privacy
gregladen | April 5, 2017This bill was so unpopular that only 11% of Americans thought he should sign it. It was so unpopular that 74% of Americans thought he should veto it.
This bill was not one of Trump's campaign promises, and it wasn't part of the Republican Party platform. I can only assume it was a bought and paid for deal.
I'm speaking, of course, of the bill that allows your Internet service provider to collect pretty much any information it wants, including quite possibly the contents of what goes into and out of your house on the Internet, and the physical locations of you and your family members, and…
aardvarchaeology | February 10, 2015Facebook's Android app seems to be monitoring whom I talk to on my phone. A few days after I've called somebody who wants to submit a paper to Fornvännen, or after I've texted the mom of one of Jrette's buddies, the web site will suddenly suggest, "Hey, maybe you might want to be Facebook buddies with this person you didn't even know was on Fb, and with whom you have no shared Fb contacts!". And there's that person.
It's possible, I guess, that this is actually set off by those people looking at my profile on Facebook. But it's happened a few times too many. I wonder...
lborkowski | September 4, 2013A regular contributor to The Pump Handle, Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA, and his co-editor Phyllis Freeman wrote the following editorial which is available at the Journal of Public Health Policy.
In early July 2013, James R. Clapper, Jr, United States Director of National Intelligence apologized to the Chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for ‘clearly erroneous’ statements made during public testimony before the committee in March.1 In his testimony, he denied that the National Security Agency collected private data on millions of American citizens. In a television interview,…
choofnagle | April 6, 2013The Wall Street Journal reported on a battle developing between privacy advocates and internet companies concerning AB 1291, a transparency measure that is in part based upon some of my privacy research:
The industry backlash is against the "Right to Know Act," a bill introduced in February by Bonnie Lowenthal, a Democratic assemblywoman from Long Beach. It would make Internet companies, upon request, share with Californians personal information they have collected—including buying habits, physical location and sexual orientation—and what they have passed on to third parties such as marketing…
denialism | January 28, 2013For shameless self promotion this morning I present Chris on NPR discussing Google's new disclosure of the rules it uses to share information with government authorities.
choofnagle | September 9, 2012With the announcement of the Kindle Fire HD, some users were upset to learn that Amazon was going to stuff "special offers" on the device. But the company quickly retreated, and now is offering the option to turn of the ads for a mere $15.
This is a good development for consumers. We should have the choice to move away from ad-supported business models. As I explain with my co-author Jan Whittington, there is a cost to free business models. "Free," ad-supported services are packed with hidden costs to privacy and other consumer interests.
While the ads are gone, there is still no word…
choofnagle | August 31, 2012Facebook watchers are reporting that the service is about to launch a new feature for merchants that will allow merchants to target ads to users based upon users' email and phone numbers. That's a little confusing. Let me explain with a hypo--
As I understand it, it might work like this: ABC Corp. has an extensive database of consumer email addresses, but is concerned that no one is reading the company's spam. So ABC uploads its consumer email database to Facebook, which identifies Facebook members who are customers of ABC. ABC Corp can then send its marketing through Facebook so that it…
choofnagle | August 16, 2012Have you heard of App.net? If not, check it out. The basic premise is to create a social media platform that is aligned with users' interest. And so, gasp, it costs money! The CEO, Dalton Caldwell, has a neat video explaining the inception of the project and the philosophy of the venture. Critics have said Caldwell's proposal is misunderstood, and that users are projecting their own ideals onto the platform. They have said that there are too many men on App.net. They have said that it's just another gated community, and segmenting away users is a bad thing.
I joined and still think it…
choofnagle | August 16, 2012In his non-book-review of Garret Keizer's new book, Privacy, "Reason" Magazine correspondent includes this ill-informed quip on privacy:
With regard to modern commerce, Mr. Keizer grumps: "We would do well to ask if the capitalist economy and its obsessions with smart marketing and technological innovation cannot become as intrusive as any authoritarian state." Actually, no. If consumers become sufficiently annoyed with mercantile snooping and excessive marketing, they can take their business to competitors who are more respectful of privacy. Not so with the citizens of an intrusive state.…
choofnagle | August 3, 2012BNA reports on the formation of the Internet Association, a new trade group that will represent Google, Facebook, eBay, and Amazon. The group introduces itself as, "the unified voice of the Internet economy, representing the interests of America's leading Internet companies and their global community of users. The Internet Association is dedicated to advancing public policy solutions to strengthen and protect an open, innovative and free Internet. "
I do not know what the Internet Association will do nor do I discuss its merits here (as it has no track record yet). I wish to use this as an…
choofnagle | July 31, 2012When one spouts disinformation about disinformation, does it make it information? No, it's L. Gordon Crovitz's "Information Age," the weekly poorly informed and poorly reasoned blather about information policy in the Wall Street Journal.
