"I fundamentally object to carving out the Internet. Let's not single out and attack the medium," said Richard Purcell, director of privacy at Microsoft, who last week showed some lawmakers the company's privacy tools in its new Internet-browser software.

Surpisingly I actually agree with this one statement, although not its motivation. Mr Purcell says this to try and stop any privacy protection. I agree because I think that the real world (magazine lists, insurance companies, supermarket shopper cards, etc.) should also be included in any protections offered. Just because these guys are not efficient at invading our privacy does not mean that they shouldn't have to act responsibly also.

Participants concede the campaign is largely pre-emptive, since none of the privacy bills pending in Congress have made significant headway. But they candidly express fears that any major privacy breach on the Internet could jump-start legislation. And the group members are increasingly concerned about the patchwork of state privacy laws passed amid broad public support for online-privacy protections.

Slashdot | "Online Privacy Alliance" Claims Privacy Too Expensive.

australianIT.com.au via news.com.au - ACCC slams Net privacy standards.

Most Australian Internet businesses have inadequate or non-existent privacy policies, the consumer watchdog has warned.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said a sweep of 229 Australian sites - part of an international sweep of 3000 sites - found fewer than three out of ten disclosed their privacy policy.

Wall Street Journal via IWon - Big companies oppose Internet-privacy moves.

NEW YORK, March 13 (Reuters) - A group of companies and industry organisations have quietly undertaken a campaign to stifle Internet-privacy legislation, the Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition on Tuesday.

Led by the Online Privacy Alliance in Washington, the loosely organised campaign was attacking legislative proposals on three fronts: identifying expensive regulatory burdens, raising questions about how any U.S. Internet law would apply to non-Internet industries, and assuring lawmakers that privacy is best guarded by new technology, not new laws, the paper said.

Members of the Online Privacy Alliance included Microsoft Corp (MSFT), AOL Time Warner Inc (AOL), International Business Machines Corp (IBM), AT&T Corp (T), BellSouth Corp (BLS) and Sun Microsystems Inc (SUNW), the paper said.

New York Times (William Safire)- via International Herald Tribune - Data Privacy: Time for Real Consent. Good commentary worth a read. The only problem is that the International Herald Tribune displays it in tiny chunks. I need to get my access to the NYT fixed (they never did respond to my emails) so I can go back to the original articles, sigh.

Newsbytes - Group Charges Government Agencies Trade Personal Data .

With some federal government agencies already burned in the last year by revelations that they plant cookies on Internet users' computers, a new report from a privacy public-policy group claims government agencies routinely trade personal user information.

Privacilla.org, an online think-tank, in a report released today said that "new government information-sharing programs have been announced more than once every two weeks."

Privacilla.org's chief, Jim Harper, characterized the study's findings as the "tip of the iceberg," and noted that the government must live by a codified set of rules to insure the proper care of personal Americans' data.

ZDNet: Interactive Week: Beware Of The E-Mail Joke Police.

A new e-mail monitoring system from SurfControl that is set for release in mid-April is able to watch incoming e-mail and block commonly reported jokes, hoaxes, spam and image attachments, as well as stop sensitive outgoing data.

The software scans incoming and outgoing messages, and can bar e-mail that contains keywords or phrases that a company selects. At that point, an Internet administrator or human resources manager with appropriate access rights can review the message and send it on, delete it or take other action.

CNN.com - Technology - Concerns remain about FBI's 'Carnivore' wiretap.

There are still plenty of legal, technical and philosophical concerns to explore with the U.S Federal Bureau of Investigation's controversial Carnivore Internet surveillance tool, according to panelists who spoke about the sniffer technology during the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference.

Some of the technical and legal points hinge on what data Carnivore is capable of capturing when it is implemented, panelists said. Carnivore, which is now referred to by the FBI as DCS1000, is a software program that monitors packets of data passing through an ISP's (Internet service provider's) network.

"The problem from legal angles is that it captures all sorts of IP (Internet Protocol) information," said panelist Mark Rasch, vice president for cyberlaw at Predictive Systems in Reston, Virginia, and the former head of the Computer Crime Unit at the U.S. Department of Justice. It can offer information such as what Web sites a user has visited, cookies, time of searches and log on/log off information, he said.

Newsbytes - WebMD Defends Privacy Protection Stance.

WebMD said that in February, after a regulatory review with outside legal counsel, the company decided that various state laws prohibited it from providing certain data to Quintiles under a data sharing agreement between the companies. Accordingly, WebMD notified Quintiles that it was exercising its right to suspend data deliveries until the data could be cleansed of elements that could enable Quintiles to identify particular patients and until other legal issues were addressed.

Quintiles then filed suit against WebMD and obtained a temporary state court order requiring WebMD to continue to deliver data, which WebMD said raised patient privacy concerns.

Federal Trade Commission - The Information Marketplace: Merging and Exchanging Consumer Data. The Federal Trade Commission will host a public workshop on March 13, 2001 to explore how businesses merge and exchange detailed consumer information and how such information is used commercially. According to a Federal Register notice to be published shortly, "The Commission proposes to explore how detailed consumer profiles -- i.e., compilations of identifying information, preference information, purchasing habits, and other information related to a particular consumer -- are created and used by entities other than third-party Internet advertising networks. In particular, the Commission plans to consider whether and how consumer profiles are created through the merger and exchange of data between companies, regardless of whether the data at issue is collected or used online or offline, and how such profiles are used  commercially. The goal of the upcoming workshop is to educate the Commission and the public about current business practices and emerging technologies."

Political News from Wired News - Want Info? Feds Happy to Share. Congress is mulling all sorts of proposed privacy legislation that would regulate privacy in business. But a new report says government poses a bigger threat to your personal privacy than does the private sector.

Each new survey says somone else is the worst one out there. The real problem is that both business and government violate the publc's right to privacy.

[ ... ]

Under the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act, government agencies must publish a notice in the Federal Register before sharing files containing citizens' personal information. But the Act only covers records involving federal benefits or federal personnel and excludes many more, including certain law enforcement and tax files.

The report comes a day ahead of a Federal Trade Commission workshop examining how businesses merge and exchange consumer information in Washington. The FTC should also examine how government collects, disperses and stores private citizens' data, Harper said.

TheStandard.com: Child Net Protection Act Will Be Put to Legal Test . The ACLU and several library associations will file twin lawsuits March 20 in an effort to overturn a law mandating software filters in schools and libraries.

Slashdot | ACLU & EPIC Will Challenge CIPA.

THE SUNDAY TIMES(UK): New camera extends watch on crime .

THE number of surveillance cameras in Britain is set to double over the next three years to 2m following Home Office approval of a new system that can be run at a fraction of the cost of existing networks.

The new system is a wireless application which employs mobile phone technology to beam pictures from cameras to portable monitoring devices such as laptops and hand-held PCs. It will cost up to 80% less than conventional closed-circuit television (CCTV) packages because it eliminates the need for expensive cabling.

[ ... ]

However, with Britain already the biggest user in the world of CCTV, civil liberties campaigners fear the growth of a Big Brother culture. An individual is already likely to be filmed by up to 300 cameras a day, according to experts.

"We are very concerned about the fact that the protection of privacy and regulation of CCTV is lagging behind new developments in technology like this," said John Wadham, the director of Liberty.

Slashdot | Even More Surveillance Cameras For England.