Monday, May 6th, 2013
Latanya Sweeney, director of the Data Privacy Lab at Harvard, has been researching the issue of de-anonymization or re-identification of data for years. In 1998, she explained how a former governor of Massachusetts had his full medical record re-identified by cross-referencing Census information with de-identified health data. Sweeney also found that, with birth date alone, 12 ...
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Monday, April 15th, 2013
To recap: In the last year, there has been increasing focus on the issue of domestic use of aerial drones (also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, “UAVs”) to conduct surveillance. Months ago, Congress approved the FAA reauthorization bill, which includes a provision to integrate the use of aerial surveillance by drones in the United States by 2015. In July, drone makers ...
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Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013
The New York Times discusses online privacy with Carnegie Mellon University’s Alessandro Acquisti, who has co-authored a draft paper, “Sleights of Privacy: Framing, Disclosures, and the Limits of Transparency” (pdf), on the issue. Alessandro Acquisti, a behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, studies how we make these choices [related to online ...
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Thursday, February 28th, 2013
The Washington Post reports on the issue of newspapers facing death threats for making requests for public records on gun ownership: Routine requests for public records have become anything but routine for some newspapers these days. For the third time in as many months, a newspaper has faced an angry ...
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Wednesday, February 27th, 2013
The New York Times reports on the issue of marketing and other companies’ tracking of users’ online browsing and buying, which has raised privacy questions and led to Do Not Track and track-blocking tools from Web browsers such as Explorer, Safari and Firefox: Last fall, Microsoft announced that its newest ...
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Thursday, February 21st, 2013
In a column at TechCrunch, former YouTube executive Hunter Walk discusses the issue of old actions coming back to haunt individuals via search engine results. Whether it’s goofy photos on social-networking sites or more serious actions, technology can make permanent these actions. Walk writes: Search engines have long memories. I ...
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Tuesday, February 19th, 2013
To recap: In the last year, there has been increasing focus on the issue of domestic use of aerial drones (also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, “UAVs”) to conduct surveillance. Months ago, Congress approved the FAA reauthorization bill, which includes a provision to integrate the use of aerial surveillance by drones in the United States by 2015. In July, drone ...
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Tuesday, February 19th, 2013
To recap: In the last year, there has been increasing focus on the issue of domestic use of aerial drones (also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, “UAVs”) to conduct surveillance. Months ago, Congress approved the FAA reauthorization bill, which includes a provision to integrate the use of aerial surveillance by drones in the United States by 2015. In July, drone ...
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Tuesday, January 22nd, 2013
The New York Times reports on the issue of data mining electronic medical records and the privacy issues that can arise: Over the past decade, nudged by new federal regulations, hospitals and medical offices around the country have been converting scribbled doctors’ notes to electronic records. Although the chief goal ...
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Wednesday, December 19th, 2012
We’ve discussed before the issue of businesses or schools gathering and sometimes storing their customers’ or students’ identification data. Businesses such as 24 Hour Fitness gyms and a Maryland recreation center began gathering customers’ fingerprints. The issue has arisen internationally, as well. Recently, ABC News (Australia) reported that the use of ID scanning and storing technology — ...
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Tuesday, December 18th, 2012
U.S. PIRG’s Edmund Mierzwinski and the Center for Digital Democracy’s Jeffrey Chester discuss the issue of consumer data privacy in a forthcoming article for the Suffolk Law Review, “Selling Consumers, Not Lists: The New World of Digital Decision-Making and the Role of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.” Here’s the abstract: ...
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Wednesday, December 5th, 2012
The New York Times reports on the issue of civil liberties at the United States border, including privacy rights: The government has historically had broad power to search travelers and their property at the border. But that prerogative is being challenged as more people travel with extensive personal and business ...
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