The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have taken legal action to defend the anonymity of persons who posted to Internet bulletin boards. The groups wish to heighten the legal standard that must be met before a court can force Internet service providers to reveal the identities of anonymous posters.
The Bush Administration, at the request of health care lobbyists, has delayed the implementation of medical privacy regulations adopted in the last days of the Clinton presidency. The rules would have required medical service providers to gain consent before accessing patients' records.
The Judicial Conference of the United States, the body that sets policy for the federal courts, will hold a hearing on public access to electronic court files this week. The body will consider the privacy implications of creating a nationwide standard for publishing case files electronically.
N2H2, a company that collects data on children through the use of Internet content filtering software, has announced that it will discontinue the practice of selling reports on children's Internet browsing habits. EPIC had filed a series of FOIA requests to determine what information N2H2 was collecting from children and selling to the Department of Defense.
Legislators in Maryland are debating the merits of a new online privacy bill that offers notice and opt-in consent for consumers. Despite widespread public support for such a measure, banking, retailing, health, telecommunications, and software lobbyists attempted to kill the legislation.
Senator Nelson (D-FL) has signed the Privacy Coalition's Privacy Pledge. The Senator also announced the introduction of two bills to promote privacy. The first would require customer consent before a business could share financial or medical information. The second establishes criminal penalties for those who steal or misuse Social Security numbers.
A subcommittee of the Judicial Conference of the United States will hold a panel hearing next month to evaluate the privacy and security issues involved with electronic public access to court documents.
Dr. Michael Rabin and Yan Zong Bing have developed a cryptography system that erases the encryption key as it is used. The developers claim that the system is unbreakable.
Credit card fraud increased by 50% last year in the European Union. While Internet transactions represent 2% of transactions in the EU, Internet transactions constituted 50% of all customer complaints.
AOL Time Warner may merge databases collected from Internet and cable subscription services. The customer information involved includes magazine subscriptions, web sites visited, channels ordered via cable, and programs watched on television.
VeriSign, the parent company of Network Solutions, has been selling customer data from DNS records for over a year. This information includes the names and addresses of individuals who have registered domain names. EPIC has urged Congress to hold hearings on the issue.
Senator Shelby (R-AL) introduced S. 324, the Social Security Privacy Act. The bill would prohibit the sale and purchase of social security numbers and amend the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act to promote privacy.
Representatives Wilson (R-NM) and Green (D-TX) have introduced the Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail Act of 2001. The bill prohibits sending unsolicited commercial e-mail that contains certain misrepresentations.
Dutch Internet Service Providers warn that compliance with government mandates on communication interception standards may cause widespread bankruptcies. Privacy advocates also objected to the interception obligations, showing that technology that facilitates interception leads to increased government intrusions.
A recent study by Consumer Reports magazine found that Internet content filters fail to block 1 in 5 sites deemed objectionable. The magazine editors report that the effectiveness of filters has not improved since the magazine last tested the programs four years ago.
Marketers and data aggregators may be attempting to link individuals with their anonymously-submitted census forms. The U.S. Census Bureau is employing a number of techniques to combat re-identification. "Data-swapping," for instance, is the practice of switching data points on one citizen with another citizen's data.
Representatives Hutchinson (R-AR) and Moran (D-VA) have reintroduced the Privacy Commission Act. The bill would create a commission to study a wide range of privacy issues.
In a new book titled "IBM and the Holocaust," Edwin Black argues that the Nazis employed IBM technology to organize personal data on citizens and target them for extermination.
SafeWeb, a commercial provider of online privacy tools, is now providing privacy protection to the CIA. The CIA reportedly is using a SafeWeb program called "Triangle Boy" to gain online anonymity.
The Privacy Coalition, a nonpartisan coalition of consumer, civil liberties, educational, library, labor, and family-based groups, launched the Privacy Pledge. The Pledge calls upon legislators to support laws that guarantee effective privacy protection.
Lobbyists from the health care industry are attempting to weaken or delay the implementation of regulations adopted during the final weeks of the Clinton administration. Among other things, the rules specify that health care providers must obtain consent before using or disclosing patients' medical records. The Bush administration is reportedly looking for ways to revise and simplify the rules.
Lorrie Cranor, Avi Rubin, and Marc Waldman, the creators of Publius, were honored with an award for the "Best Circumvention of Censorship" by the Index on Censorship. Publius is a web-publishing system that distributes files in fragments on the Internet. The system allows for anonymous publishing that is almost impossible to censor.
Senators Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Christopher Dodd (D-CT) reintroduced legislation that would require that schools obtain parental consent before collecting personal information from children for commercial use.
The FBI has renamed Carnivore in an apparent attempt to minimize public concern over the Internet monitor tool. Carnivore is now called "DCS1000," which is short for "digital collection system."
