Archive for the ‘Privacy’ Category
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
Building an Online Bulwark to Fend Off Identity Fraud
Identity fraud has been on the rise, as criminal cunning may be mixing with desperation during the downturn. Schemes seem to multiply daily, as scammers often half a world away dream up new ways to steal data to enrich themselves. According to Javelin Strategy and Research, 9.9 million Americans were victims of identity theft in 2008, up from 8.1 million in 2007.
With all kinds of private information residing in all kinds of places, vigilance can be difficult. Using caution when surfing the Internet and keeping antivirus software up to date are vital steps, experts say, but they are not enough. And most tools for fighting identity fraud — credit-monitoring services, fraud alerts and credit freezes — are reactive, not proactive, and they primarily address abuse of financial accounts, not other types of identity fraud.
But a new breed of products is tackling the trickier matter of preventing identity theft. New approaches include scouring the Internet in search of signs that criminals have your information, so you can move to block them. Others focus on keeping your data away from criminals in the first place, locking it down while you bank, shop or do other personal tasks online. Here are some ways to keep your information yours.
Source: New York Times
Posted in Privacy, Search News, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
Some Courts Raise Bar on Reading Employee Email
Big Brother is watching. That is the message corporations routinely send their employees about using email.
But recent cases have shown that employees sometimes have more privacy rights than they might expect when it comes to the corporate email server. Legal experts say that courts in some instances are showing more consideration for employees who feel their employer has violated their privacy electronically.
Driving the change in how these cases are treated is a growing national concern about privacy issues in the age of the Internet, where acquiring someone else’s personal and financial information is easier than ever.
Source: Wall Street Journal
Posted in Legal, Privacy, Search News | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
From the Wired Story:
Confused by all the proposed changes to the Patriot Act ricocheting through the Capitol? The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) has put together a handy chart comparing the current law with the various amendments in the House and Senate.
The chart compares proposed amendments (.pdf) to National Security Letters (NSLs) and the so-called “lone wolf” provisions of the Patriot Act. The proposals have only been passed by the judiciary committees, and face further amendments before they hit the full House and Senate for votes.
+ Direct to the Amendments Chart (7 pages; PDF)
+ Access the Complete Wired Story
Much more on the proposed amendments.
Source: Threat Level (Wired)
Source: Wired
Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, Legal, Privacy | No Comments »
Friday, November 6th, 2009
From an ACM TechNews Summary
Researchers from Rovira i Virgili University, Autonoma of Barcelona, and Oberta of Catalonia have developed a system that protects the privacy of Internet search engine users through a new computer protocol. “It is a model based on cryptographic tools, which distort the profile of users when they use search engines on Internet in such a way that their privacy is preserved,” says Rovira i Virgili University’s Alexandre Viego. The researchers note that there are systems that provide anonymous navigation, but say their system provides a significant improvement in response time over anonymous systems, though it still delays searches slightly. The new protocol has already been tested in both closed research center intranets and on the Internet, and the results have made the researchers optimistic about a global implementation model. The researchers are currently working on the development of a final user version, and believe that it will soon be easy to integrate the system into the major platforms and browsers.
Read the Complete News Item
Source: AlphaGalileo
Posted in Privacy, Technology and Internet, Web Search | No Comments »
Thursday, November 5th, 2009
From the Article:
At a European privacy conference in Spain Thursday, the company unveiled a new service called Google Dashboard that summarizes the data that Google collects in users’ accounts for products like Gmail, Picasa Web Albums, Web History, Checkout, Reader and YouTube. Users will be able to adjust their privacy settings for the various Google products directly from the dashboard.
Much of the information was previously available in the accounts and settings sections for each product, so Dashboard simply brings all that information together in one place.
[Snip]
[Our emphasis] Dashboard provides information only about users’ Google accounts for products that require users to log in or products where the log-in is optional. It does not address the search records of people who are not logged into Google or the cookie data that Google uses to aim ads at people. Many advocates say that the collection and storage of such data may raise the biggest privacy concerns.
[Snip]
Still, privacy advocates hailed the product.
“It is a significant step forward in terms of trying to unite the user experience for people who use Google products,” said Ari Schwartz, chief operating officer of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an independent advocacy group that receives some funding from Google and other technology companies. “We still need a lot more to protect consumers’ privacy.”
