In This Section

Other Privacy Concerns

ContactPoint database of 11 million children’s details to go ahead despite security fears, 11-07-09, www.pogowasright.org
Ministers are pressing ahead with the introduction of ContactPoint to every local authority in the country after claiming that a pilot project has proved a success.

Google Dashboard lifts curtain on stored data, 11-4-09, news.cnet.com
Google is proving to be well aware of the uneasiness among the public over the increasing amount of data it stores from users of its services.

Article: From Privacy To Liberty: The Fourth Amendment After Lawrence, 10-31-090, www.pogowasright.org
This Article explores a conflict between the protections afforded interpersonal relations in Lawrence v. Texas and the vulnerability experienced under the Fourth Amendment by individuals who share their lives with others.

California Court Rejects Class Action Based on Data Collection for PII Aggregation Purposes, 10-29-09, www.pogowasright.org
On Friday, the California Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, certified for publication its October 8 opinion in Pineda v. Williams-Sonoma, the most recent in a string of decisions regarding California’s Song-Beverly Credit Card Act of 1971, California Civil Code § 1747.08.

LA Council Insists On Security Breach Penalty As It Oks Move To Google’s ‘Cloud’, 10-27-09, www.pogowasright.org
The Los Angeles City Council voted today to move the city’s 30,000 email users to a system provided by Google, but only after a provision that the city be compensated if there is security breach in the data held on Google’s servers.

Privacy, free speech, and the PATRIOT Act: First and Fourth Amendment limits on national security letters, 10-26-09, www.pogowasright.org
Congress’s passage of the Patriot Act after 9/11 expanded the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) information-gathering authority to issue national security letters (NSL). Without any judicial review, the FBI issues NSLs to telecommunications providers

TD Ameritrade settlement rejected, 10-26-09, www.databreaches.net
Josh Funk of Associated Press reports that Judge Vaughn Walker has rejected the settlement offer by TD Ameritrade. The settlement was in response to a hack in 2006 nd 2007 which exposed customer contact information on 6.3 million clients.

FTC settles latest charges against ChoicePoint, 10-19-09, www.databreaches.net
ChoicePoint, Inc., one of the nation’s largest data brokers, has agreed to strengthened data security requirements to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that the company failed to implement a comprehensive information security program protecting consumers’ sensitive information, as required by a previous court order.

Cyberthieves find workplace networks are easy pickings, 10/10/09, www.databreaches.net
Byron Acohido provides a write-up of some of the TJX and Heartland Payment Systems incidents that emphasizes the point that many hacks go undetected or unnoticed — and that cyberthieves often take considerable time to start and continue stealing data.

Hannaford breach case not over yet, 10/07/09, www.databreaches.net
Just as a potential class-action lawsuit against Hannaford Bros. appeared dead, there’s a glimmer of hope this week for consumers who hope to recover damages from the Scarborough-based grocer for a massive electronic data theft in late 2007 and early 2008.

Airport developments: strip searches, Clear program, 10/07/09, www.pogowasright.org
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has plans to greatly expand its use of whole body imaging machines at airports around the country.

Lawsuit challenges California’s mandatory DNA collection at arrest, 10/07/09, www.pogowasright.org
A lawsuit filed today by the ACLU of Northern California seeks to stop California’s policy of mandating that DNA is collected from anyone arrested for a felony…

Telephone Company Is Arm of Government, Feds Admit in Spy Suit, 10/08/09, www.wired.com
The Department of Justice has finally admitted it in court papers: The nation’s telecom companies are an arm of the government — at least when it comes to secret spying.

850,000 doctors could be hit by potential data breach from insurer’s stolen laptop, 10/06/09, _www.databreaches.net
Emil Berry reports on a recent breach that was originally described as affecting “tens of thousands” of people. Now it appears that the breach was much bigger.

Breach reports involving paper records increase – ITRC, 10/01/09, www.databreaches.net
The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) has released an interim report that reveals that breaches involving paper records appear to be increasing significantly compared to last year while the number of incidents involving electronic records has not showed a similar increase.

Anonymization FAIL! Privacy Law FAIL!, 08/14/09, www.pogowasright.org
Computer scientists have recently undermined our faith in the privacy-protecting power of anonymization, the name for techniques for protecting the privacy of individuals in large databases by deleting information like names and social security numbers.

Tentative settlement between govt and FL on sale of DMV records, 08/25/09, www.pogowasright.org
The Associated Press is reporting that Florida Governor Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet have agreed to pay the federal government $1.5 million to settle charges that the state violated…

Privacy and Crime: In UK, Two Convicted of Refusing To Decrypt Data, 09/12/09, www.slashdot.org
ACKyushu clues us to recent news out of the UK, where two people have been successfully prosecuted for refusing to provide authorities with their encryption keys…

Court’s Steroid Ruling Pumps Up Computer Privacy, 09/26/09, www.wired.com
A divided 11-judge federal appeals court panel has dramatically narrowed the government’s search-and-seizure powers in the digital age, ruling Wednesday that federal prosecutors went too far…

Congress Mulls Research Into a Vehicle Mileage Tax, 09/15/09, www.slashdot.org
US Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) introduced H.R. 3311 earlier this year to appropriate $154,500,000 for research and study into the transition to a per-mile vehicle tax system

Unlearned Lessons of ChoicePoint, Four Years Later, 09/11/2009, www.pogowasright.org
It’s been four years since data broker ChoicePoint acknowledged the data security breach that put it in the middle of a media firestorm and pushed data protection to the top of the infosecurity community’s priority list.

