More than ever, companies are pouring their resources into watching their customers. Twenty years ago, Microsoft had two researchers who specialized in observing consumers at home or at work. Today, the company has 300. At General Mills, about half the consumer research now involves observing people individually, compared with 10 years ago when about 80% of its research was done in focus groups. Procter & Gamble has increased spending on such personal research fivefold since 2000. It spent $200 million in consumer-focused research last year.
Drumming up business would seem to be an easy task for those who sell encrypted cellphones in Italy. All they have to do is browse the major newspapers for likely customers. When it comes to phone tapping, Brazil, Greece and Spain are other desirable markets, the encryption companies say, but in Western Europe, Italy remains peerless.
Retailers, manufacturers, hospitals, federal agencies and other organizations planning to use radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to improve their operations should also systematically evaluate the possible security and privacy risks and use best practices to mitigate them, according to a report issued today by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday passed the Genetic Information Non-discrimination Act. The bill, known as GINA, would prohibit improper use of genetic information in hiring and health insurance decisions. Author of the bill Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) first introduced GINA in the House 12 years ago. In her remarks on the House floor today, Slaughter said that with the rapid advances in scientific research in those 12 years, the need for such legislation has grown exponentially.
Less than two weeks after being sworn in as undersecretary of defense for intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr. is moving to end the controversial Talon electronic data program, which collected and circulated unverified reports about people and organizations that allegedly threaten Defense Department facilities.
A majority of respondents to a UPI-Zogby International poll said the U.S. government shouldn't be allowed to suspend privacy laws to share terror information. The 5,932 U.S. residents who took part in the April 13-16 Zogby interactive poll were asked whether the government could suspend privacy laws to enable the sharing of counter-terror information that could include private data on U.S. citizens.
A computer stolen from a Neiman Marcus consultant contained personal information on nearly 160,000 current and former employees, the luxury retailer said Tuesday. The company said there was no indication yet that the thieves had tapped into the personal information, which included individuals� names, addresses, Social Security numbers, birth dates and salaries.
A federal task force Monday urged the Bush administration to back certain policy proposals to help combat identity theft, but critics say the recommendations will do little to curb the loss or needless collection of sensitive consumer data. Consumer groups were unimpressed with the group's suggestions, which also called for a broader sharing of victim data among state and local identity theft investigators, and amending existing criminal statutes to allow stricter punishment for identity thieves.
CDD, EPIC and US PIRG today filed a complaint (pdf) with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), urging the Commission to open an investigation into the proposed acquisition. The groups urged the FTC to assess the ability of Google to record, analyze, track, and profile the activities of Internet users with data that is both personally identifiable and data that is not personally identifiable. The groups further urged the FTC to require Google to publicly present a plan to comply with well-established government and industry privacy standards such as the OECD Privacy Guidelines. Pending the resolution of these and other issues, EPIC encouraged the FTC to halt the acquisition.
The Education Department last night cut off outside access to a government database that contains the personal financial information of millions of student aid applicants. The department acted on concerns that loan companies or other marketers were improperly obtaining private information on potential borrowers.
The State Police crime laboratory is considering expanding the use of its DNA database to search for close relatives of suspects whose DNA is recovered from crime scenes, a controversial crime-fighting technique that prosecutors say would help them solve more cases but that critics say would target innocent people, many of them members of minority groups. Currently, the lab takes DNA found at crime scenes and compares it with DNA samples from convicted felons in hope of finding a perfect match and a suspect. The lab does not permit employees to seek or report close matches, which could give investigators an important lead by indicating the suspect may be related to a felon in the database, according to officials at the state's Executive Office of Public Safety. But the ban is being reconsidered.
The case of an Alberta medical office clerk who illegally checked the health records of her lover's wife is being discussed at a groundbreaking meeting on privacy. About 140 health and privacy experts are in Regina at a health information privacy conference. They're talking about the best way to balance patients' privacy with research, and are also hearing stories about inappropriate use of health information.
Microsoft, a veteran defendant of epic antitrust battles in the United States and Europe, is urging antitrust officials to consider scuttling Google�s plan to buy DoubleClick, an online advertising company. Microsoft contends that the $3.1 billion deal, announced last Friday, would hurt competition in the fast-growing market for advertising on the Web and raise questions about how much personal information would be collected by Google, which is already a dominant player in online advertising.
Some lending companies with access to a national database that contains confidential information on tens of millions of student borrowers have repeatedly searched it in ways that violate federal rules, raising alarms about data mining and abuse of privacy, government and university officials said. The improper searching has grown so pervasive that officials said the Education Department is considering a temporary shutdown of the government-run database to review access policies and tighten security. Some worry that businesses are trolling for marketing data they can use to bombard students with mass mailings or other solicitations.
The administration proposed a bill on Friday to relax certain legal restrictions on the government�s ability to intercept telephone calls and other communications in the United States. The proposal would change provisions in the primary law on domestic surveillance that the Bush administration says limit its ability to spy on the domestic and international communications of foreigners and would provide new legal immunity for telecommunications companies that have been sued for cooperating with the government as it conducts domestic wiretapping.