Access Google Dashboard
Source: Bits Blog, NY Times
See Also: Search Engine Land
Posted in Information Industry, Privacy | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
Global Phishing Survey: Trends and Domain Name Use in 1H2009 (PDF; 673 KB)
The battle against phishing is a seesaw contest. On one side are the phishers, looking for better ways to steal money and Internet users’ personal data. On the other side is an array of security and software providers, financial institutions, and other like-minded parties who fight back with counter-measures of their own. While phishing remains a dangerous criminal activity involving great losses of money and personal data, the latest statistics also show that phishing has not increased by some measures, and that some anti-phishing measures have had a beneficial impact.
This report attempts to understand the scope of the global phishing problem, especially by examining domain name usage and phishing site uptimes. Specifically, this new report examines all the phishing attacks detected in the first half of 2009 (1H2009) — between January 1, 2009 and June 30, 2009. The data was collected by the APWG and supplemented with data from several phishing feeds and private sources. The APWG phishing repository is the Internet’s most comprehensive archive of phishing and e-mail fraud activity. Our data confirms new and ongoing trends, and we hope that bringing them to light will lead to improved anti-phishing measures.
Source: Anti-Phishing Working Group
Posted in Privacy, Search News, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
Sunday, October 25th, 2009
Social Networking – Legal and Ethical Issues for Lawyers and Investigators
Should an investigator or attorney “friend” a prosecution witness in order to find impeachment evidence? Are there legal or ethical bars to surreptitiously gathering data from social network profiles? Should the intent of the user have any bearing on the formulation of law related to access? These and more questions were stirred up in the mix of case studies presented at the (first, annual?) symposium, Social Networks: Friends or Foes? Confronting Online Legal and Ethical Issues in the Age of Social Networking, sponsored by UC Berkeley School of Law. Yeah, a long title but, hey, these folks are academics. And the case studies constituted just the first panel (”Problems Unique to Social Networking and the Law”) of an extraordinary assemblage of academic, government, activist, policy and practicing lawyers rounding out the 5-panel day.
Much of the discussion concerned access to profile content, – the difference between civil and criminal (where there’s the familiar prosecution/defense imbalance) cases – whether certain information should be private even if it can be viewed by unintended parties. For example, should employers be able to view deleted personal information? No one mentioned the issue of whether schools have a legal right to compel students to turn over their user names/passwords (See: “Area School Wants Access To Students’ Social Networking”). There may be instances when a legal requirement for disclosure would apply. Lauren Gelman, Executive Director, Stanford Law, Center for Internet and Society, raised the question of whether evidence in the online sites could be used, say, in divorce cases, to support evidence gathered by other means. The Deputy General Counsel for Facebook took the position that user’s profile content is private, begging the audience to sue the company to settle issues of access.
See: Social Networks: Friends or Foes
Source: PI Buzz
Posted in Legal, Papers and Presentations, Privacy, Search News, Social Media, Source File, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Friday, October 23rd, 2009
Access the Statement (2 pages; PDF)
On October 20, 2009, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Representatives Jerrold R. Nadler (D-NY) and Bobby Scott (D-VA) introduced the USA PATRIOT Amendments Act of 2009 (H.R.3845). The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the American Library Association (ALA) believe that this bill contains
necessary and important reforms to the powers created by the USA PATRIOT Act.
Several provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act are set to expire on December 31, 2009 unless Congress acts to reauthorize them. This “sunsetting” provides lawmakers with an
opportunity to revisit the USA PATRIOT Act and address the numerous shortcomings and abuses that have come to light in the years since its passage. The Senate Judiciary
Committee took up these issues recently with disappointing results. Senator Feingold’s excellent proposals for comprehensive reform, which ARL and ALA endorsed, were
passed over in favor of a minimal bill that would offer library patrons some limited protections for their offline activities, but does little else to address deep concerns with
the original USA PATRIOT Act. The full Senate has yet to vote on a bill.
Access the Complete Statement (2 pages; PDF)
Source: ARL/ALA
See Also: ALA: House takes lead with strong surveillance reform bills
You will find links to track the legislation via GovTrack.us
See Also: Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
Disappointed in Patriot Act Revisions
Two librarians from Vermont are featured in this report.
Posted in Access to Information, Libraries and Librarianship, Privacy | No Comments »
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
From the Blog Post:
The USA Patriot Amendments Act of 2009 (H.R. 3845) and the FISA Amendments Act of 2009 (H.R. 3846), introduced into the House of Representatives Tuesday, would together systematically reform our national surveillance laws.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee failed to pass a bill that would restore the balance between protecting civil liberties and ensuring law enforcement has the tools it needs to fight terrorism, but leaders in the House have boldly stepped up to reopen the public debate on these challenging issues and address the need for reform,” American Library Association (ALA) President Camila Alire said.
