EPIC Urges Congress to Adopt Privacy Safeguards for Locational Data: Via EPIC - Electronic Privacy Information Center .

Today, EPIC submitted comments for an upcoming joint hearing on "The Collection and Use of Location Information for Commercial Purposes." EPIC cited the growing uses of location data for advertising and tracking purposes, typically without any legal protections, and noted widespread support among US and European consumer organizations for clear protections. EPIC recommended that Congress establish strong rules, similar to those in the European Union Eprivacy Directive, that would give users meaningful control over their locational data. EPIC had previously recommended that the F.C.C. establish guidelines for the protection of users' locational privacy. For more information, see EPIC: CPNI.

Read Original Article:(Via EPIC - Electronic Privacy Information Center .)

Google Alters Buzz Service Over Privacy Concerns - NYTimes.com: Via NYTimes.com .

Google moved quickly over the weekend to try to contain mounting criticism of Buzz, its social network, apologizing to users for features that were widely seen as endangering privacy and announcing product changes to address those concerns.

Todd Jackson, product manager for Gmail and Google Buzz, wrote in a blog post on Saturday that Google had decided to alter one of the most-criticized features in Buzz: the ready-made circle of friends the service provided to new users based on their most frequent e-mail and chat contacts in Gmail. Instead of automatically connecting people, Buzz will in the future merely suggest to new users a group of people they may want to follow or be followed by, he said.

Mr. Jackson, who said that the auto-follow feature had been intended to make it easy for people to get started on Buzz, acknowledged the criticism that was heaped on Google in the last few days.

“We’re very sorry for the concern we’ve caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback,” Mr. Jackson wrote. “We’ll continue to do so.” [ Read more ... ]

FTC complaint says Facebook's privacy changes are deceptive: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.

Facebook claimed it was doing the world a favor when it updated how the site handles privacy settings earlier this month, but the change has done nothing but get the company in even more hot water. Amid heavy criticism from rights and privacy groups, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the changes that it says mislead users and "contradict Facebook’s own representations." [ Read more ... ]

EPIC - The Nomination of Judge Sotomayor: Via EPIC - Electronic Privacy Information Center.

On May 26, 2009, President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David H. Souter on the Supreme Court. Judge Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University where she also was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and won the Pyne Prize, the top prize for undergraduates. She attended Yale Law School where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. She joined the New York District Attorney's Office immediately upon graduating. Judge Sotomayor then entered private practice, eventually becoming a partner at Pavia & Harcourt. She specialized in intellectual property litigation, international law, and arbitration. [ Read more ... ]

ACLU Presents Arguments Today For Congressional Select Committee To Reform U.S. Surveillance Policies: Via ACLU online newsroom.

Panel Discussion On Next Steps For Domestic Surveillance Highlights Consensus Among Privacy Rights Advocates

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (202) 675-2312; media@dcaclu.org

WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union presented its reasons for Congress to establish a Select Committee to review U.S. surveillance policies at a panel discussion today entitled, “Domestic Surveillance: Next Steps.” As a panelist, Michael MacLeod-Ball, Chief Legislative and Policy Counsel for the Washington Legislative Office, talked about the need to reform intrusive surveillance powers which have resulted in the misuse of national security letters, untracked administrative subpoenas issued by the FBI that do not require going through a judge, as well as the wasteful use of taxpayer dollars spent monitoring peaceful law-abiding protestors in Maryland and Texas. [ Read more ... ]

DHS Release Fusion Center Report: Via Privacy.org - The Source for News, Information, and Action

The Department of Homeland Security has released the Privacy Impact Assessment for the State, Local, and Regional Fusion Center Initiative. The assessment examines the privacy implications of the State, Local and Regional Fusion Centers and the DHS' State and Local Program Management Office. In May, EPIC prevailed in its freedom of information request to disclose documents describing the federal government's involvement in efforts to limit Virginia's transparency and privacy laws and uncovered a secret contract between the State Police and the FBI that limits the rights of Virginia citizens to learn what information the State Police collect about them.

