privacy
choofnagle | April 15, 2010Naftali Bendavid reports today in the Journal on a problem facing conservatives: how should they assure their supporters, many of whom are suspicious of government activity, to participate in the US Census? After all, the Census sounds suspiciously like something Tiberius would like. But Moses was a fan too. And now Karl Rove is pitching the Census.
Ron Paul argues:
"The census should be nothing more than a headcount," Mr. Paul wrote this month in his weekly column. "It was never intended to serve as a vehicle for gathering personal information on citizens."
It should be noted that Paul…
razib | March 16, 2010How Privacy Vanishes Online. Pretty banal actually. Social networking has really changed things. As I've said before I'm fascinated by the large number of people who, even those who want to be anonymous, enter in their real email addresses when leaving a comment. There seems a default "trust unless you shouldn't trust" setting, so we naively input our information assuming it isn't being mined by someone. In any case, a bigger issue in the future I think will be stupid government officials who scan up documents which they shouldn't scan up. It's happened a few times so far, but I think it'll…
jstemwedel | February 19, 2010Although I swear that the Free-Ride offspring have not read the relevant prior posts!
While walking home from school:
Younger offspring: From now on, in the sprog blogs, can you call me "the small, silent one"?
Dr. Free-Ride: Why? You're neither small nor silent.
Elder offspring: Definitely not silent. I live with you, I know.
Younger offspring: Just call me "the small, silent one," OK?
Dr. Free-Ride: But that would be lying to my readers.
Younger offspring: But you already lie to them.
Dr. Free-Ride: What? When do I do that?
Younger offspring: You call me the younger sprog--
Dr. Free-…
milhayser | December 28, 2009On Collective Imagination, Joe Salvo declares the Information Age is done for, writing: "a period of history can be characterized by the dominant technology that separates the leaders from the followers." He believes humanity has approached a tipping point where the separation between leaders and followers will cease to exist, as the internet democratizes the planet and good information becomes ubiquitous. So what's up next? Salvo calls it a "Systems Age," which involves "sensing, collecting, and manipulating data in near real-time with little to no human supervision." Sounds like a lot of…
ajakulin | December 18, 2009Wired reports a great new opportunity to make money online by suing internet companies for revealing the data:
An in-the-closet lesbian mother is suing 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 to improve its recommendation system.
I'm not sure whether the litigators have read this particular section of the Netflix prize rules:
To prevent certain inferences being drawn about the Netflix customer base, some…
choofnagle | October 31, 2009Consumers who have asked me whether they should give their zip code at the register have been getting bad advice! I was under the misimpression that zip-level data was only being collected for demographic research purposes (to determine where stores should be located, and advertising directed, on a mass scale) and thus said that no harm came from revealing the zip. No longer. Here's a summary of data practices at William Sonoma, according to a recent California case (Pineda v. Williams-Sonoma Stores Inc., Cal. Ct. App., 4th Dist., No. D054355). Giving the zip code allows the store to "…
choofnagle | October 21, 2009For some time, I've been trying to better understand Google's worldview on privacy issues. The culture of companies fosters different privacy values and sensitivities, and the signals sent by those at the top shape how the organization itself conceives of and addresses privacy issues. In wrestling with this, I read every article discussing Google and privacy in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, resulting in a paper titled, Beyond Google and Evil, How policy makers, journalists and consumers should talk differently about Google and privacy.
In last week's New Yorker, which is…
choofnagle | September 29, 2009I'm delighted to announce the results of our first national telephonic survey of US internet-using adults on consumer privacy! The Times has coverage and the full report (Americans Reject Tailored Advertising and Three Activities that Enable It is available here. Here's a summary:
This nationally representative telephone (wireline and cell phone) survey explores Americans' opinions about behavioral targeting by marketers, a controversial issue currently before government policymakers. Behavioral targeting involves two types of activities: following users' actions and then tailoring…
choofnagle | August 24, 2009My civil libertarian friends are "worried" about the precedent set in the recent Liskula Cohen case. In the case, a formerly anonymous blogger said some nasty things about Cohen. So nasty that Cohen sued to unmask the blogger's identity and was successful in doing so. The blogger is now suing Google alleging that the company owed her a fiduciary duty and should not have revealed her identity.
Critics of the Cohen case tend to focus on the fact that the blogger called Cohen a "skank." They argue that the word is mere hyperbole and not an objective fact. But the blogger said and did much…
grrlscientist | August 13, 2009tags: Onion News Network, ONN, privacy, humor, funny, satire, fucking hilarious, streaming video
This streaming news report reveals that web users who wish to completely protect their privacy can choose to move to a desolate mountain village started by Google. While living there, they are guaranteed an environment free from Google products and natural light from the sun [2:18]
choofnagle | July 21, 2009Wow! In a strange turn of events, Chris Anderson got it all wrong, while Malcolm Gladwell got it right. What's that? Free. Chris Anderson thinks it is the future of price; that companies should give their products away free and find other, magical ways to generate revenue. Gladwell roundly criticizes this idea; it's worth reading his review because his critique is effective on several levels.