Citing an exponential growth in online crimes, Representatives Saxton (R-NJ) and Chambliss (R-GA) introduced a House Resolution declaring that "cyberterrorism" is an emerging threat to national security. The Resolution calls for public-private partnerships to combat the "cyber menace," a revised legal framework for prosecuting "hackers," and a new interagency study to assess the treat posed by cyberterrorists.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center has announced the creation of the Internet Public Interest Opportunities Program (IPIOP). The program, made possible by a $1,000,000 grant from Professor Pamela Samuelson and Robert Glushko, will provide opportunities for law students to pursue public interest issues associated with technology and the Internet.
BigChampagne, a marketing company, has been scanning the MP3 collections of Napster users and targeting ads based on their music tastes. The company apparently also targets ads based on users' search criteria. In a related story, Gnutella, a popular peer-to-peer file sharing program, may allow others to acquire users' cookies and other files.
Norwich Union Life, one of Britain's largest insurance companies, revealed at a House of Commons Committee meeting that genetic tests were used for screening potential buyers of life insurance.
According to the FBI, Carnivore can be fine-tuned to capture only the network packets of a specific suspect. Further, to capture both the content and headers of a suspect's online communications, the agency must gain approval from a judge and senior Justice Department officials.
A coalition of Internet companies and public interest groups have filed a complaint alleging that a recently-enacted Vermont law violates free speech rights. The law prohibits the communication of nudity or sexual content where it may be considered "harmful to minors."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Liberty Project have asked a court to protect the identities of two persons who posted criticism of an ambulance company on an Internet bulletin board anonymously. The groups argue that the right of the "John Does" to speak anonymously is protected by the constitution, and that the company is simply attempting to expose the identities of its critics.
Amazon's new "honor system," a scheme that allows Internet users to donate money to their favorite web sites, also increases the ability of the company to track users. An Amazon spokesperson claims that the company will "hobble" their servers to prevent the collection of personally-identifiable information from the program.
Computer hackers were able to circumvent security precautions at the World Economic Forum and gain access to information on 1,400 prominent leaders. 80,000 pages of information, including the cell-phone and credit card numbers of Bill Clinton and Bill Gates were accessed.
The February issue of the Internet Law Journal has just been published online. It includes articles on the new federal guidelines for searching and seizing computers, the Council of Europe Cyber Crime Convention and web privacy seals.
Senator Leahy (D-VT) has promised to propose legislation to alter the health care privacy regulations released by the Clinton Administration. Leahy's legislation would grant patients a private right of action against companies that misuse or sell their information. The legislation would also include opt-in provisions to require patient consent before medical records could be used for marketing.
The Privacy Foundation has uncovered a method to spy on email messages sent in HTML format. By planting a JavaScript program in an HTML email, the message could be secretly returned to the sender every time it is forwarded. The Privacy Foundation Advisory suggests methods to prevent this security problem.
The FTC approved the first "safe harbor" guidelines for web site compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The approved guidelines were submitted by the Children's Advertising Review Unit of the Council of Better Business Bureaus.
The Congressional Privacy Caucus, the bi-partisan, bi-cameral group of federal legislators, will examine the use of "web bugs" in hearings later this month. Web bugs are transparent GIF images that are used to track Internet users as they browse the Internet.
Juno has announced the "Virtual Supercomputer Project," a plan to employ the "unused resources of the Juno subscriber base" for distributed computing. Under the project, subscribers to Juno's free Internet service would leave their computers running 24 hours a day. When the computer is not in use, Juno's system would run the computer's processor and hard disk drive to perform computations for third parties.
The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), an industry association including AOL Time Warner, Microsoft, and Intel, has advocated federal privacy legislation. However, the group supports legislation that preempts state attempts at providing broader protection to consumers.
Daniel Solove, a professor at Seton Hall Law School, argues in a soon to be published article that Kafka's The Trial provides more accurate privacy metaphors than Orwell's 1984. A working draft of the paper is online.
Police video cameras were used at the Super Bowl to scan every person as they entered the stadium. The images captured were compared against a database of suspected criminals and terrorists.
Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) has joined the Congressional Privacy Caucus (CPC). The CPC is a bi-partisan, bi-cameral body dedicated to privacy issues.
The Federal Trade Commission has identified 200 firms that are collecting personal financial information and selling it others. The FTC's investigation, Operation Detect Pretext, focuses on the practice where a person poses as a real customer in order to gain information on others from financial institutions.
Nortel Networks has developed a software suite that allows ISPs to secretly track users' online movements. The program initiative, "Personal Internet," can target advertisments to users based upon credit card purchase history or web browsing history.
In the wake of numerous privacy bills introduced on the state and federal level, the Personalization Consortium has developed self-regulatory privacy standards for industry. The guidelines specify notice, opt-out, access, and other requirements.
A bankruptcy judge approved the destruction of the Toysmart.com customer list database. A Disney subsidiary had offered $50,000 to purchase and destroy the list. However, under the new ruling, Toysmart may destroy the list without transfering the information to the Disney subsidiary.