Read Original Article ( Via Privacy.org - The Source for News, Information, and Action. )

Online Privacy Group Seeks Role in Mapping Out Policy: Via

A group of privacy scholars, lawyers and corporate officials are launching an advocacy group today designed to help shape standards around how companies collect, store and use consumer data for business and advertising.

The group, the Future of Privacy Forum, will be led by Jules Polonetsky, who until this month was in charge of AOL's privacy policy, and Chris Wolf, a privacy lawyer for law firm Proskauer Rose. They say the organization, which is sponsored by AT&T, aims to develop ways to give consumers more control over how personal information is used for behavioral-targeted advertising.

Internet companies have come under fire for tracking consumers' online habits in order to tailor ads relevant to their interests. Lawmakers have held several hearings this year to examine online privacy protections. [ Read more ... ]

Judge to Examine Warrantless Spying Docs in Chambers - Via Threat Level:

The government's legal rationales for warrantless spying on Americans must be given to a federal judge to examine in his chambers in order to decide whether parts of the documents should be released under government sunshine requests, a federal judge ruled last Friday.

The ruling(.pdf) by Washington D.C. Circuit Court judge Henry Kennedy, Jr. marks a partial win for the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the ACLU which sued for the documents' release under the Freedom of Information Act. Kennedy will decide what portions of the ten documents at issue will be released to the groups.

The government has refused to release the documents, which were mostly created by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. That office is responsible for deciding what policies are legal for government employees to follow. John Yoo, then a little known conservative lawyer, worked in that office and crafted opinions that legalized the warrantless surveillance program and the government's torture policy. [ Read more ... ]

Freedom Not Fear 2008 - Via EFF.org Updates:

Freedom Not Fear is the world's ongoing demonstration against the encroachment of civil liberties by anti-terrorist laws -- particularly in the online world. This year the protests take place this Saturday, October 11th in nearly thirty countries, including the very first events in the Americas.

The origin of the campaign comes from Europeans' anger at the EU's 2006 data retention directive, a pan-European law that requires ISPs to log email and web traffic data for a minimum of six months, and often more. Terabytes of personal data on millions of innocent Europeans are now being collated, paid for by customers and taxpayers, and open for access by any criminal or civil investigation, no matter how trivial.

Freedom Not Fear has since evolved into a more general warning: showing how fundamental freedoms like privacy, freedom of expression, and democratic participation lose when reactionary surveillance systems penetrate our open networks, justified by a hyperbolic rhetoric of fear. [ Read more ... ]

Va. Domestic Intelligence Center Sued for Info - Via Threat Level:

A D.C. privacy group that is curious about the activities of a Virginia domestic intelligence center filed a government sunshine lawsuit Friday, after Virigina's so-called fusion center rebuffed its requests for documents about what the center was doing.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center's complaint (.pdf) asks a Virginia judge to force state police to cough up records about meetings with the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, especially in regards to discussions about how the center would or would not comply with state open government laws. Virginia state police denied the request, saying the documents were "criminal intelligence data."

Fusion centers are relatively new creatures on the homeland security scene and are intended to allow local and state police to combine their criminal and intelligence information with information shared by government agencies. [ Read more ... ]

PC World - Privacy Groups Oppose Microsoft-Yahoo Deal - Via PC World:

Regulatory agencies in both the U.S. and Europe must approved the proposed acquisition, which is already drawing ire.

Privacy groups are promising a fight before U.S. regulatory agencies if Microsoft 's offer to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion is accepted, and the deal could face significant hurdles in Europe as well.

Microsoft announced that it sent an offer to Yahoo' s board of directors on Thursday, going public with the news Friday morning. Immediately, the executive directors of the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said the acquisition would raise serious privacy concerns. [ Read more ... ]

Whoops! Ask.com complaint to FTC is an EPIC mistake - Via The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.com:

A zealous band of pro-regulation privacy groups made a valiant effort a few days ago to convince the Feds to forcibly pull the plug on a new feature on the Ask.com search engine.

The groups, which include the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy, told the Federal Trade Commission on Saturday that that a formal injunction was necessary to halt some supposedly pernicious practices on the part of Ask.com.

