Here is video of the US Senate Commerce Committee’s hearing ‘Broadband Providers and Consumer Privacy‘ held on Sep 25 2008.
privacy
Cerf, Zittrain & Lessig talk @ Google
Back in March, introduced by Vint Cerf, Jonathan Zittrain and Larry Lessig gave a talk at Google’s Washington DC offices. Google has, possibly encouraged by its Viacom harassment, just posted the video up on YouTube. About 58 minutes in, after Zittrain has given his book synopsis – with which I trust we are all now familiar, Lessig, drawing on earlier ‘Z theory’, gets into the meat of exactly the privacy issues recently highlighted by Viacom’s actions.
NJ court rules that IP addresses are private
A US court has ruled that users have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in their internet surfing records and that police must obtain warrants from higher than usual courts in order to force ISPs to hand over records. However there was no requirement to inform the subject of such a request that it had been carried out.
The Supreme Court of the state of New Jersey said that information about a person’s use of the internet was so private that police there cannot order ISPs to release surfing details of suspects with a municipal court subpoena. They must receive a grand jury subpoena, it said. Continue reading
Facebook’s Beacon tracks all users
An article in Computerworld explains that Facebook’s Beacon javascript, once incorporated in a partner site, collects information on activities of all users with a Facebook cookie, not just logged in Facebook members. A Facebook spokesman stated that data from opt-ed out Facebook members and others is automatically discarded. Continue reading
Facebook backpedals on Beacon
Under pressure from moveon.org and others Facebook has changed it’s controversial Beacon feature, where outside purchases were published in a user’s news feed, to ‘opt-in’ rather than ‘opt out’. Continue reading
MPAA University ‘Toolkit’ Raises Privacy Concerns
 An Washington Post article by Brian Krebs details a new piece of spyware that the MPAA are trying to foist on universities. Krebs had the ‘University Toolkit’ tested by security experts and concludes that it is full of holes that could allow third parties to view the gathered information. Continue reading
Facebook users complain of new tracking
NEW YORK – Some users of the online hangout Facebook are complaining that its two-week-old marketing program is publicizing their purchases for friends to see. Continue reading