NewsTrust - Privacy - Most Recent Stories: News (Mainstream)

Google Buzz Exemplifies Privacy Problems, FTC Commissioner Says

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Emily Steel - Mar. 19 (News Report) - Citing the recent launch of Google’s social-networking service, Google Buzz, outgoing Federal Trade Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour said technology companies are setting a dangerous precedent of publicly exposing consumer data, particularly during the rollout of new products.

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How Privacy Vanishes Online, a Bit at a Time

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Steve Lohr - Mar. 17 (Special Report) - Using innocuous bits of data from Web sites like Facebook and Twitter, researchers gleaned people’s names, ages and even Social Security numbers.

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House votes to renew Patriot Act

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Politico - By Meredith Shiner - Feb. 26 (News Report) - Democrats in a tough election year quietly vote to extend legislation many decried under Bush.

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Italian Court Finds Google Violated Privacy

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Eric Sylvers, Eric Pfanner - Feb. 24 (News Report) - Three Google executives were convicted of privacy violations related to online video in a case that could affect freedom of expression on the Internet.

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Google executives convicted in Italy over abuse video

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - By John Hooper - Feb. 24 (News Report) - Six-month suspended jail terms for three Google chiefs for privacy violations over screening of bullying video Three Google executives were convicted of invasion of privacy today over the transmission of a video showing an Italian teenager being abused by classmates. The three each received a suspended sentence of six months in jail. The short film, which featured a 17-year-old boy with Down's syndrome being harassed by four other children, was uploaded to Google Video in September 2006. Two months later, following a complaint from a pressure group, Italian authorities asked for it to be taken down. It was removed by Google less than 24 hours later. Italian officials argued that Google?s failure to prevent the video from ever reaching ...

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Can the FBI Secretly Track Your Cell Phone?

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Newsweek - By Michael Isikoff - Feb. 12 (News Analysis) - The Justice Department is poised this week to publicly defend a little-known law-enforcement practice that critics say may be the "sleeper" privacy issue of the 21st century: the collection of cell-phone "tracking" records that identify the physical locations where the phones have been.

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Google to enlist NSA to ward off attacks

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Ellen Nakashima - Feb. 04 (News) - Firm won’t share user data, sources say, but deal raises issue of privacy vs. security

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Porn viruses revived on mobiles

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

BBC News - Jan. 15 (News Report) - As mobile phones get more sophisticated, hi-tech criminals are dusting off some old tricks. Security companies have noticed a rise in trojans known as diallers that used to be popular during the days of dial-up net access. On a smartphone the diallers

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Cuba opens airspace to U.S. evacuation flights

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Mary Beth Sheridan, William Booth, Debbi Wilgoren - Jan. 15 (News) - PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- Efforts to rescue, feed and treat ten thousands of Haitians trapped or injured in a devastating earthquake continued Friday morning, and the U.S. government said it had received permission from Cuba to fly through restricted air space on medical evacuation flights.

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France ponders right-to-forget law

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

BBC News - By David Reid - Jan. 08 (News) - The impact of .. online revelations has made France consider the length of time that personal information should remain available in the public arena. A proposed law in the country would give net users the option to have old data about themselves deleted. This right-to-forget would force online and mobile firms to dispose of e-mails and text messages after an agreed length of time or on the request of the individual concerned.

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Netflix Spilled Your Brokeback Mountain Secret, Lawsuit Claims

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Wired - By Ryan Singel - Dec. 18 (News Report) - An in-the-closet lesbian mother is suing Netflix for privacy invasion, alleging the movie rental company made it possible for her to be outed when it disclosed insufficiently anonymous information about nearly half-a-million customers as part of its $1 million contest to improve its recommendation system. The suit known as Doe v. Netflix (.pdf) was filed in federal court in California on Thursday, alleging that Netflix violated fair-trade laws and a federal privacy law protecting video rental records, when it launched its popular contest in September 2006.

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Move to National ID Cards Delayed

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Wired - By David Kravets - Dec. 15 (News Report) - The United States’ quest for a national identification database associated with driver’s licenses won’t be finished by year’s end. The deadline was Dec. 31 for the states to create what would be the largest identification database of its kind under the auspices of the Real ID program. The law also mandates uniform anti-counterfeiting standards for state driver’s licenses.

