Smackdown: Consumer Privacy vs. Advertiser Revenue: Via CDT - Center for Democracy & Technology..

I attended Smackdown: Consumer Privacy vs. Advertiser Revenue and was expecting to hear good discussion about how advertising and targeting firms are battling with privacy groups to meet the needs of the consumer. I was a little disappointed in how little representation from the privacy end there was in the room. The panel opened with moderator Alan Chapell from BlueKai asking whom in the room represented the business side of consumer data and who was from the advocacy end. I was one of three people representing the advocacy end.

The talk began with defining what data they were talking about as panelists tiptoed around exactly what data is being taken by marketers and commented that nothing used is personally identifiable and is used to tailor a better online experience; however, the panel didn’t really discuss one of the most important questions of user data being used for marketing - how long this data is kept and stored?

Discussion from the panelists turned to how advertisers can adapt their industry practices and data practices in the changing legislative environment. The FTC’s public roundtables, in which CDT participated, were discussed as was legislation in Congress being proposed by Rep. Boucher. [ Read more ... ]

Investigators: Businesses buying your credit card number: Via NorthWest Cable News.

$10 here. $15 there. 

By putting little charges on your credit card  some companies are making tens of millions of dollars a year. These are businesses that you never gave your credit card number to.

Some consumer groups call it fraud, but it may be perfectly legal.

Christie Frison-Thornton, of Rainier, spotted a $19.95 charge just a few weeks ago.   A company called "Privacy Matters" billed her credit card.

"I thought what the heck is this? Cause I really did not have a clue," said Frison-Thornton. [ Read more ... ]

Telling Friends Where You Are (or Not): Via NYTimes.com .

Mobile services like Loopt and Google’s Latitude have promoted the notion of constantly beaming your location to a map that is visible to a network of friends — an idea that is not for everybody.

But now there is a different approach, one that is being popularized by Foursquare.

After firing up the Foursquare application on their phones, users see a list of nearby bars, restaurants and other places, select their location and “check in,” sending an alert to friends using the service.

This model, which may be more attractive than tracking because it gives people more choice in revealing their locations, is gathering speed in the Internet industry. Yelp, the popular site that compiles reviews of restaurants and other businesses, recently added a check-in feature to its cellphone application. And Facebook is expected to take a similar approach when it introduces location features to its 400 million users in coming months. [ Read more ... ]

NetFlix Cancels Recommendation Contest After Privacy Lawsuit: Via Threat Level.

Netflix is canceling its second $1 million Netflix Prize to settle a legal challenge that it breached customer privacy as part of the first contest’s race for a better movie-recommendation engine.

Friday’s announcement came five months after Netflix had announced a successor to its algorithm-improvement contest. The company at the time said it intended to expand the amount of information it gave to researchers in hopes that its recommendation system — a key part of Netflix’s customer retention strategy — would get even better. That was then followed with a warning by prominent data privacy lawyers that the new dataset was easily de-anonymized.

Those fears were highlighted in December, when an in-the-closet lesbian mother sued Netflix for privacy invasion, alleging the movie-rental company made it possible for her to be outed when it disclosed insufficiently anonymous information about nearly half-a-million customers as part of its $1 million contest. [ Read more ... ]

Advertising - Instant Ads Set the Pace on the Web: Via NYTimes.com .

Now, companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft let advertisers buy ads in the milliseconds between the time someone enters a site’s Web address and the moment the page appears. The technology, called real-time bidding, allows advertisers to examine site visitors one by one and bid to serve them ads almost instantly.

For example, say a man just searched for golf clubs on eBay (which has been testing a system from a company called AppNexus for more than a year). EBay can essentially follow that person’s activities in real time, deciding when and where to show him near-personalized ads for golf clubs throughout the Web.

If eBay finds out that he bought a driver at another site, it can update the ad immediately to start showing him tees, golf balls or a package vacation to St. Andrew’s, Scotland, often called the home of golf. If a woman was shopping, eBay could change the ad’s color or presentation. [ Read more ... ]

The Beginning of the End of Data Retention: Via EFF.org Updates.

Last week, the German Constitutional Court issued a much-anticipated decision, striking down its data retention law as violating human rights. It was an important victory for Europe’s Freedom Not Fear movement, which was formed to oppose the EU Data Retention Directive. But it was also a reminder of the political work which remains to be done to defeat it.

When the European Union first passed the Data Retention Directive in 2006, despite a hard-fought campaign by European activists, it seemed like the beginning of the end for Internet privacy. The directive sought to require telecommunications service providers operating in Europe to retain a detailed history of each of their customers' activity for up to 2 years for possible use by law enforcement; including phone calls made and emails sent and received.

