A Seattle-based attorney has filed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Postal Service for allegedly selling employees' personal information to marketing companies in violation of the U.S. Privacy Act. The lawsuit, which has been filed on behalf of all postal employees, alleges that the USPS has allowed private businesses to access and use its employee master file, which contains private information, including home addresses, of all full- and part-time employees. The complaint noted that the USPS sets up co-branding agreements with different marketing companies. The agreements allow the companies to use the Postal Service logo on marketing materials that are sent to employees' homes.
A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency�s secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program. It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate. But such databases contain records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans, and their examination by the government would raise privacy issues.
Every vehicle entering Centre Island on the North Shore of Nassau County gets its license plate automatically scanned and checked by sophisticated computers. The stationary license plate camera is only part of the Centre Island Police Department's advanced technology. The officers' cars are also high tech: Volvos equipped with night-vision binoculars and digital cameras. They also carry Tasers and high-powered guns.
The Homeland Security Department�s Privacy Office faces a huge backlog in informing the public of privacy risks related to more than 200 departmental systems, according to congressional testimony (pdf) given this week by a top official at the Government Accountability Office. Although the DHS Privacy Office has made progress in putting together a framework for conducting the assessments and issuing the public notices, backlogs of uncompleted work are continuing to grow in both areas, Linda Koontz, GAO�s director of information management issues, told the House Judiciary Committee�s Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee.
Microsoft Corp. and Ask.com called on the technology industry to craft safeguards to better protect consumer privacy, answering a growing chorus of criticism about the amount of data Internet companies collect about their users. The project, proposed Monday, would bring together businesses, advocacy groups and academics to develop a set of guiding principles that would help alert users when their online behavior is being tracked and for how long that information is retained. The idea is to create a single standard for search engines and online advertising to replace the current hodgepodge of privacy policies.
They're in your car if you cross the Tacoma Narrows Bridge using the electronic toll option and in your driver's license if you sign up for new "enhanced" Washington state licenses and ID cards that can be used to travel to Canada. They are tiny radio-frequency ID (RFID) tags the size of a computer chip used to hold and transmit information from a distance. Their use is growing to encompass not only clothing tags and payment cards, but also many transportation systems.
Facebook used to be all about the location of the next kegger, who hooked up with whom and maybe keeping in touch with the foreign student you studied with for a semester. Now this formerly exclusive community is increasingly being used for business networking -- and that's causing some of the service's longtime users to be a lot less forthcoming about the information they share on the site.
The U.S. military is taking fingerprints and eye scans from thousands of Iraqi men and building an unprecedented database that helps track suspected militants. U.S. troops are stopping Iraqis at checkpoints, workplaces and sites where attacks have recently occurred, and inputting their personal data using handheld scanners or specially equipped laptops. In several neighborhoods in and around Baghdad, troops have gone door to door collecting data. The rapidly expanding program has raised privacy concerns at the Pentagon, although it has met little resistance from Iraqis.
The Federal Bureau of Investigations is developing a computer-profiling system that would enable investigators to target possible terror suspects, according to a Justice Department report submitted to Congress yesterday. The System to Assess Risk, or STAR, assigns risk scores to possible suspects based on a variety of information, similar to the way a credit bureau assigns a rating based on a consumer's spending behavior and debt. The program focuses on foreign suspects but also includes data about some U.S. residents. A prototype is expected to be tested this year.
German researchers have developed a new tool to recognize emotions as they flicker across the human face. Rapid facial analysis has huge potential for advertisers, but some are concerned about protecting privacy. A small video camera records the face of each person who passes and registers whether the person looks happy, surprised, sad or angry. Complex algorithms find faces in a video image, count the number of people watching an ad, distinguish between men and women and analyze their expressions. Plus, it all happens in real time.
As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse," Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005. Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.
European Union citizens will be protected by the U.S. Privacy Act under an anti-terror deal with Washington on the sharing of trans-Atlantic air passenger data, the EU's top justice official said Monday. Seeking to dispel concerns over a possible erosion of privacy, EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini told EU parliamentarians that the binding deal, backed by envoys from the EU's 27 nations two weeks ago, provides for a high level of data protection.
The Federal Trade Commission Friday cleared Microsoft's plan to acquire Internet ad company aQuantive. In May, Microsoft said that it would acquire aQuantive for $6 billion, its largest purchase to date. The deal is widely seen as an attempt to improve Microsoft's ability to compete against Google as a provider of search advertising. According to Internet metrics firm comScore, Google accounted for 50.7% of U.S.-based Internet searches in May, compared to 10.3% handled by Microsoft sites.
By the end of this year, police officials say, more than 100 cameras will have begun monitoring cars moving through Lower Manhattan, the beginning phase of a London-style surveillance system that would be the first in the United States. The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, as the plan is called, will resemble London�s so-called Ring of Steel, an extensive web of cameras and roadblocks designed to detect, track and deter terrorists. British officials said images captured by the cameras helped track suspects after the London subway bombings in 2005 and the car bomb plots last month. If the program is fully financed, it will include not only license plate readers but also 3,000 public and private security cameras below Canal Street, as well as a center staffed by the police and private security officers, and movable roadblocks.
A federal appeals court ordered the dismissal Friday of a lawsuit challenging President Bush�s domestic spying program, saying the plaintiffs had no standing to sue. The 2-1 ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel vacated a 2006 order by a federal judge in Detroit, who found that the post-Sept. 11 warrantless surveillance aimed at uncovering terrorist activity violated constitutional rights to privacy and free speech and the separation of powers.
Government studies released in the last few months show the frustration is widespread, an unintended consequence of the 1996 law. Hipaa was designed to allow Americans to take their health insurance coverage with them when they changed jobs, with provisions to keep medical information confidential. But new studies have found that some health care providers apply Hipaa regulations overzealously, leaving family members, caretakers, public health and law enforcement authorities stymied in their efforts to get information.
The Freedom of Information Act requires a federal agency to provide an initial response to a request within 20 days and to provide the documents in a timely manner. But the oldest pending request uncovered in a new survey of 87 agencies and departments has been awaiting a response for 20 years, and 16 requesters have been waiting more than 15 years for results. The survey, to be released on Monday, is the latest proof of a fact well-known to historians and journalists who regularly seek government documents: Agencies often take months or years to respond to requests for information under the law, known as FOIA, which went into effect on July 4, 1967.
