Newly Revealed FBI Data Abuses and the Data Retention Red Flag.
Greetings. The release of a new report detailing massive FBI abuses
of the PATRIOT Act (particularly in regard to National Security
Letters), now confirms concerns that I and others have been long
expressing about the potential abuse of retained Internet and other
data, e.g.:
Sounding the Alarm on Government-Mandated Data Retention
An Open Letter to Google: Concepts for a Google Privacy Initiative
Broad abuses of retained data are now demonstrated to be real, not theoretical, as described in this Washington Post story.
We don't yet really know the full extent of these violations, but
what has already been revealed is bad enough as a starting point.
I hope that these events will not only trigger considerable
soul-searching by those firms who voluntarily retain user activity
data, but also cause a renewed recognition of how broad mandated data
retention can facilitate, and inevitably will facilitate, such abuses
in the future.
--Lauren-- [Lauren Weinstein's Blog]
10:43:18 PM 
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