The Bush administration is signaling that it plans to turn again to a legal tool, the �state secrets� privilege, to try to stop a suit against a Belgian banking cooperative that secretly supplied millions of private financial records to the United States government, court documents show. The suit against the consortium, known as Swift, threatens to disrupt the operations of a vital national security program and to disclose �highly classified information� if it continues, the Justice Department has said in court filings. Historically, courts have been reluctant to challenge the secrecy privilege. But the administration has suffered setbacks in seeking to use the secrecy claim in the eavesdropping case and several other recent cases.
The Sikh community in the United States has reluctantly accepted new airport security procedures that involve mandatory "pat down" of turbans after administration officials agreed that passengers had the right to a private area for any secondary checks. Following talks between Sikh activists and officials of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), a Sikh group issued an advisory to the community alerting it to expect secondary screening of turbans but counseling that they have a right to private screening in the event of a pat-down of turban.
Privacy concerns are causing state educators to back away from a new law that would have required them to release attendance records of students to the secretary of state's office in an effort to bar truant students from receiving driver's privileges, Illinois State Board of Education officials said Tuesday. The law would affect students younger than 18 and was to begin being enforced in state high schools this fall. The General Assembly passed and Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed the bill last year, but it did not take effect until July 1.
Almost 2 million Australians have had their personal details stolen and used fraudulently by a third party, according to a report released today by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, which highlights the internet as a growing privacy pain point. The report found only 17 per cent of Australians trusted online businesses to handle their personal information responsibly, compared with 37 per cent for regular retailers, 73 per cent for government departments and 91 per cent for health service providers.
The government's terrorist screening database flagged Americans and foreigners as suspected terrorists almost 20,000 times last year. But only a small fraction of those questioned were arrested or denied entry into the United States, raising concerns among critics about privacy and the list's effectiveness. A range of state, local and federal agencies as well as U.S. embassies overseas rely on the database to pinpoint terrorism suspects, who can be identified at borders or even during routine traffic stops. The database consolidates a dozen government watch lists, as well as a growing amount of information from various sources, including airline passenger data. The government said it was planning to expand the data-sharing to private-sector groups with a "substantial bearing on homeland security," though officials would not be more specific.
New York City taxi drivers are split on whether they should strike in opposition to a new GPS requirement. One taxi group plans to strike from 5 a.m., Sept. 5, through 5 a.m., Sept. 7, in opposition to New York City's requirement that all cabs be equipped with GPS technology beginning Oct. 1. The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which claims more than 8,400 members, announced the strike dates this week, saying GPS infringes on drivers' privacy. The New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers and other groups representing about 10,000 cab drivers oppose the strike.
Google has gotten a lot of flack from privacy advocates for photographing faces and license plate numbers and displaying them on the Street View in Google Maps. Originally, the company said only people who identified themselves could ask the company to remove their image. But Google has quietly changed that policy, partly in response to criticism, and now anyone can alert the company and have an image of a license plate or a recognizable face removed, not just the owner of the face or car, says Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google.
The Bush administration has approved a plan to expand domestic access to some of the most powerful tools of 21st-century spycraft, giving law enforcement officials and others the ability to view data obtained from satellite and aircraft sensors that can see through cloud cover and even penetrate buildings and underground bunkers. Administration officials say the program will give domestic security and emergency preparedness agencies new capabilities in dealing with a range of threats, from illegal immigration and terrorism to hurricanes and forest fires. But the program, described yesterday by the Wall Street Journal, quickly provoked opposition from civil liberties advocates, who said the government is crossing a well-established line against the use of military assets in domestic law enforcement.
Google and Microsoft, are working up their plans to improve the nation�s health care. By combining better Internet search tools, the vast resources of the Web and online personal health records, both companies are betting they can enable people to make smarter choices about their health habits and medical care. Google and Microsoft recognize the obstacles, and they concede that changing health care will take time. But the companies see the potential in attracting a large audience for health-related advertising and services. And both companies bring formidable advantages to the consumer market for such technology. Privacy concerns are another big obstacle, as both companies acknowledge. Most likely, they say, trust will build slowly, and the online records will include as much or as little personal information as users are comfortable divulging.
