion from the St. Petersburg Times, Fly the suspicious skies: …
A Guide to the Patriot Act, Part 1 – Should you be scared of the Patriot Act? proclaims there are villans on both side of the fight over the extension of this act, as well as its proposed progeny, the Victory Act (as the Patriot Act II was quickly dispatched while still in draft). This …
From Boston.com, another article focused on public library efforts to maintain the privacy of their patron’s usage records: “The public library in Boulder, the home of the University of Colorado, has adopted one of the country’s most aggressive policies to keep circulation records private. The library keeps a bare minimum of information on books that …