Recall that Crovitz recently wrote about the invention of the Internet and online privacy. I wrote about these last two columns, and this week in the Journal Crovitz tries to backpedal, with the standard trope that his "Who Really Invented the Internet?" article was controversial—"It [became] for a time the most read, emailed and commented upon article on…
choofnagle | July 29, 2012Imagine a newspaper oped with half a dozen fallacies. Such a thing could appear in any newspaper in the US. But now imagine that the author is a Rhodes Scholar and you’re left with the Wall Street Journal’s L. Gordon Crovitz.
For years I’ve followed the bizarre arguments of L. Gordon Crovitz, who has a weekly column on information policy in the Wall Street Journal. It’s part of my daily routine of reading the Journal, which is great for business news but something else for everything else.
Last week, Crovitz wrote a real howler, arguing that the Internet was really created by Xerox, not…
gregladen | January 25, 2012From Google:
We're getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that's a lot shorter and easier to read. Our new policy covers multiple products and features, reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google.
This stuff matters, so please take a few minutes to read our updated Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service now. These changes will take effect on March 1, 2012.
The privacy policy is here.
The terms of service statement is here.
Here's a few tidbits from the documents, but you should go look…
sciencepunk | April 26, 2011Mika Tan is a 30-something biochemistry graduate working in the United States. She also happens to be a successful porn actress. Tan helped me out when I was looking for a security expert to provide some context on an article about hacking luxury cars; since then I've been following her on Twitter, because, hey, nothing livens up a Twitter stream like a little gangbang gossip in the mornings.
One of the recurring themes on Tan's list of bugbears is her ongoing strife with Facebook, which repeatedly suspends her account for breaching rules on graphic content. This opens up an important…
jdupuis | June 11, 2010Priceless, just priceless.
PALO ALTO, CA--All 1,472 employees of Facebook, Inc. reportedly burst out in uncontrollable laughter Wednesday following Albuquerque resident Jason Herrick's attempts to protect his personal information from exploitation on the social-networking site. "Look, he's clicking 'Friends Only' for his e-mail address. Like that's going to make a difference!" howled infrastructure manager Evan Hollingsworth, tears streaming down his face, to several of his doubled-over coworkers. "Oh, sure, by all means, Jason, 'delete' that photo. Man, this is so rich." According to…
choofnagle | May 24, 2010Those of you who read Mark Zuckerberg's oped in today's Washington Post might appreciate my take on how Facebook talks about privacy in tomorrow's San Francisco Chronicle: The Privacy Machiavellis.
sciencepunk | May 24, 2010It's rare that I blog off topic - there's so much cool science in the world that I don't have much time for anything else. But my departure from Facebook has co-incided with something of a global trend, so I thought I may as well explore what people thought.
In case you've been wrapped in roofing felt for the last few weeks, here's the scoop. After a series of embarrassing security flaws and anger over the company's attitude toward privacy, Facebook users are leaving in droves. Or at least, that's the claim - the reality is that there's no viable alternative yet, although some bright…
revere | April 27, 2010Once, long ago, I used to be in a radiology department in a famous hospital. I liked radiology quite a bit and even before becoming a doctor I worked in them. Later I did research on the kinds of errors radiologists make when they read x-rays. One of the errors that was extremely well known even 40 plus years ago (although that didn't prevent it from being made with dismaying consistency up to and including today) was something called "satisfaction of search error." In essence, it meant that once one abnormality was found on an x-ray, there was an increased chance of missing a second,…
choofnagle | April 16, 2010Media reports teem with stories of young people posting salacious photos online, writing about alcohol-fueled misdeeds on social networking sites, and publicizing other ill-considered escapades that may haunt them in the future. These anecdotes are interpreted as representing a generation-wide shift in attitude toward information privacy. Many commentators therefore claim that young people "are less concerned with maintaining privacy than older people are." This report is among the first quantitative studies evaluating young adults' attitudes. It demonstrates that the picture is more nuanced…