[Snip]
H.R. 3845 calls for reform to Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, often referred to as the library provision, by improving the standard for issuing a Section 215 order, providing recipients of Section 215 orders with the ability to immediately challenge both the underlying order and any gag order associated with it, and prohibiting a request for Section 215 records to a library or bookseller for documentary materials that contain personally identifiable information concerning a patron.
[Snip]
“Libraries have been on the receiving end of both Section 215 orders and NSLs, and we know reform is needed to these broad, sweeping policies in order to prevent the abuse of these tools and to protect innocent Americans from the unwarranted surveillance, collection and retention of their personal information,” Alire said.
Read the Complete Blog Post
Source: American Library Association District Dispatch
See Also: Track the Legislation (Free) Using the Powerful GovTrack.us.
+ Track H.R. 3845 (Note the Numerous Tracking Options on the Right Side of the Page)
+ Track H.R. 3846
Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, Privacy | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
From the Interview:
([Bob] Kinzel, [Reporter, Vermont Public Radio] The controversy started when [Senator Patrick] Leahy [D-VT] offered a second version of the bill that didn’t include all of the protections of his first plan. He says he did this because the stronger provisions received very little support in his committee. When the changes were adopted, the Library Association withdrew its support for the legislation.
Senator Sanders says he doesn’t care for the changes either:
(Sanders) “I’m not happy with the language as it currently stands.”
([Bob] Kinzel, [Reporter, Vermont Public Radio] Sanders says it’s possible to fight terrorists and protect civil liberties.
(Sanders) “I would also hope that everybody in this country respects the Constitution of this nation and that you don’t go on fishing expeditions and tapping people’s phones or securing the books that they’re reading or going into the websites that they are looking at without evidence that you have reason to believe that they are involved in terrorist activities. That’s what the issue is.”
Also interviewed are:
+ Trina Magi, Reference and Instruction Librarian, Library Associate Professor at the University of Vermont.
+ Gail Weymouth, Chairperson, Intellectual Freedom Committee, Vermont Library Association and Library Direct, Sherburne Memorial Library, Killington, VT.
+ Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
Much More of the Report via the Transcript or Listen Online/Download the Complete Report.
Source: Vermont Public Radio
Posted in Access to Information, Privacy | No Comments »
Monday, October 19th, 2009
Consumer Data Broker ChoicePoint Failed to Protect Consumers’ Personal Data, Left Key Electronic Monitoring Tool Turned Off for Four Months
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. This failure left the door open to a data breach in 2008 that compromised the personal information of 13,750 people and put them at risk of identify theft. ChoicePoint has now agreed to a modified court order that expands its data security assessment and reporting duties and requires the company to pay $275,000.
In April 2008, ChoicePoint (now a subsidiary of Reed Elsevier, Inc.) turned off a key electronic security tool used to monitor access to one of its databases, and for four months failed to detect that the security tool was off, according to the FTC. During that period, an unknown person conducted unauthorized searches of a ChoicePoint database containing sensitive consumer information, including Social Security numbers. The searches continued for 30 days. After discovering the breach, the company brought the matter to the FTC’s attention.
The FTC alleged that if the security software tool had been working, ChoicePoint likely would have detected the intrusions much earlier and minimized the extent of the breach. The FTC also alleged that ChoicePoint’s conduct violated a 2006 court order mandating that the company institute a comprehensive information security program reasonably designed to protect consumers’ sensitive personal information.
+ United States of America (for the Federal Trade Commission) v. ChoicePoint Inc.
Source: Federal Trade Commission
Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, Information Industry, Legal, Privacy, Search News, Source File, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
Personal financial records found in Dumpster
Authorities from both the Tampa Police Department and the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office are looking into how files containing private financial information ended up in two Dumpsters.
The owner of a hair salon, Claudia Dozier, discovered the documents as she was taking out the trash behind her business, Hair Visions Salon, south of Temple Terrace. Dozier called a television reporter, who determined that they were mortgage applications belonging to Creative Financial Services of Tampa Bay Inc., a mortgage lending company.
Source: St. Petersburg Times
Posted in Privacy, Search News | No Comments »
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
Metadata Ethics Opinions Around the U.S.
Metadata is loosely defined as “data about data.” More specifically, the term refers to the embedded stratum of data in electronics file that may include such information as who authored a document, when it was created, what software was used, any comments embedded within the content, and even a record of changes made to the document.
