In Canada, Ontario's privacy commissioner has found a clinic and a paper-disposal company broke privacy rules after personal health records were strewn on a downtown movie set. The company mistakenly believed that the records picked up from the X-ray and ultrasound clinic were meant to be recycled, so it subcontracted the paper to another recycling company, which later sold it to a film company for use on its set. The health records then ended up being strewn across the streets of downtown Toronto as a backdrop for a film production.
Federal law enforcement attempts to use cell phones as tracking devices were rebuked twice this month by lower court judges, who say the government cannot get real time tracking information on citizens without showing probable cause. Judges rejected the location tracking portion of the request in harshly worded opinions, concluding investigators cannot turn cell phones into tracking devices by simply telling a judge the information is likely "relevant" to an investigation.
A coalition of anti-spyware vendors and consumer groups published guidelines Thursday to help consumers assess products designed to combat unwanted programs that sneak onto computers. The Anti-Spyware Coalition released the guidelines for public comment and also updated a separate document that attempted to craft uniform definitions for "spyware" and "adware" in hopes of giving computer users more control over their machines.
All U.S. passports will be implanted with remotely readable computer chips starting in October 2006, the Bush administration has announced. Sweeping new State Department regulations issued Tuesday say that passports issued after that time will have tiny radio frequency ID (RFID) chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitized photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitized data such as "fingerprints or iris scans."
The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents to be released today. Records turned over to the Electronic Privacy Information Center as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit also indicate that the FBI has investigated hundreds of potential violations related to its use of secret surveillance operations, which have been stepped up dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but are largely hidden from public view.
The federal government, vastly extending the reach of an 11-year-old law, is requiring hundreds of universities, online communications companies and cities to overhaul their Internet computer networks to make it easier for law enforcement authorities to monitor e-mail and other online communications. The action has unleashed protests and the threat of lawsuits from universities, which argue that it will cost them at least $7 billion while doing little to apprehend lawbreakers. Because the government would have to win court orders before undertaking surveillance, the universities are not raising
civil liberties issues.
Maryland will spend $183 million to make changes to the EZ Pass electronic toll collection system. Under the system, toll booths would be replaced by overpasses under which motorists could drive without slowing down. Sensors would deduct tolls from EZ Pass accounts, while cameras would photograph the license plates of vehicles without the electronic devices. Registered owners would receive bills for the tolls in the mail.
Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco consumer privacy group, said it had cracked the code used in a widely used line of Xerox printers, an invisible bar code of sorts that contains the serial number of the printer as well as the date and time a document was printed. The U.S. Secret Service acknowledged yesterday that the markings, which are not visible to the human eye, are there.
Google Inc. is now disclosing more details on how it collects and uses data obtained from users, but it is remaining silent on several key questions that concern privacy advocates. The company's new privacy policy is easier to read and reflects Google's expansion beyond its core search engine business. But it remains remains silent on how long information is kept. That's an area of growing concern as Google offers more and more services that potentially collect and store a wealth of personal data.
In Japan, the Fukuoka District Court on Friday rejected a lawsuit that claimed the national residency registry network violates privacy rights, ruling it constitutional. The ruling was made on a lawsuit brought by 24 residents of Fukuoka Prefecture who wanted their personal information removed from so-called Juki Net electronic network because they said it infringed upon their constitutional rights and partly due to concerns their personal information could be leaked.
In what would be the largest project of its kind, the Missouri Department of Transportation is finalizing a contract to monitor thousands of cell phones, using their movements to map real-time traffic conditions statewide on all 5,500 miles of major roads. The contract is expected to be completed within several weeks, and a cell phone monitoring system tested and implemented within six months after that.
As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers the use of radio frequency identification tags to help fight counterfeit prescription drugs, privacy advocates are cautiously watching to be sure consumer privacy isn't lost in the process. The problem is that the FDA is considering more than just tracking large shipping containers or crates of medicines with RFID tags; it could also use the tags to track individual medicine bottles or even individual tablets.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is restricting the release of information on Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Citing privacy concerns, FEMA has rejected a request by Texas officials for access to its database of the more than 100,000 evacuees who have registered for state aid, according to the governor's office.
I.B.M., the world's largest technology company by revenue, is promising not to use genetic information in hiring or in determining eligibility for its health care or benefits plans. Genetics policy specialists and privacy rights groups say that the I.B.M. pledge to its more than 300,000 employees worldwide appears to be the first such move by a major corporation. The new policy, which comes as Congress is considering legislation on genetic privacy, is a response to the growing trend in medical research to focus on a person's genetic propensity for disease in hopes of tailoring treatments to specific medical needs.
More lenders are offering ID-theft protection services -- for a price. They say the safeguards help victims navigate several layers that only tangentially relate to their bank. It's thus necessary to charge administrative fees, the lenders say. Advocates say the practice plays on consumer fears while offering extras that should come standard with normal bank accounts.
One of the first things detectives now do at a crime scene is conduct a sweep for surveillance video that might have captured the incident or the perpetrator, public and private law enforcement officials say. A video security firm in California estimates that there are now 26 million surveillance cameras in the United States generating more than four billion hours of video every week. Footage can now be examined for facial features, tattoos, personal mannerisms, jewelry and clothing as well as the license plate, make, model, weight and headlight pattern of a passing car, experts say. Image blurring can often be eliminated, and there is a process called frame averaging in which multiple frames can be blended to achieve one clear picture.
The Delaware Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that if an elected official claims he has been defamed by an anonymous blogger, he cannot use a lawsuit to unmask the writer unless he has substantial evidence to prove his claim. That standard, the court said, "will more appropriately protect against the chilling effect on anonymous First Amendment Internet speech that can arise when plaintiffs bring trivial defamation lawsuits primarily to harass or unmask their critics."
After Italy passed a new antiterrorism package in July, authorities ordered managers offering public communications services to make passport photocopies of every customer seeking to use the Internet, phone, or fax. Passed within weeks of the London bombings this summer, the law is part of the most extensive antiterror package introduced in Italy since 9/11 and the country's subsequent support of the Iraq war.
Pentagon intelligence operatives would be allowed to collect information from U.S. citizens without revealing their status as government spies under legislation approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee and publicly released this week. The bill would end a long-standing requirement that military intelligence officers disclose their government ties when approaching an American citizen in the United States � a law designed to protect Americans from domestic intelligence activities by the Defense Department.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's first privacy chief stepped down on Friday amid praise from civil-liberties groups--and regret that Congress didn't prescribe more power to her position. Nuala O'Connor Kelly, appointed by then-Secretary Tom Ridge in April 2003, plans to start as General Electric's Washington-based chief privacy leader and senior counsel in early to mid-October.
American lawmakers are looking to put more checks on the Transportation Security Administration's long-running effort to come up with a new way to conduct background checks on airline passengers. Twice lawmakers have prohibited the Transportation Security Administration from going live with Secure Flight until the Government Accountability Office reports that it meets several conditions.