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Yahoo, Verizon: Our Spy Capabilities Would ‘Shock’, ‘Confuse’ Consumers

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Wired - By Kim Zetter - Dec. 03 (News Report) - Want to know how much phone companies and internet service providers charge to funnel your private communications or records to U.S. law enforcement and spy agencies?

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Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here's What Happened

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Wired - By Evan Ratliff - Nov. 28 (Special Report) - When Sarah Manello heard from a friend about the search for Ratliff, she couldn’t resist. A researcher based in Rochester, New York, Manello had long worked with private investigators, digging up information for defense attorneys and tracking down missing people. She quit a few years ago after growing increasingly dissatisfied with the industry’s tactics. But her skills remained intact. The initial question she posted on Twitter, under the handle @menacingpickle, was private investigation 101: What was Ratliff’s middle name?

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NSA helped with Windows 7 development

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - By Gregg Keizer - Nov. 25 (News Report) - The National Security Agency (NSA) worked with Microsoft on the development of Windows 7, an agency official acknowledged yesterday during testimony before Congress.

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Senators Press Holder to Declassify Key Facts about Patriot Act

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Salem-News.com - Nov. 19 (News Report) - We believe that the information we referenced in those paragraphs – specifically about the use of section 215 – is essential to understanding the full scope of the PATRIOT Act, which is about to be debated in Congress. As we said in June, if you have concerns about declassifying the specific language contained in our letter, we ask that you work with us to find language that conveys enough information to allow for an informed public debate on the PATRIOT Act’s reauthorization

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Gay-rights support stops at Cascades

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By Lornet Turnbull - Nov. 05 (News Report) - The lopsided results over expansion of the state's domestic-partnership law, which voters overall were approving, show the challenge supporters of gay rights face in winning over all Washingtonians as they seek full equality.

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Project ‘Gaydar’: An MIT experiment raises new questions about online privacy

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Boston Globe - By Carolyn Y. Johnson - Sep. 21 (Special Report) - Using data from the social network Facebook, they made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person’s online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. They did this with a software program that looked at the gender and sexuality of a person’s friends and, using statistical analysis, made a prediction. The two students had no way of checking all of their predictions, but based on their own knowledge outside the Facebook world, their computer program appeared quite accurate for men, they said. People may be effectively “outing” themselves just by the virtual company they keep.

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And You Thought a Prescription Was Private

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Aug. 09 (News Report) - Prescriptions and the information on them are bought and sold in a murky marketplace, often without the patients’ knowledge or permission.

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Details on presidential motorcades, safe house for First Family, leak via P2P

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Computerworld - By Jaikumar Vijayan - Jul. 29 (News) - Computerworld - Details about a U.S. Secret Service safe house for the First Family -- to be used in a national emergency -- were found to have leaked out on a LimeWire file-sharing network recently, members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee were told this morning.

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Free the Patents and Laws, Activist Tells Feds

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Ryan Singel - Jul. 23 (News Report) - What’s worse than being a government agency targeted by a gadfly who wants data to be free and is willing to plead, sue, reverse-engineer, grandstand and shame his way into freeing government data? Well, try being a government agency on the receiving end of that in an administration that has pledged allegiance to transparency and openness.

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UAE Blackberry update was spyware

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - By Ben Thompson - Jul. 21 (News Report) - A software update promoted by United Arab Emirates telecoms firm Etisalat appears to have been surveillance software.

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Obama Goes to Bat for Bush Wiretap Program

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Bob Egelko - Jul. 15 (News Report) - President Obama is adamant about maintaining the secrecy of a wiretapping program authorized by George W. Bush, an administration lawyer told a federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday.

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Special alloy sleeves urged to block hackers?

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Todd Lewan - Jul. 11 (News Report) - Separately, a system called STAR, that adapts deep-space communications technologies to read passive tags from distances greater than 600 feet, was announced last year by a Los Angeles startup called Mojix, Inc. It uses "smart antennas" and "digital beam forming" to process signals in four dimensions — time, space, frequency and polarization. Mojix, founded by a former NASA scientist, promotes the technology for supply chain management and asset tracking

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Report: Too few officials knew of surveillance

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Pamela Hess - Jul. 11 (News Report) - Not enough relevant officials were aware of the size and depth of an unprecedented surveillance program started under President George W. Bush, let alone signed off on it, a team of federal inspectors general found.

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