While metadata is often harmless, it can potentially include sensitive, confidential, or privileged information. As such, it presents a serious concern for attorneys charged with maintaining confidentiality — both their own and their clients. Professional responsibility committees at several bar associations around the country have weighed in on attorneys’ ethical responsibilities regarding metadata, but there is no clear consensus on the major metadata issues. To help track current views on metadata and ethics, we’ve assembled the following chart.
Source: American Bar Association Legal Technology Resource Center
Posted in Cataloging and Metadata, Legal, Privacy, Source File | No Comments »
Monday, October 12th, 2009
From the Article:
Sen. Patrick Leahy is finding himself at odds with privacy-protecting librarians in the state — a group that usually has praise for Vermont’s senior U.S. Senator and has often worked with him in the past.
Last week Leahy’s Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve an extension of pieces of the USA Patriot Act, major parts of which have long been criticized by those librarians and others interested in protecting civil liberties, including in some cases by Leahy himself.
[Snip]
“I am feeling very disappointed,” said University of Vermont Research Librarian Trina Magi, one of the most active librarians in Vermont on privacy issues. “I don’t think the bill voted out of the Judiciary Committee comes close to meeting the hopes we had.”
[Snip]
“We are very confident in Sen. Leahy, we know he shares our concerns. I am confident he was trying to get the best legislation he could,” said John Payne, director of library and information services at St. Michael’s College and president of the Vermont Library Association. But, he added, the bill as it came out of the Senate Judiciary Committee “was very watered down.”
The chairwoman of the library association’s committee dealing with intellectual freedom, Gail Weymouth, a Killington librarian, said that the Judiciary Committee bill doesn’t offer very many additional protections for those concerned that the Patriot Act has resulted in a loss of privacy and individual rights – particularly given the reports showing how the provisions have been used.
“We appreciate what Sen. Leahy has tried to do, but it is very disturbing that the Judiciary Committee could just overlook what has been said,” said Weymouth.
“It is being so abused that it is very disturbing,” she said.
Much More in the Complete Article Including Comments from Sen. Leahy
Source: Time Argus
Posted in Privacy | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
From the News Release:
Dozens of leading academic, library, consumer advocacy, organized labor and publishing organizations joined the Open Book Alliance today in calling on Google and its litigation partners to create an open and transparent process to negotiate a settlement in the Google Book Search case. The parties published an open letter to Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, demanding that they include key stakeholders to represent the broad range of public interests in the mass digitization of books. Google and its partners abandoned a previous settlement proposed in the case after the U.S. Department of Justice and others criticized the deal and recommended that the court reject it, but Google and the plaintiff publishers continue to negotiate behind closed doors on a revised settlement proposal.
[Snip]
Joining the Open Book Alliance in calling on Google and its partners to open the process in service of the public interest are leading library associations such as the New York Library Association, the Ohio Library Council, the New Jersey Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association…
You can read the full text of the letter here. (2 pages; PDF)
Source: Open Book Alliance (via PR Newswire)
UPDATE: We’ve learned the the Open Book Alliance letter wasn’t the only letter sent today.
From an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Blog Post:
Today EFF along with the ACLU and the privacy authors and publishers they represent, the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries and the Association of College and Research Libraries, CDT, EPIC, SFLC, Professor James Grimmelman sent a joint letter to Google urging it to include privacy protections along with its reconsidered Google Book Search Settlement.
Access the complete letter here (2 pages; PDF)
Posted in Digitization Projects, Information Industry, Intellectual Property, Legal, Privacy | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
From the Computerworld Article:
Google’s Gmail and Yahoo’s Mail were also targeted by a large-scale phishing attack, perhaps the same one that harvested at least 10,000 passwords from Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail, according to a report by the BBC.
Microsoft, for its part, said late yesterday that it had blocked all hijacked Hotmail accounts, and offered tools to help users who had lost control of their e-mail.
[Snip]
The BBC also said it has seen a list of some 20,000 hijacked e-mail accounts; the list included accounts from Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, Comcast and EarthLink. The latter two are major U.S. Internet service providers.
See Also: Read the Complete BBC Article Mentioned in the Story
See Also: Thousands of Hotmail passwords leaked online (via neowin.net)
Posted in Information Industry, Privacy, Technology and Internet | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
Data Mining the Mint.com Demographic
Last week we reported on Intuit’s acquisition of personal finance site Mint.com. Now Mint Founder Aaron Patzer is lifting the curtain on a few fantastic new features–for businesses.
