Yesterday, we mentioned that Sec. of State Clinton would be giving a speech this morning about Internet freedom. You can read a news report here. (via Washington Post)
Additionally, if you would like to view the speech, it has been archived on the State Dept. web site and is available here. Finally, a full text transcript of the speech is also available.
Source: U.S. Dept. of State / Washington Post
UPDATE: Reaction to Speech by China Ministry of Foreign Affairs
From the State Department Web Site:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will deliver remarks on Internet Freedom on Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 9:30 a.m. (EST) at the Newseum, in Washington, D.C. The remarks will be live-streamed on www.state.gov.
Secretary Clinton’s policy address will lay-out the Administration’s strategy for protecting freedom in the networked age of the 21st Century.
Today, The Guardian published a preview.
“She will lay out policy to ensure that our centuries-long traditions are preserved in the 21st century,” Alec Ross said during an online discussion today.
“Internet freedom is not just about freedom of expression, but about what kind of world we live in. Is it about one knowledge [in common] or about access to information based on where you live?”
Ross said the speech was not about China as such but was a broader exploration of internet freedom, said to be based on discussions under way before Google’s decision emerged.
[Snip]
…Rebecca Mackinnon, a fellow with the Open Society Institute, who is currently writing a book on the internet and censorship said: “The wrong message … would be something to the effect of: ‘Never fear, netizens of China, America is here to free you!’”
In a blog posting, she called for an acknowledgement of the challenge which “all governments and most companies” face in deciding how to handle the net.
Source: The Guardian
Google needs to keep hold of information about people’s search history if it is to combat the sort of hacking it experienced in China last month, the company’s top privacy lawyer, Peter Fleischer, said Tuesday.
“The unprecedented hacking [of Google's networks] and the threat of similar such attacks in the future emphasized the importance of internal analysis of logs,” Fleischer said in a telephone interview.
He added that it is essential to find an appropriate balance between respecting users’ privacy and maintaining network security. “To do that we need to open a dialog with the cybersecurity community. You can’t discuss privacy in a vacuum,” he said.
At the end of this week Google will submit a proposal to the Article 29 committee, a body comprising data protection officials from all 27 countries in the European Union, suggesting the creation of a panel of cybersecurity experts as well as privacy officials, Fleischer said.
Source: Computerworld
Microsoft Corp. Tuesday acted on its promise to tighten consumer privacy rules, saying it will limit the length of time it holds customers’ Internet search data to six months regardless of what competitors do.
The company will “delete the entire Internet Protocol address associated with search queries at six months rather than at 18 months,” it said in a blog.
The move to grant online users more privacy comes after intense negotiations with European data privacy regulators who have been pushing for all search engines to limit the time they hold personally identifiable search data to six months since early 2008.
[Snip]
Google currently stores Internet protocol addresses which can be used to identify the computer used for searches for 9 months, and deletes all cookies after 18 months.
Source: Dow Jones
The attempted Christmas Day attack on a U.S. airliner has refocused interest on the data collected by governments on international travelers, and how information sharing can be used to prevent terrorism and secure travel if properly shared and analyzed. In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States and European Union worked out agreements to expand the sharing of personal information about international travelers as a means to prevent acts of terrorism and fight international crime.
However, as a new Migration Policy Institute (MPI) report explores, negotiations on a binding international agreement that will govern the sharing of personal information for law enforcement purposes between the United States and the European Union, while high on the transatlantic policy agenda, face significant challenges.
Among them: Divergent institutional setups of U.S. and E.U. privacy agencies, conflicting views over how to guarantee privacy and personal data protection under different legal and institutional frameworks, and finding a common solution for the obligations of private companies to share information with governments.
+ Full Report (PDF; 594 KB)
Source: Migration Policy Center
A “wow” article in The Guardian about remarks made over the weekend by Facebook Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg
We’re not so sure that privacy is no longer a social norm. It sounds goofy just saying it. Privacy is still something that MANY (most) people we come across (of all ages) find very important and essential. In fact, privacy may be more important now, in the age of social networks, than ever before and even more so going forward.
Additionally, the expectation it exists with all-types of information and info providers is still and will continue to be both important, necessary, and mandatory. Since so many info pros and library users utilize Facebook, this just might be a good time for ALA and other organizations to respond (on a popular info topic, social networks) making a strong statement against Zuckerberg’s words.
These comments are also interesting for Zuckerberg, the CEO of a company currently with more than 350 million users, to make just weeks after Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, told CNBC (here’s the video), “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” Schmidt’s remarks and other comments about privacy made quite an uproar.
Also, Zuckerberg’s words come not that many weeks after his company changed their privacy settings to a loud chorus of complaints. It makes you wonder if Zuckerberg’s beliefs were used in the formation of those new policies.
If the leader of the largest social network believes this about privacy and then makes those feelings public, perhaps it’s time to move on to another social networking service. There are more than enough to choose from.
The rise of social networking online means that people no longer have an expectation of privacy, according to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Talking at the Crunchie awards in San Francisco this weekend, the 25-year-old dotcom chief executive of the world’s most popular social network said that privacy was no longer a “social norm”.
“People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people,” he said. “That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.”
Source: The Guardian
Note: In the U.S., balancing access to information (legal access to it) with privacy has been an issue long before Facebook was born. Now, with so much information being made available (often via social networks) it’s essential we get a handle on it and continue to teach its importance just like we teach critical info skills. ]
See Also: More from Marshall Kirkpatrick at RWW (Including Video)
In an interview with German magazine Spiegel, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said the company must clearly inform users of what is happening with their data.
“If this does not occur, then perhaps we will be required to step in as lawmakers,” she said.
