Critics warned that there is too much of a threat to Americans' privacy rights if Intelligent Mail is applied to all mail.

"You have to question the Big Brother aspect of the government being able to document who is writing who," said Rick Merritt, executive director of the Virginia Beach-based advocacy group PostalWatch. "There will be some serious privacy concerns if it becomes mandatory that all mail be sender identified."

The proposal contradicts the Postal Service's cherished notion of anonymous correspondence, said "Ari Schwartz", associate director of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C.

"There is a rich history in this country around the concept of anonymous mail that goes back to the Federalist Papers," Schwartz said, referring to the documents anonymously authored by the nation's founding fathers which helped sway public opinion in favor of ratifying the Constitution.

"There are way too many unknowns about expanding this idea beyond its original scope, including who would have access to the information, and what this would mean for tracking individuals in the future," Schwartz said. "We just haven't dealt with those questions yet."

"Banning anonymous speech through the mail would be a major revolution," said Peter Swire, former chief privacy officer during the Clinton administration, now a law professor at Ohio State University.

Zoe Strickland, the Postal Service's chief privacy officer, declined to discuss specifics of the report, citing an ongoing internal review of the recommendations.

"Privacy is a major value with us, and we will make sure those values are integrated into any program, including Intelligent Mail," Strickland said.

securitas writes "The President's Commission on the U.S. Postal Service's final report (PDF) has recommended that the USPS and the Department of Homeland Security develop sender identification technology for all U.S. mail. The commission said Intelligent Mail could bolster security and let consumers track the progress of all mail they send, which has been a top consumer demand in surveys. The report released July 31 reads, "Each piece of Intelligent Mail will carry a unique, machine-readable barcode (or other indicia) that will identify, at a minimum, the sender, the destination, and the class of mail... Intelligent Mail will allow the real-time tracking of individual mail pieces." Privacy advocates like the EFF and Center for Democracy & Technology are understandably concerned. The Final Recommendations are available in PDF format. More at Direct Marketers News and pro-privacy/civil liberties magazine Counterpunch." --- Jamie adds: This confuses me, because I read a news story in late 2001 which matter-of-factly explained that authorities would be contacting recipients of letters which went through a particular post office around the same time as an anthrax envelope. The implication, which I haven't seen any discussion of then or since, is that records are kept of every letter's travels through every post office. Anyone know anything about that? Update: mec does.

Jenny found us a tasty morsel (Flash) at Netparents.swf

Gee, maybe libraries are being forced to filter the wrong terminals. Maybe it's the adults we should be aiming to protect....

The convergence of privacy-invading technologies and Washington's appetite for surveillance have put civil liberties on the run. This is especially true in the war against terrorism.

Controversial initiatives have included biometric face cameras, wiretap enhancements, invasive computer-assisted airline passenger screening, escalated e-mail monitoring fostered by the USA Patriot Act, and the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness data-mining project (now renamed the "Terrorism" Information Awareness, or TIA). Even a national ID card was proposed.

In the right circumstances, data-mining technologies and "biometrics" -- such as voice prints, retina, iris and face scanners, digitized fingerprints, and even implantable chips -- can benefit us. That's because data-mining and biometrics, at least in principle, are about enhancing convenience, service, authentication, and individual security more than they are about invading privacy. Biometrics, for example, promises increased privacy and security by guarding against identity theft in our myriad marketplace transactions. We'll see their use in cell phones, laptops, car doors, doorknobs and office keys -- basically everywhere. They can increase security in online commerce, help locate a lost youngster, relay medical information to doctors, and much more.

But inherently "invasive" technologies like these can threaten fundamental values of privacy and liberty if misused. No one wants to be treated like a human bar code by the authorities, or monitored around the clock by the Homeland Security Department. Thus, we need a framework by which to distinguish appropriate and inappropriate uses or surveillance-enabling technologies.

The most pressing threat to liberty is a compulsory database encompassing everyone. Examples are a mandatory National ID with biometric identifiers, or involuntary data-mining like the TIA that would permit real-time monitoring of our whereabouts, movements and transactions. This is a Big Brother scenario, one of constant surveillance or harassment of citizens unrelated to addressing terrorist threats. You can't opt-out.

The government's enforcement of privacy laws is uneven at best, with federal agencies lacking any way to detect unauthorized reading, altering or disclosing of personal information from about one-fifth of agency files, congressional investigators said Wednesday.

The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded that enforcement is so spotty that "the government cannot assure the public that individual privacy rights are being protected."

More than one in four federal agencies, or 29 percent of those surveyed by the GAO, did not have procedures to ensure that personal data about individual Americans that they disclosed to nonfederal groups was complete, accurate, relevant and timely, as required by the Privacy Act of 1974.

The key supporters of a software-licensing bill that critics say promotes corporate rights over those of consumers have, in the face of mounting opposition, decided to quit lobbying for its enactment.

The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA), drafted four years ago, is meant to protect software developers from intellectual property theft by resolving conflicting software licensing laws that vary from state to state.

But critics have complained that the proposed laws favor corporate interests over those of consumers. They say it grants software makers too much freedom in restricting the use of their products and in dictating settlement terms for conflicts.

[ ... ]

"The debate is not just 'politics,'" Braucher added. "There are fundamental policy problems with UCITA."