The most significant: Mint is now aggregating data from its 1.5 million users and mining it for personal spending trends. To demonstrate the concept, Mint launched its Trends page three weeks ago with some teaser data, like graphs about the decline of the newspaper industry and the most frugal cities in America.
Right now, access to the aggregate data, which is anonymized, is closed to the public. “Eventually, we’ll do this for researchers,” says Patzer, who hopes to create a streamlined for-pay service allowing businesses to mine the spending habits of the Mint demographic. For now, he says, Mint is open to running custom trends research on a case-by-case basis; if you’re interested, you can contact him at data[at]mint.com to get started.
Source: Fast Company
Posted in Business and Economics, Consumer Issues, Privacy, Search News, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
The following videos were recorded at the 2009 ALA Annual Conference. They’re hosted on blip.tv.
From the Blog Post:
1) “My, those novels certainly are… graphic!”
One of the most popular intellectual freedom programs in years, this panel discussion was sponsored by the ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee, Association of American Publishers, and Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Speakers: Neil Gaiman, Terry Moore, and Craig Thompson. Moderated by Charles Brownstein of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
2) “Privacy in an Era of Change”
An engrossing conversation about the status of privacy under the new administration. Cosponsored by the ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee and the ALA Washington Office. Speakers: Mary Ellen Callahan, Chief Privacy Officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; David Sobel, Senior Counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and Craig Wacker, program officer for the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media & Learning initiative.
3) “Libraries, Librarians, and America’s War on Sex”
Sex ed advocate Marty Klein discusses the importance of having sexual information available to all library users. Sponsored by the Intellectual Freedom Round Table.
4) “Intellectual Freedom on the Front Lines”
Librarians and library supporters from West Bend, Wisconsin share their perspective on the protracted censorship challenges going on in their community at this issues briefing session, sponsored by the Intellectual Freedom Committee and the Freedom to Read Foundation.
Source: OIF Blog
See Also: Banned Books Week Begins this Saturday. ResourceShelf has assembled and continues to update a growing compilation of web-based resources. You can find the compilation here.
Posted in Information Policy, Legal, Libraries and Librarianship, Privacy, Technology and Internet, Webcasts and Podcasts | No Comments »
Monday, September 14th, 2009
Facebook fights Virginia’s demand for user data, photos
The state of Virginia has backed away from its attempts to force Facebook to divulge the complete contents of a user’s account to settle a dispute over workers’ compensation, narrowly avoiding what promised to be a high-profile privacy battle in federal court.
On Monday, the Virginia’s Workers Compensation Commission said it was no longer going to levy a $200-a-day fine on the social-networking site for refusing to comply with a subpoena from an airline that previously employed a flight attendant named Shana Hensley.
Facebook had objected to the June 4 subpoena from Colgan Air–the Manassas, Va.-based company that operates under the names United Express, US Airways Express, and Continental Connection–on privacy grounds. It said federal law prohibits divulging user data in response to a subpoena, and promised to “further litigate this issue by seeking, among other things, an injunction from the federal courts.”
In principle, this isn’t a novel concept: employers and insurance companies have long used private investigators to ferret out fraud and show that someone who claims to be a virtual cripple actually participates in waterskiing competitions.
Because social-networking sites offer such information-rich glimpses into a person’s private life, insurers and employers have begun eyeing them. A personal injury lawyer in Elmira, N.Y., noted in July that an accident victim claiming to be severely injured was, thanks to Facebook, revealed to be playing in soccer games. An article last week in Business Insurance said that social-networking sites revealed exaggerated claims of injuries from a judo instructor, a bowler, and a rodeo bronco rider.
In the Colgan Air case, Facebook says it’s happy that privacy rights prevailed. “We’re pleased with the outcome and that our users’ information will be protected,” said Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt.
Source: CNET News
Posted in Access to Information, Legal, Privacy, Search News, Social Media, Source File, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
From the Article:
Says NLM [National Library of Medicine] Director Donald A.B. Lindberg, M.D., “For more than 30 years, the National Library of Medicine has funded research and development related to Electronic Health Records, including the Indianapolis Patient Care Network (see related story, “Electronic Health Records Place 1st at Indy 500.”). Given the wide variation in U.S. health-care delivery, one size is unlikely to fit all, so it is encouraging that a variety of models is being pursued.”
Source: NIH MedlinePlus Magazine
Posted in Privacy | No Comments »