Erin Andrews: Peeping Tom video made her ‘stalking victim’, 09/13/09, www.pogowasright.org
The victimization of Erin Andrews through the peeping tom video, at first as an unknowing victim and then as a fully cognizant and mortified victim…

Judge dismisses suits over nude photos, 09/05/2009, www.pogowasright.org
Yet another court case involving nude photos on a cell phone.

Ca: ICBC admits snooping into jurors’ private files, 05/14/2009, www.pogowasright.org
A B.C. Supreme Court judge has chastised the Insurance Corporation of B.C. for checking the accident claims histories of jurors in a recent civil court case.

What Google knows about you, 05/11/2009, www.computerworld.com
Google may know more about you than your mother does. Got a problem with that?

Essays on Deep Packet Inspection and Privacy, 04/05/2009, www.pogowasright.org
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada invited a series of essays on deep packet inspection and the interplay between privacy, data protection and modern network technologies.

New CyberSecurity Bill Raises Privacy Questions, 04/03/2009, www.slashdot.org
“The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (PDF) gives the president the ability to ‘declare a cybersecurity emergency’ and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any ‘critical’ information network ‘in the interest of national security.’

Major tech companies to drop support for comprehensive U.S. privacy law, 03/05/2009, www.pogowasright.org
In the summer of 2006, a who’s who of technology and Internet companies garnered headlines when they formed the Consumer Privacy Legislative Initiative.

Face Recognition – Clever Or Just Plain Creepy?, 02/28/2009, www.slashdot.org
…The skinny: iPhoto is fun, Google is creepy.

Privacy Group Calls Google Latitude a Real ‘Danger’, www.slashdot.org
“Privacy International is calling Google’s new mapping application an ‘unnecessary danger’ to users’ security and privacy.

White House acts to limit YouTube cookie tracking, 1/23/2009, www.pogowasright.org
Just 12 hours after this blog highlighted the privacy problems associated with the White House’s use of embedded YouTube videos, the Obama team rushed to deploy a technical fix that significantly protects the privacy of many (but not all) of the site’s visitors.

New guidelines push agencies to build in IT security controls upfront, 11/21/08, www.pogowasright.org
Guidelines on evaluating information security at agencies soon will be revised to better address concerns about protecting personal information and to incorporate risk assessments into processes for building computer systems…

Schneier sticks it to surveillance, 11/19/08, www.pogowasright.org
Security guru Bruce Schneier has challenged the view that privacy and security are at loggerheads, suggesting the real debate is between liberty and control.

Colorado state Web site dishes out SSNs of top execs, 10/09/08, www.pogowasrigt.org
The Web site of the Colorado Secretary of State is making available the Social Security numbers and other personal data of numerous CEOs…

We have no evidence that the data have been misused, 10/06/08, www.pogowasright.org
The next time you read a statement that a breached entity has found no evidence of data misuse, remember this: data may have been misused even though entities are unaware of it.

Data “Dysprotection:” breaches reported last week, www.pogowasright.org
A recap of incidents or privacy breaches reported last week for those who enjoy shaking their head and muttering to themselves with their morning coffee

FBI Seizes Library Computers Without Warrant, 8/3/08, slashdot.org
Two FBI agents walked into a public library in Maryland, without a warrant, and walked out with two computers.

Nissenbaum: ‘Privacy in Context,’ 04/03/08, www.pogowasrigiht.org

Calculate Your ‘Digital Footprint’ with New Tool from EMC, 03/24/08, www.pogowasright.org

FTC Deal Suggests Enterprises Could Be Liable for Poor Security, 3/17/08, www.pogowasright.org

OR: Whistleblower Claims Salem Clinic Mishandled Patient Info, 02/29/08, www.pogowasright.org

TJX Reports Soaring Profits One Year After Breach Disclosure, 02/20/08, www.pogowasright.org

Federal Government to American Public: Our Data is DEFINITELY Not Safe, 02/20/08, www.pogowasright.org

Smile, You’re on a Bar Webcam, 02/19/08, www.news.com

Public Health Surveillance in the Twenty-First Century: Achieving Population Health Goals While Protecting Individuals’ Privacy, 2/15/08, Georgetown Law Journal

US Set to Use Spy Satellites on US Citizens, 2/13/08, yro.slashdot.org

123People.com – Find All About that Special Someone, 2/04/08, www.killerstartups.com

Voter Privacy is Gone – Get Over It, 1/31/08, www.pogowasright.org

ChoicePoint Settles Data Breach Lawsuit, 1/27/08, www.pogowasright.org