Yet UCITA is not completely dead and buried, legal experts say. Because it's on the books in two states, courts across the country could be influenced by it, according to Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"However, the prevailing wind right now is against UCITA," von Lohmann said. "We think that's a good thing."

A new mobile service will let UK users pinpoint another person's physical location at all times, based on the individual's mobile phone signal.

[ ... ]

In recognition of the civil liberties concerns of such technology, Carphone Warehouse stresses that handset owners must consent to be tracked: the person to be located will receive a text message asking for their permission before the service commences. Subsequently, the person being tracked will also receive regular text messages to remind them they can be located.

The system works by pinpointing the unique identifier of a specific mobile and then triangulating the data between the network towers that send and receive to and from the handset. Fundamentally the system is based on the same principle that has been used by the military to pinpoint enemy transmissions since World War II.

Similar ideas are expected to be rolled out in the near future, including personal Global Positioning Services which are much more accurate and can be carried either on the person or in a moving vehicle.

Facing increasing resistance and concerns about privacy, the United States' largest food companies and retailers will try to win consumer approval for radio identification devices by portraying the technology as an essential tool for keeping the nation's food supply safe from terrorists.

The companies are banding together and through an industry association are lobbying to have the Department of Homeland Security designate radio frequency identification, or RFID, as an antiterrorism technology.

[ ... ]

Experts estimate industry could save billions of dollars each year in inventory and logistical costs with RFID. Trouble is, privacy advocates see RFID as a massive invasion of privacy. They say the technology would let retailers, marketers, governments or criminals scan people -- or even their houses -- and ascertain what they own. The technology hasn't been rolled out widely yet, but already it's causing controversy. Earlier this summer, Wal-Mart caved to protests and pulled radio-tagged items out of a store in Brockton, Massachusetts.

To win the hearts and minds of consumers, retailers and food and drug companies may portray the technology as an antiterrorist tool. They say the technology can help them keep precise track of all goods and help in recall efforts should their products be contaminated or laced with poison during a terrorist attack.

The Auto-ID Center, an RFID consortium, presented its technology to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge in Washington, D.C., last year. In fact, many Auto-ID Center sponsors consider Ridge's blessing to be key to public acceptance. An internal presentation by Fleishman-Hillard, the powerhouse PR firm that advises the center, lists Ridge as a "top-tier opinion leader." And the minutes (PDF) of another meeting, attended by a representative of the Department of Defense, records a group statement that the technology will catch on "when the government mandates it for homeland security reasons."

The center also has targeted Sens. John McCain and Patrick Leahy, and Reps. Charles Dingell and Billy Tauzin, for recruitment to help Americans overcome their suspicions about RFID tags on consumer goods.

[ ... ]

But not all legislators on Capitol Hill are buying into RFID tags, especially when they see companies playing the terrorism card to gain acceptance for the technology.

"We would never support legislation to prevent businesses from using RFID the way they want to," said Jeff Deist, a spokesman for Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who is a staunch privacy rights advocate. "That's a question for the marketplace. But once the Homeland Security Department gets involved, that's another story entirely."

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- A computer hacker gained access to private files at Acxiom Corp., one of the world's largest consumer database companies, and was able to download sensitive information about some customers of the company's clients, the company said Thursday.

``The data on the servers was a wide variety of information, some of which was personal, some of which was not,'' Jennifer Barrett, the company's chief privacy officer, said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday. The AP was notified of the intrusion by an anonymous caller who would not identify himself or his connection with the company.

Barrett said the company did not know about the breach until a law enforcement agency from Ohio contacted it last week. (ed. emphasis added)

Barrett said both the hacker and the stolen information are in police custody. She said about 10 percent of the company's customers were affected and that, ``it would include some of our larger customers.''

Little Rock-based Acxiom manages consumer databases for a variety of companies, including several Fortune 500 firms. Among its clients are Microsoft Corp., IBM, Sears Roebuck and Co., AT&T, General Electric and Bank of America. Acxiom's Web site says the company serves 14 of the top 15 credit card companies, seven of the top 10 auto manufacturers and five of the top six retail banks.

Barrett would not name the specific clients affected, but said the company had contacted them.

She said less than 10 percent of the files on a single server were affected and that the company knows what information was stolen. Acxiom has thousands of computer servers.

Acxiom spokesman Dale Ingram said it was unclear whether the clients had contacted the individuals whose information was affected. ``Each client will have to look at it and see what communication, if any, would be necessary,'' he said. (ed. emphasis added)

Barrett said the individual in police custody is a former employee of one of Acxiom's clients and that the information was stolen while the person had legitimate access to Acxiom servers.

`They used that access to hack into the passwords of other clients,'' she said.

Google Search: hacker Acxiom

fermion writes "The NYT(FRR) and others are reporting that a hacker has broken into a Acxiom server. Acxiom evidently is "one of the world's largest consumer database companies" and serves most top credit card companies and retail banks. There are a few items that stand out in this case. First, Acxiom had no idea that the breach occurred until the company was contacted by the police. Second, the theft was an inside job. The suspect, now in police custody, was an employee with legitimate access to the information. It amazes me that a such a company would have such lax security as to allow an insider to browse supposedly private data at will. Third, the company is taking no responsibility for the break in other than reporting it to the clients, who then may or may not inform their customers." --- Acxiom is a Certified Participant in the BBBOnline Privacy Program.