A pivotal legal battle is being waged in a federal appeals court over the Bush administration's controversial spying program, including the monitoring that came to be publicly known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program. Tomorrow, a three-judge panel will hear arguments on whether the case, which may provide the clearest indication yet of how the spying program has worked, can go forward. So far, evidence in the case suggests a massive effort by the NSA to tap into the backbone of the Internet to retrieve millions of e-mails and other communications, which the government could sift and analyze for suspicious patterns or other signs of terrorist activity, according to court records, plaintiffs' attorneys and technology experts.
The 178 video cameras that keep watch on San Francisco public housing developments have never helped police officers arrest a homicide suspect even though about a quarter of the city's homicides occur on or near public housing property, city officials say. Nobody monitors the cameras, and the videos are seen only if police specifically request it from San Francisco Housing Authority officials. The cameras have occasionally managed to miss crimes happening in front of them because they were trained in another direction, and footage is particularly grainy at night when most crime occurs, according to police and city officials. Similar concerns have been raised about the 70 city-owned cameras located at high-crime locations around San Francisco.
Five reporters must reveal their government sources for stories they wrote about Steven J. Hatfill and investigators' suspicions that the former Army scientist was behind the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, a federal judge ruled yesterday. The decision from U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton is yet another blow to the news industry as it seeks to shield anonymous sources who provide critical information -- especially on the secret inner workings of government. The ruling is a victory for Hatfill, a bioterrorism expert who has argued in a civil suit that the government violated his privacy rights and ruined his chances at a job by unfairly leaking information about the probe.
Last week, Google Inc. began expanding its Google Maps program to Southern California, and anyone who got in the way became subjects in the firm's version of "Candid Camera." The additions from Los Angeles, San Diego and some Orange County cities, as well as Houston and Orlando, expands an online service that thrilled some digital-map buffs but freaked out privacy advocates when it launched in May in the San Francisco Bay area, New York, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami. The photos can help people scout out places they plan to visit. But when Google's camera shutters click, they capture more than buildings. Within hours of the first release, bloggers had found and posted photographs, which are often sharp enough to identify the people in them, of vulnerable moments: students sunbathing in bikinis at Stanford University, motorists being ticketed by police, a man walking into an adult bookstore in Oakland, even a man picking his nose on a San Jose park bench.
The Homeland Security Department has unveiled several important upgrades to databases that collectively contain tens of millions of personal records concerning immigration and travel. Some of the changes are intended to foster information sharing among organizations inside DHS as well as with outside government agencies. Others aim to reorganize the databases internally so as to make them easier to use. The database changes came to light via a Federal Register notice today in which DHS announced the online availability of 14 separate Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) concerning new projects. Not all of the 14 PIAs cover information technology-related projects.
In the last few months, the search engine business has experienced its own version of cutthroat competition: a privacy policy war, with Google, Ask.com and Microsoft vying to outdo one another in protecting their users' personal information. But it's been difficult to make direct comparisons, in part because privacy policies tend to be written by lawyers for lawyers. So CNET News.com did some of the work for you by surveying the five leading search companies. Starting on August 6, we asked them eight questions, including how long they retain search data, how they eventually dispose of it, whether they engage in behavioral targeting, and whether they use information they have from user sign-ups to guide which ads are displayed.
The Department of Homeland Security is funneling millions of dollars to local governments nationwide for purchasing high-tech video camera networks, accelerating the rise of a "surveillance society" in which the sense of freedom that stems from being anonymous in public will be lost, privacy rights advocates warn. Since 2003, the department has handed out some $23 billion in federal grants to local governments for equipment and training to help combat terrorism. Most of the money paid for emergency drills and upgrades to basic items, from radios to fences. But the department also has doled out millions on surveillance cameras, transforming city streets and parks into places under constant observation.