The minister said applications like Google Street View and Google Earth, which provide satellite images of almost everything from city streets to entire countries, are “absolutely worth exploring,” with regard to data protection.
“I am bothered by this kind of rushing forward, this megalomania, which is also apparent in the case of Google Book Search,” she said, adding that the US-based internet business was becoming “a monopoly, similar to Microsoft.”
Source: Deutsche Welle
Data mining project benefits investigators, scares privacy experts
At any one time, some 750,000 pedophiles are prowling the Internet, the United Nations says. They might be lurking in chat rooms. Or swapping images of adults having sex with kids.
It’s a virtual epidemic of child pornography, and to fight it, law enforcement officers from all over are converging on a cavernous building in South Florida. Here they have access to the most advanced technology for finding pedophiles.
But this isn’t run by any government agency. The desks, computers, technology — all are provided free by a former drug smuggler named Hank Asher.
Called a “mad scientist” by one employee, Asher has made a fortune collecting public records — deeds, lawsuits, voter registrations — and combining them into databases that can be invaluable in locating people. Plug a name into Accurint, Asher’s best-known product, and you’ll see addresses, possible relatives, licenses held.
It was Asher’s technology that helped police find the Washington, D.C., snipers.
Now he is building a super computer and a database “a thousand times more powerful” than anything he has developed yet.
“I can find out way too much about you,” he says.
Source: St. Petersburg Times
Note: ResourceShelf senior editor Shirl Kennedy is a news researcher at the St. Petersburg Times.
A few weeks ago, EFF published its first draft of a Buyer’s Guide to E-Book Privacy, which summarized and commented on the privacy-related policies and behaviors of several e-readers. In that first draft we incorporated the actual language of the privacy policies as much as possible, which unfortunately created some confusion since companies generally use different language to address similar issues. We also did a few other things clumsily.
Since then, thanks to the feedback and corrections we’ve received, we’ve made some updates and corrections to the guide which we hope will make it more useful. First, we’ve re-written many of the questions and answers to provide more clarity about the behavior of each e-reader. Second, we’ve tried point out where companies’ privacy policies themselves are unclear on particular issues. And finally, we’ve made the whole thing easier to read by changing its visual layout.
Access: Buyer’s Guide to E-Book Privacy
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Congress enacted the USA PATRIOT Act soon after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The most controversial sections of the Act facilitate the federal government’s collection of more information, from a greater number of sources, than had previously been authorized in criminal or foreign intelligence investigations. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), and the national security letter (NSL) statutes were all bolstered. With the changes came greater access to records showing an individual’s spending and communication patterns as well as increased authority to intercept e-mail and telephone conversations and to search homes and businesses. In some cases, evidentiary standards required to obtain court approval for the collection of information were lowered. Other approaches included expanding the scope of information subject to search, adding flexibility to the methods by which information could be collected, and broadening the purposes for which information may be sought.
Access the Complete Report (30 pages; PDF)
Source: Congressional Research Service (via OpenCRS)
…e-reader technology also presents significant new threats to reader privacy. E-readers possess the ability to report back substantial information about their users’ reading habits and locations to the corporations that sell them. And yet none of the major e-reader manufacturers have explained to consumers in clear unequivocal language what data is being collected about them and why.
As a first step towards addressing these problems, EFF has created a first draft of our Buyer’s Guide to E-Book Privacy. We’ve examined the privacy policies for the major e-readers on the market to determine what information they reserve the right to collect and share.
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
From a News Release: (Lots of Stats)
The eYouGuide explains the concrete rights of European consumers surfing the web or shopping online, thanks to 25 years of EU consumer protection rules. Also when online, European consumers have a right to:
- clear information about prices and conditions before making a purchase;
- decide if and how their personal data is treated;
- delivery sent in 30 days after purchase;
- a “cooling-off” period of at least 7 working days after purchase during which they can change their mind;
- a minimum 2 year guarantee on products purchased;
- protection against rogue vendors, unfair contractual terms and commercial practices.
Consumers can be sure that all these rights apply on any website that ends with the suffix “.eu”. Unlike websites ending with .com or .net, a website ending with .eu (the EU top level domain opened in 2006, now at 3 million sites, IP/09/536), must be registered by a person or company established in one of the 27 EU Member States and is subject to EU laws.
More about the .eu domain.
Source: European Commission
Asa Dotzler, Mozilla’s director of community development, used his personal blog to urge Firefox users away from Google and to use Microsoft’s search engine Bing, instead. Dotzler cited privacy concerns, specifically pointing to comments recently made by Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
“I think judgment matters,” said Schmidt. “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” Dotzler then links to the Bing add-on for Firefox, stating that Bing’s privacy policy is better than Google’s (and notably fails to mention Yahoo at all).
Schmidt was talking about laws in the US, but the way he worded his beliefs did not sit well with privacy advocates—and a whole lot of other folks—including Dotzler. Microsoft has to respect the Patriot Act and other laws just as Google does, but after seeing Schmidt’s comments, Dotzler decided that Firefox users need to be reminded of Bing’s existence.
[Snip]
Dotzler’s statement further adds to the unstable relationship between Google and Mozilla. Firefox has had Google as the default search engine for years, and the default Firefox Start Page homepage is really just a rebranded Google search engine webpage. Mozilla has always made sure that the Google search engine was easily accessible from Firefox.
One of the reasons for this is that the larger majority of Mozilla’s revenue has always come from Google (about 97 percent). In November 2009, we noted that most of Mozilla’s revenue was still being generated through search deals with Google and other popular website operators (one of the reasons why Dotzler can’t simply push for Bing becoming the default search engine in Firefox).
Soure: Ars Technica
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