The only problem? Those supposedly pernicious practices don't actually exist.

Ask.com already had voluntarily changed the way it handled its new privacy feature weeks earlier. [ Read more ... ]

Ask.com's Privacy Tool Tracks Users, Groups Tell Feds - Via Threat Level:

A coalition of privacy groups filed a federal complaint Saturday against Ask.com, alleging that AskEraser - the company's recently unveiled search engine history anonymization tool - doesn't actually protect users' privacy and could be used to track people when they thought they were anonymous.

The groups, which include the Electronic Privacy Information Center, are asking the Federal Trade Commission to find that Ask.com is engaged in unfair trade practices by making false promises to users. The groups want the FTC to force the company to modify the program.

Specifically, the groups charge that even when the search anonymization tool is turned on, Ask.com's advertising partners -- which include Google -- are able to see and store search terms and identifiers that tie a search to an individual.

Ask.com hoped its history erasing tool would make it the privacy leader for search engines, which have only reluctantly begun loosening their hold on user data as they face increasing scrutiny from government regulators around the world.

But the limitations of Ask's privacy offering were immediately noticed by the press and privacy groups.

Ask Eraser, which can be turned on and off from Ask.com's main screen, lets individuals tell the search engine to forget. Search engines generally hang on to such data for more than a year in order to serve relevant ads and to try to make search results more personal.

Ask's tool relies on a permanent cookie on a user's computer that the company's servers rely on to know when to delete search terms. The complaint alleges that Ask Eraser's cookie requirement means that privacy-conscious users will have to turn off cookie blocking - a common, but brute force, way of ensuring online privacy.

Moreover, the groups argue that cookie includes a time stamp down to the second, which could be used as a unique identifier. [ Read more ... ]

The 2007 International Privacy Ranking - Via PogoWasRIght - Privacy News Headlines:

Each year since 1997, the US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and the UK-based Privacy International have undertaken what has now become the most comprehensive survey of global privacy ever published. The Privacy & Human Rights Report surveys developments in 70 countries, assessing the state of surveillance and privacy protection.

The most recent report published in 2007, available at http://www.privacyinternational.org/phr,
Editor: At the time I created this entry, it appears that this page still had the 2006 report. I found the actual 2007 report here http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-559597 . is probably the most comprehensive single volume report published in the human rights field. The report runs over 1,100 pages and includes 6,000 footnotes. More than 200 experts from around the world have provided materials and commentary. [ Read more ... ]

PC World - New Facebook Ad Techniques Raise Privacy Concerns: Just days after Facebook unveiled plans for a new advertising network that relies on user-provided details about themselves for marketers to target their ads, some legal experts said the system may violate privacy laws.

William McGeveran, association professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis, noted in a blog post that the new ad initiative only asks users in general whether they want to share information -- not whether they want their name and picture used in an ad for a product. The new Facebook system will serve up so-called Social Ads, which combines actions taken by a users' friends -- like a purchase, review or a service -- with an advertiser's message. These ads will appear in a user's news feeds as sponsored content or in the ad space on the site, according to Facebook. [ Read more ... ]

Federal judge faults Bush administration for excessive secrecy - firstamendmentcenter.org: news: WASHINGTON — A U.S. judge scolded the Bush administration yesterday for responding with sometimes blanket secrecy to a request for documents on its warrantless-wiretapping program.

Privacy groups and civil rights organizations sued the Justice Department last year, demanding it release documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The government refused to release most of the records, arguing that such a move could jeopardize national security and undermine terrorism investigations. [ Read more ... ]

DHS Plans Changes in Air Passenger Screening: "narramissic writes 'The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday announced plans to revamp its Secure Flight program, with the agency no longer assigning risk scores to passengers or using predictive behavior technology. In addition, the Transportation Security Administration, part of DHS, will have direct control of checking domestic passenger lists against terrorist watch lists, instead of the airlines, said DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff. [ Read more ... ]

Industry-funded Group and a Compliant THREAT LEVEL Working To Derail Google-Doubleclick Probe, Privacy Group Charges - UPDATED: "

Marc Rotenberg, who heads the Electronic Privacy Information Center, thinks a recent report from the Center for Democracy and Technology about search engine privacy and competition was designed to undercut a federal investigation launched after his organization filed a complaint about Google's proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick.