As expected, North Dakota has become the second state in the U.S. to ban the forced implanting of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips in people. The two-sentence bill, passed by the state legislature, was signed into law by Gov. John Hoeven last Wednesday. Essentially, it forbids anyone from compelling someone else to have an RFID chip injected into their skin. The state follows in the steps of Wisconsin, which passed similar legislation last year.
The federal government earned an overall grade of "C-minus" last year for securing its computer systems and networks from hackers, viruses and insider threats, a slight improvement from its performance in 2005. According to data to be released by a House committee today, the Department of Defense led a group of eight agencies that received failing marks for computer security. Also receiving that dubious distinction were the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Interior, State and Treasury, as well as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Department of Homeland Security earned a D, although its overall performance improved since 2005. The Department of Veterans Affairs did not provide enough data to earn a grade. In 2005, it received an F.
President Bush's spy chief is pushing to expand the government's surveillance authority at the same time the administration is under attack for stretching its domestic eavesdropping powers. National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has circulated a draft bill that would expand the government's powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, liberalizing how that law can be used.
A handheld device that can tell in a second whether a person is on one of 140 wanted or watch lists is being hailed by police as a crime-fighting breakthrough and flayed by civil libertarians as an intrusion on the innocent. The sheriff's office in Clermont County, Ohio, is the first civilian law enforcement agency in the nation to test the portable fugitive finder. Police say Mobilisa Inc.'s m2500 Defense ID system shows promise of saving them time and helping them fight crime. Critics say it intensifies questions about privacy.
A privacy advocate Friday threatened to publicly post on her Web site the names of prominent individuals in Massachusetts whose Social Security numbers and other personal data she was able to pull from public records posted on the commonwealth secretary of state's Web site. In addition, Betty "B.J." Ostergren said detailed instructions will be provided on her site telling others how to access the data from the site. Ostergren, a Virginia-based privacy advocate, runs a Web site called The Virginia Watchdog, which she uses to draw attention to -- and put pressure on -- county and state government officials who post unredacted public records online.
Thousands of taxpayers could be at risk of identity theft or other financial fraud because the Internal Revenue Service has failed to adequately protect information on its 52,000 laptop computers and other storage systems, a new government report concludes. The IRS did not begin to adequately correct the security problems until the second half of 2006, despite being warned about them in 2003 and again in February 2006, according to a report by the inspector general of the IRS, J. Russell George.
A secret FBI intelligence unit helped detain a group of war protesters in a downtown Washington parking garage in April 2002 and interrogated some of them on videotape about their political and religious beliefs, newly uncovered documents and interviews show. For years, law enforcement authorities suggested it never happened. The FBI and D.C. police said they had no records of such an incident. And police told a federal court that no FBI agents were present when officers arrested more than 20 protesters that afternoon for trespassing; police viewed them as suspicious for milling around the parking garage entrance.
You'll have to provide a password if you want to get your account information from your telephone company under new privacy rules approved Monday by the Federal Communications Commission. The rules were created to safeguard against pretexting, the practice of impersonating a phone customer to gain access to his phone records.
They swab the cheeks of strangers and pluck hairs from corpses. They travel hundreds of miles to entice their suspects with an old photograph, or sometimes a free drink. Cooperation is preferred, but not necessarily required to achieve their ends. If the amateur genealogists of the DNA era bear a certain resemblance to members of a �CSI� team, they make no apologies. Prompted by the advent of inexpensive genetic testing, they are tracing their family trees with a vengeance heretofore unknown. �People who realize the potential of DNA,� said Katherine Borges, a co-founder of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, �will go to great lengths to get it.�
In a remarkable turnaround, ChoicePoint, the giant data broker excoriated two years ago for its lack of precautions as it went about gathering and selling personal data, has recast itself as a model corporate citizen. California's milestone data-theft disclosure law forced ChoicePoint in February 2005 to reveal that it had sold sensitive information for at least 166,000 people to a Nigerian con artist posing as a debt collector. The Federal Trade Commission hit ChoicePoint with a record $10 million fine and ordered it to set aside $5 million to aid data breach victims.
New technology, already in use in parts of Asia but still in development in the United States, allows the phones to connect everyday objects with the Internet. In their new incarnation, cellphones become a sort of digital remote control, as one CBS executive put it. With a wave, the phone can read encoded information on everyday objects and translate that into videos, pictures or text files on its screen.
The new travel documents, called e-passports, are being issued to Americans who apply to either renew their passport or receive their first one. They look similar to the old passports, but they have a rectangular symbol printed on the cover indicating they contain a computer chip. The chip is hidden in the back cover and contains the holder's name, photo, birth date and other vital stats. State Department officials say the chip will improve security and help speed travelers through checkpoints by beaming their personal information to immigration officials' computers when the passports are opened. But privacy advocates say the wireless chip can be easily hacked by any terrorist or identity thief standing nearby with a chip-reading device.
Thousands of patients at Baptist Hospital appear to have had their credit card information stolen by an employee, Adrian Green, who was arrested late last week. Green was caught after using Baptist telephone extensions to give various names in purchasing $3,000 worth of fancy watches, according to an affidavit filed by U.S. Secret Service Agent Shannon Jayroe.