The response from European citizens was swift and outraged. Under the banner of Freedom Not Fear, mass protests were held in cities all across Europe and beyond. [ Read more ... ]

Classmates.com’s Facebook Mimicking Prompts Privacy Suit: Via Threat Level.

The long-lost pal locating site, Classmates.com, has been hit with a class action privacy lawsuit alleging the company violated the law when it decided to make user profiles public in order to compete with Facebook.

The suit alleges that Classmates.com duped its paying customers in late January when it sent them an e-mail saying that members would have to opt-out of new Facebook and iPhone apps to keep their data private. That’s a massive change to the site’s privacy policy and violates federal and Washington State privacy and fairness laws, according to the suit (.pdf) filed in a Washington State federal district court March 5.

Classmates.com has long kept user information non-public, and only paying members can read e-mails sent to them by others, see ‘old friends’ on a map, and see who has been looking at their profile. While the site has some 3 million paying users, it’s been eclipsed by sites like Facebook and MySpace, which have more members, more public profiles and don’t charge.

In order to keep up, Classmates.com decided to make “public Classmates content available to people using a variety of sites and devices, including Facebook and the iPhone,” according to a January 30 e-mail sent to users. [ Read more ... ]

Zeus botnet dealt a blow as ISP Troyak knocked out: Via Computerworld Cybercrime/Hacking News.

Internet service providers linked to the notorious Zeus botnet have been taken down, knocking out a third of the command-and-control servers that run the network of hacked machines.

Two ISPs, named Troyak and Group 3, were home to 90 of the 249 known Zeus command-and-control servers. Zeus Tracker, a Web site that tracks the botnet, noticed the steep drop in servers on Wednesday morning.

The Troyak network was itself an upstream provider to six networks, known to host a large number of cybercrime servers, including Web sites used in drive-by attacks and phishing sites, according to Kevin Stevens, a researcher with SecureWorks. "There's lots of Zeus and Fragus exploit kit [sites]," he said. Whoever was behind the takedown "just decided to knock out a large area of cybercirme, and this was probably one of the easiest ways to do it." [ Read more ... ]

Better U.S. Net Rules for Iran, Cuba and Syria: Via EFF.org Updates.

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced on Monday key amendments to the regulation of United States sanctions against Cuba, Iran and Sudan.

The new provisions give a blanket license for the export of "certain services and software incident to the exchange of personal communications over the Internet, such as instant messaging, chat and email, social networking, sharing of photos and movies, web browsing, and blogging, provided that such services are publicly available at no cost to the user."

This clarification is just what EFF called for last June, and will go a long way to allay concerns that online service providers based in the U.S. cannot offer their services in those countries. Previously, despite the well-known freedom-enhancing capabilities of services like Twitter and Facebook in repressive regimes like Iran, it was unclear whether those companies could even offer their services there without falling foul of the United State's broad prohibition on the export of goods and services to these regimes. [ Read more ... ]

European Parliament Rips Global IP Accord: Via Threat Level.

The European Parliament delivered a political blow to Hollywood and the Obama administration, voting Wednesday 663 to 13 in opposition to a proposed and secret intellectual property agreement being negotiated by the European Union, United States and a handful of others.

Wednesday’s developments concerning the Anti-Counterfeiting and Trade Agreement are substantial because the European Union’s 27 countries vastly outnumber the remaining countries negotiating the deal. They are Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States. Ambassador Ron Kirk, the top U.S. trade official, is spearheading the deal that began being crafted under the George W. Bush administration.

Kirk’s office declined comment.

To be sure, there is a dispute and heavy confusion concerning whether internet service providers under ACTA would be forced to punish customers deemed copyright scofflaws by reducing or eliminating service, according to a string of leaked documents. So Parliament members also agreed Wednesday to oppose the measure if it contains so-called “three strikes” or “graduated response” policies — regardless of whether that’s now in the text.

And because of the text’s secrecy, Parliament on Wednesday also demanded (.pdf) that the private agreement still under negotiation be publicly released. [ Read more ... ]

Mobile that allows bosses to snoop on staff developed: Via BBC News.

Researchers have produced a mobile phone that could be a boon for prying bosses wanting to keep tabs on the movements of their staff.

Japanese phone giant KDDI Corporation has developed technology that tracks even the tiniest movement of the user and beams the information back to HQ.

It works by analysing the movement of accelerometers, found in many handsets.

Activities such as walking, climbing stairs or even cleaning can be identified, the researchers say.

The company plans to sell the service to clients such as managers, foremen and employment agencies.

"Technically, I think this is an incredibly important innovation," says Philip Sugai, director of the mobile consumer lab at the International University of Japan. [ Read more ... ]

New "Smart Meters" for Energy Use Put Privacy at Risk: Via EFF.org Updates.