EPIC argues that the marriage of Google's text ads and tracking cookies with DoubleClick's banner ad serving technology and its tracking cookies would create a company with way too much information on and power over internet users. (Note: CDT and EPIC both have updated comments at the end of this post). [ Read more ... ]

Industry-funded Group and a Compliant THREAT LEVEL Working To Derail Google-Doubleclick Probe, Privacy Group Charges - UPDATED:

Marc Rotenberg, who heads the Electronic Privacy Information Center, thinks a recent report from the Center for Democracy and Technology about search engine privacy and competition was designed to undercut a federal investigation launched after his organization filed a complaint about Google's proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick. The group argues that the marriage of Google's text ads and tracking cookies with DoubleClick's banner ad serving technology and its tracking cookies would create a company with way too much information on and power over internet users.

Rotenberg had no kind words for Threat Level's post about the report.

Why is it so difficult to say simply and plainly, 'unlike *every other* privacy group, the Center for Democracy and Technology is funded by the businesses it purports to oversee'?

This has nothing do with meeting with industry groups or government officials, it has to do with the ethics of being paid to write PR copy and pretend it's a disinterested evaluation. [ Read more ... ]

As Web companies get smarter, privacy concerns grow - MarketWatch: Privacy and human rights groups fired their latest salvo Wednesday in an ongoing battle with Internet giants over their collection of personal data on Web users.

A trio of groups on Wednesday announced the filing of an amended complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over Google Inc.'s planned acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick.

The groups, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, say the deal will place too many details about private individuals into a single company's hands, without adequate protections.

The amended complaint gives the FTC more information about the way the "ability to behaviorally track or ... put together a dossier on a consumer is incredibly magnified because of the richness of these two data sets," U.S. PIRG program director Ed Mierzwinski said during a conference call. [ Read more ... ]

Google Deal Said to Bring U.S. Scrutiny - New York Times: An F.T.C. spokesman said yesterday that the agency did not comment on pending inquiries.

The deal, involving powerful forces in their respective niches of the online advertising business, prompted privacy advocates and competitors to raise concerns after it was announced last month. Those concerns and the deal’s size made a preliminary investigation all but certain, according to antitrust experts. [ Read more ... ]

REAL ID comments due tomorrow!:

We're coming down to the wire on a campaign to encourage public comment on the Real ID proposal! Real ID will create a massive national ID system without adequate security or privacy safeguards. It will become more difficult for people to get licenses, and it will become easier for identity thieves to access the personal data of 245 million license and cardholders nationwide. [ Read more ... ]

Privacy concerns over Google-DoubleClick deal: "

Maybe I've spent too much time in information security, but Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick scares me from a privacy perspective.

I'm not alone here. Microsoft and AT&T are already lobbying the Federal Trade Commission to scrutinize this deal (albeit their concerns go beyond privacy alone). So has the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). [ Read more ... ]

Stop REAL ID! - Privacy Coalition: "Stop REAL ID! Submit comments to the Dept. of Homeland Security by May 8th! [ Read more ... ]

Over Forty Groups Announce National REAL ID Public Campaign - Privacy Coalition

WASHINGTON, DC - Today, 43 organizations representing transpartisan, nonpartisan, privacy, consumer, civil liberty, civil rights, and immigrant organizations have joined to launch a national campaign to solicit public comments to stop the nation's first national ID system: REAL ID.

The groups joining in the anti-REAL ID campaign are concerned about the increased threat of counterfeiting and identity theft, lack of security to protect against unauthorized access to the document's machine readable content, increased cost to taxpayers, diverting of state funds intended for homeland security, increased costs for obtaining a license or state issued ID card, and because the REAL ID would create a false belief that it is secure and unforgeable. [ Read more ... ]