Moving on...I want to make some crazy predictions here. Free is dead. It's a Ponzi scheme, and we're all invested in it. We all love free, but it has a price. We all think advertising will pay…
choofnagle | June 29, 2009If you are a resident of California, rejoice, because the Supreme Court let stand a decision in the 9th Circuit finding that SB 1 (California's Financial Information Privacy Act) was not preempted by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. In plain English, this means that California residents can opt-out of "affiliate sharing" among banks. Thus, if you have an account at Bank of America, you can ask the bank not to share information about your account with the company's 2,000 affiliates! This sets the stage for other states to limit affiliate sharing, and in all likelihood, it means that some…
choofnagle | June 22, 2009David Rivkin and Lee Casey consider this question in today's Journal, explaining that the Supreme Court's abortion jurisprudence limits the government's power to unduly burden choices about healthcare:
It is, of course, difficult to imagine choices more "central to personal dignity and autonomy" than measures to be taken for the prevention and treatment of disease -- measures that may be essential to preserve or extend life itself. Indeed, when the overwhelming moral issues that surround the abortion question are stripped away, what is left is a medical procedure determined to be "necessary"…
choofnagle | June 22, 2009Christoper Rhoads and Loretta Chao report in today's Journal:
...the Iranian government appears to be engaging in a practice often called deep packet inspection, which enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes, according to these experts.
The monitoring capability was provided, at least in part, by a joint venture of Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Nokia Corp., the Finnish cellphone company, in the second half of 2008, Ben Roome, a spokesman for the joint venture,…
choofnagle | June 11, 2009Obama's honeymoon is over, and so is my intermittent blogging, because business groups have finally started their machines! Christopher Conkey reports in the Journal:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it will spend $100 million in an effort to stem the "rapidly growing influence of government over private-sector activity," in a major new move by the powerful business group to counter the Obama administration's regulatory agenda.
[...]
Chamber president Thomas Donohue said his organization is launching its "Campaign for Free Enterprise" because an "avalanche of new rules, restrictions,…
choofnagle | June 2, 2009I'm very proud of the Know Privacy team, a group of three students who performed a broad analysis of online privacy issues for their master's project at UC Berkeley's School of Information. The study is featured today on the New York Times Bits blog. Several findings are notable:
They found: "From our analysis, it is apparent that Google is the dominant player in the tracking market. Among the top 100 websites this project focused on, Google Analytics appeared on 81 of them. When combined with the other trackers it operates, such as DoubleClick, Google can track 92 of the top 100 websites.…
choofnagle | May 16, 2009Following up on my earlier post about Beyond Google and Evil, I just came across this article from the Wall Street Journal on one of Google's detractors, Consumer Watchdog. Believe it or not, Google went after their funding!
...In January, Consumer Watchdog circulated a press release alleging a "rumored" lobbying effort by Google to enable it to sell personal medical data stored on its Google Health service. Simpson said the organization merely wanted to examine whether Google was trying to avoid new regulation under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, which…
choofnagle | May 15, 2009I apologize for the infrequent blogging. A tough semester. I did have time, however, to publish an essay about Google's rhetoric that might be of interest to Denialism readers.
No, I'm not calling Google denialist, but am trying to explain what Google means when the company talks about privacy (most companies interpret information privacy to mean security). And it's not all bad for Google--the company's rhetoric has created confusion, and clarifying it would help Google communicate why search advertising might be better for the consumer than other forms of targeting.
choofnagle | April 22, 2009We're discussing a junk mail case from the 1970s in my information privacy law case. In Rowan, Justice Burger laments:
...the plethora of mass mailings subsidized by low postal rates, and the growth of the sale of large mailing lists as an industry, in itself, have changed the mailman from a carrier of primarily private communications, as he was in a more leisurely day, and have made him an adjunct of the mass mailer who sends unsolicited and often unwanted mail into every home. It places no strain on the doctrine of judicial notice to observe that, whether measured by pieces or pounds,…
choofnagle | February 20, 2009If you are socking money away in offshore banks, pay attention to this man's expression. He's saying, you're screwed.
Yes, taxpaying citizens, you can rejoice, because tax cheats across the country are having panic attacks. They're thinking about refiling their tax returns, or going to the IRS to beg forgiveness with a check to cover past taxes and potential fines. Some are evening thinking about sailing away from this great country. Good riddance.
As part of a 9/11 trend that requires banks to collect more information about their clients, and the fact that our government needs money,…