The ebb and flow of gas and electricity into your home contains surprisingly detailed information about your daily life. Energy usage data, measured moment by moment, allows the reconstruction of a household's activities: when people wake up, when they come home, when they go on vacation, and maybe even when they take a hot bath.

California's PG&E is currently in the process of installing "smart meters" that will collect this moment by moment data—750 to 3000 data points per month per household—for every energy customer in the state. These meters are aimed at helping consumers monitor and control their energy usage, but right now, the program lacks critical privacy protections.

That's why EFF and other privacy groups filed comments with the California Public Utilities Commission Tuesday, asking for the adoption of strong rules to protect the privacy and security of customers' energy-usage information. Without strong protections, this information can and will be repurposed by interested parties. It's not hard to imagine a divorce lawyer subpoenaing this information, an insurance company interpreting the data in a way that allows it to penalize customers, or criminals intercepting the information to plan a burglary. Marketing companies will also desperately want to access this data to get new intimate new insights into your family's day-to-day routine–not to mention the government, which wants to mine the data for law enforcement and other purposes. [ Read more ... ]

Supreme Court Takes ‘Informational Privacy’ Case: Via Threat Level.

The U.S. Supreme Court is agreeing to decide how much personal information the federal bureaucracy may acquire on its workers.

The justices, without comment, decided Monday to review a lower-court decision surrounding the concept of so-called “informational privacy.” The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down intrusive background checks last year on nearly three dozen National Aeronautics and Space Administration contractors as being too invasive — calling them an unconstitutional, “broad inquisition.”

The checks sought information from any source surrounding their sex lives, finances and even drug use. The contractors being investigated were not privy to classified information. [ Read more ... ]

Major ISPs Help Fund BitTorrent User Tracking Research: Via Slashdot YRO.

An anonymous reader writes "I was scanning conference proceedings to come up with ideas for a reading group I run at my workplace, and I noticed an interesting paper from the new IEEE WIFS forensics conference. Researchers from the University of Colorado have published a technique for tracking BitTorrent users (PDF) by joining and actively probing torrent swarms using low-cost cloud computing services. They claim their methods allowed them to monitor the entire Pirate Bay torrent set for as little as $13/mo using EC2. But that's not even the interesting part. Their work appears to have been 'funded in part through gifts from PolyCipher' — a broadband ISP consortium. That's right; three major national ISPs funded this round of BitTorrent tracking research, not the MPAA/RIAA. Could this be evidence of ISP support for ACTA and a global three-strikes law?"

Read Original Article:(Via Slashdot.)

Worker ID Card at Center of Immigration Plan: Via Wall Street Journal.

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.

The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card. [ Read more ... ]

Feds Move to Break Voting-Machine Monopoly: Via Threat Level.

Citing anti-competitive concerns, the Justice Department sued Election Systems & Software in order to force the company to divest itself of the voting machine assets it obtained from Premier Election Solutions last year.

The department’s Antitrust Division, along with nine state attorneys general, filed the civil antitrust lawsuit (.pdf) in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., charging that the acquisition threatened competition. The department proposed a settlement that, if accepted, would dissolve the merger and force ES&S to sell its Premier business to a buyer approved by the Justice Department.

“The proposed settlement (.pdf) will restore competition, provide a greater range of choices and create incentives to provide secure, accurate and reliable voting equipment systems now and in the future,” said Molly S. Boast, deputy assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division in a statement. [ Read more ... ]

All Your Apps Are Belong to Apple: The iPhone Developer Program License Agreement: Via EFF.org Updates.

The entire family of devices built on the iPhone OS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) have been designed to run only software that is approved by Apple—a major shift from the norms of the personal computer market. Software developers who want Apple's approval must first agree to the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement.

So today we're posting the "iPhone Developer Program License Agreement"—the contract that every developer who writes software for the iTunes App Store must "sign." Though more than 100,000 app developers have clicked "I agree," public copies of the agreement are scarce, perhaps thanks to the prohibition on making any "public statements regarding this Agreement, its terms and conditions, or the relationship of the parties without Apple's express prior written approval." But when we saw the NASA App for iPhone, we used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to ask NASA for a copy, so that the general public could see what rules conrolled the technology they could use with their phones. NASA responded with the Rev. 3-17-09 version of the agreement (it has reportedly been revised somewhat since—please send us the current version if you are able). [ Read more ... ]

The Cell Phone Network: Law Enforcement's Surveillance Dream: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Yesterday, WNYC's On the Media (OTM) profiled our cell phone tracking case. In this case, the ACLU, Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked the court to require that the government at least show probable cause before it can ask a wireless provider to fork over information about your whereabouts using GPS or cell tower tracking via your cell phone. We won in the district court (PDF); the government appealed that decision to the 3rd Circuit. [ Read more ... ]

Security Pros Question Deployment of Smart Meters: Via Threat Level.