At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity. Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens. Data on the chip will include not just the citizen�s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord�s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China�s controversial �one child� policy.
Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, viscerally objected to a Democratic proposal to limit warrantless surveillance of foreigners' communications with Americans to instances in which one party was a terrorism suspect. McConnell wanted no such limits. The Bush administration leveraged Democratic acquiescence into a broader victory: congressional approval of a Republican bill that would expand surveillance powers far beyond what Democratic leaders had initially been willing to accept.
I-Pass, which is part of the E-ZPass system, and other electronic toll collection systems around the country are emerging as a powerful means of proving infidelity. That's because when your spouse doesn't know where you've been, the pass does. Records that show which tolls an I-Pass user traveled through can be used against the driver in divorce court or criminal cases. The devices communicate with antennas at toll plazas, and money is automatically deducted from the motorist's prepaid account.
On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security announced significant changes to its immigration regulations. These include: requiring through a �rule making process� that all federal contractors and vendors verify the legal work status of their employees through the federal verification system; reducing the number of documents employers could accept to confirm the identity and eligibility of an employee; seeking voluntary partnerships with states that would allow the federal government to access photographs in Department of Motor Vehicle databases.
President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government�s authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants. Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government�s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.
The U.S. government's main border control system is plagued by computer security weaknesses, increasing the risk of computer attacks, data thefts, and manipulation of millions of identity records including passport, visa and Social Security numbers and the world's largest fingerprint database, officials said. U.S. officials have called the US-VISIT system a cornerstone of the nation's efforts to stop terrorists at the borders and stanch the flow of illegal immigrants. It automates the collection of fingerprints and digital photographs, and links border control officers to FBI, border enforcement, immigration and State Department watch lists and databases.
UK police are seeking powers to take DNA samples from suspects on the streets and for non-imprisonable offences such as speeding and dropping litter. The demand for a huge expansion of powers to take DNA comes as a government watchdog announced the first public inquiry into the national DNA database. There is growing concern among MPs and civil liberties groups about the number of children under 10 and young black men on the database � the biggest in the world. But a number of police forces in England and Wales are backing proposals that would add millions more samples to it.
The latest group to chime in on Google's proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of ad firm DoubleClick is the--get ready because this is a long one--Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa, to be referred to as the CIPPIC going forward. The CIPPIC is asking Canadian regulators, the Competition Commissioner, to be exact, to review the Google-DoubleClick deal. Like others before it, the CIPPIC alleges that the merger would prevent or at least significantly lessen competition in the market for online targeted advertising because of Google's dominance in keyword search and DoubleClick's lead in the display ad serving and behavioral targeting ad business.
The Bush administration is pressing Congress this week for the authority to intercept, without a court order, any international phone call or e-mail between a surveillance target outside the United States and any person in the United States. The proposal, submitted by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell to congressional leaders on Friday, would amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for the first time since 2006 so that a court order would no longer be needed before wiretapping anyone "reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States." It would also give the attorney general sole authority to order the interception of communications for up to one year as long as he certifies that the surveillance is directed at a person outside the United States.
The Bush administration's chief intelligence official said yesterday that President Bush authorized a series of secret surveillance activities under a single executive order in late 2001. The disclosure makes clear that a controversial National Security Agency program was part of a much broader operation than the president previously described. The disclosure by Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, appears to be the first time that the administration has publicly acknowledged that Bush's order included undisclosed activities beyond the warrantless surveillance of e-mails and phone calls that Bush confirmed in December 2005.
The government's ID card system will give thousands of "false matches" when more than six million people are registered on its database, an academic has claimed. Biometric data holding a person's unique physiological characteristics will be stored on a microchip in the cards. But Professor John Daugman, said using fingerprints as a key biometric measure will cause major problems. The Identity and Passport Service has denied Professor Daugman's claims.