The country’s swift deployment of smart-grid technology has security professionals concerned that utilities and smart-meter vendors are repeating the mistakes made in the rollout of the public internet, when security became a priority only after malicious attacks had reached mass levels.

But when it comes to the power grid, the costs of remote hack attacks are potentially more dramatic.

“The cost factor here is what’s turned on its head. We lose control of our grid, that’s far worse than a botnet taking over my home PC,” said Matthew Carpenter, senior security analyst of InGuardian, speaking at a panel at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco this week. [ Read more ... ]

Italy Convicts Google Execs To Protect Privacy: Via NPR.

Europeans are debating the overall reach of the Internet into their lives. An Italian court recently convicted three Google executives for privacy violations after a clip was posted on Google Video showing a disabled student being bullied by classmates in Turin. The ruling highlights a deep trans-Atlantic cultural gap: Americans see the ruling as undermining the concept of freedom of expression, while Europeans put privacy first — they consider it a fundamental human right. [ Read more ... ]

Ubisoft's Authentication Servers Go Down: Via Slashdot.

ZuchinniOne writes "With Ubisoft's fantastically awful new DRM you must be online and logged in to their servers to play the games you buy. Not only was this DRM broken the very first day it was released, but now their authentication servers have failed so absolutely that no-one who legally bought their games can play them. 'At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games.' One can only hope that this utter failure will help to stem the tide of bad DRM."

Read Original Article:(Via Slashdot.)

Introducing the iKey – Apple's answer to the humble door key: Via Telegraph(UK).

Apple has already revolutionised the personal stereo and mobile phone, but now the computer firm behind the iPhone has its sights set on the humble front door key.

The computer giant, which manufactures the iPod and iPhone, has plans to replace the traditional door key with a hi-tech alternative.

It is developing technology, already being nicknamed the "iKey", which will mean that rather than carrying around a bunch of keys, people will be able to use a single electronic device to unlock their car, front door and gain access to their office.

Users would simply have to enter a pin code and wave the device over an electronic pad fitted beside a door to open it.

The technology is revealed in a newly published patent application, which has generated speculation that the next model of the iPhone will contain this feature. [ Read more ... ]

Cryptome Suspected of Money Laundering or Worse: Via cryptome.org .

PayPal has confiscated donations made to Cryptome since February 24, 2010.
The donations have have been refunded rather than leave them in the untrustworthy
control of PayPal for purposes contrary to those of the donors. The total
upsurge was about $5,300, not much but a peak.

The timing of the confiscation corresponds to the recent Microsoft-Network
Solutions copyright imbroglio and public attention given to the lawful spying
guide series including those of PayPal. PayPal's
legal
agreements describe a wide range of prohibitions -- among them
DMCA
infringement,
counter-terrorism,
violations
of AUP and catch-alls -- for use of its services and urges
reporting of violations.
It "limits" (suspend and/or close) an account without fully explaining the
reasons, some of which may be secret under spying law, others kept confidential
to avoid law suits or bad publicity.

[ Read more ... ]

Security Pros Question Deployment of Smart Meters: Via Threat Level.

The country’s swift deployment of smart-grid technology has security professionals concerned that utilities and smart-meter vendors are repeating the mistakes made in the rollout of the public internet, when security became a priority only after malicious attacks had reached mass levels.

But when it comes to the power grid, the costs of remote hack attacks are potentially more dramatic.

“The cost factor here is what’s turned on its head. We lose control of our grid, that’s far worse than a botnet taking over my home PC,” said Matthew Carpenter, senior security analyst of InGuardian, speaking at a panel at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco this week. [ Read more ... ]

Thousands Sign Petition Protesting Net Neutrality Loopholes for Copyright Enforcement: Via EFF.org Updates.

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) submitted a petition signed by more than 7000 people to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today demanding that the agency close a loophole for copyright enforcement in its proposed regulations for network neutrality.

The petition is part of EFF's reply comments in the FCC's net neutrality rulemaking. The FCC's proposed rules generally prohibit ISPs from discriminating or blocking lawful content, but include a loophole for 'reasonable network management' by ISPs. The proposed rules then define 'reasonable network management" to include measures taken by ISPs to block unlawful content or transmissions. This exception would effectively permit ISPs to violate net neutrality rules and block lawful activities in the name of copyright enforcement.

"We can't afford to let lawful speech become collateral damage in Hollywood's war on copyright infringement," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "Net neutrality regulations should not excuse ISPs that interfere with lawful content just because they claim they were acting as copyright cops." [ Read more ... ]