In May, Deutsche Telekom admitted it had secretly combed through its own millions of call records to review the calls made by some of its executives in order to ferret out which employees leaked information to the media. There was a huge uproar, and German officials began an investigation.(…)
http://www.privacylives.com/update-arrest-made-in-deutsche-telekom-privacy-scandal/2008/12/18/
The Motion Picture Association of America sued three allegedly illicit movie sites on Wednesday, bringing to 13 the number of MPAA lawsuits since 2007 challenging downloading sites.
The latest copyright infringement lawsuits target U.S.-based
campusist.com(.pdf),
movies-on-demand.tv(.pdf) and
sswarez.com(.pdf) – generally accusing them of indexing to unauthorized copies of movies on the internet.
The
MPAAis often successful in its piecemeal legal approach to combat the underground trade of its intellectual property. U.S. judges have shuttered at least four sites since March — although
illegal downloadingis skyrocketing.
Interesting enough, a U.S. federal judge has never ruled on the merits of an MPAA lawsuit against a BitTorrent tracker or an indexing, search-engine-like website– leaving unanswered the central legal question of whether such sites violate U.S. copyright law. The
MPAA has been winningvia default judgments or settlement agreements, and racking up millions in fines,
paid or unpaid.
The Supreme Court hasn’t even come close to deciding the issue.
Grokser(.pdf) and
Napsteraren’t on point.
A pending and contested case in Los Angeles federal court against
IsoHuntcould bring an answer.
Google’s search engine, which can also point to illicit movie sites, has not been sued by Hollywood. But Google’s YouTube
site has been sued by Viacomfor allegedly allowing wanton infringement on its video-sharing site. The case is pending.
Still, an untold number of freebie sites also exist overseas, including the world’s largest,
The Pirate Bay. While The Bay, a torrent-tracking service, is facing copyright charges in a Swedish court, online piracy is running rampant, so much so the U.S. government just created a
copyright czar.
That is also why the MPAA is urging the incoming Obama administration to
embrace internet filtering.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wired27b/~3/488173897/mpaa-reining-in.html
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is feeling a little jolly these days.
As part of its latest donor campaign, it’s created a brief, albeit
humorous animated videoespousing why it needs your cash.
Among other things, the video highlights the group’s fight for electronic rights, including its
lawsuitchallenging President Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping on Americans.
The lawsuit prompted Congress to immunize telecoms that freely gave your private data to the Bush administration – without warrants. (The EFF is now
challenging that immunity legislation, which was
supported by President-elected Barack Obama.)
What’s more, the EFF video, released Wednesday, reviews the group’s quest for
fair useof copyrighted works, working electronic voting machines and how it
foiled wrongly issued patents.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wired27b/~3/488211950/eff-wants-your.html
The United Kingdom has an estimated 4.2 million cameras (one for every 14 people) and has spent about 500 million pounds on its massive camera surveillance system. Closed circuit television systems (CCTV) have often been sold to the public as systems that help prevent crime. However, numerous studies (some conducted by US and UK law [...]
http://www.privacylives.com/uk-mail-cash-strapped-towns-leave-cctv-cameras-unmonitored/2008/12/17/
HHS Secretary Leavitt announced Monday new key privacy principles for electronic health information exchange. In addition, HHS’s Office of Civil Rights published new HIPAA Privacy Rule guidance, which provides important clarifying information on how the Privacy Rule governs covered entities engaged in electronic health information exchange. For example, it clarifies when covered entities must enter into business associate agreements with health information exchanges; it also makes clear that HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules cover consumer personal health records offered by covered entities. However, the guidance merely encourages the adoption of stronger privacy and security policies consistent with the new principles. CDT calls on Congress and the new Administration to implement a comprehensive, enforceable framework of protections for personal health information that builds public trust and facilitates widespread adoption of health IT.
The New York Times has an interesting story on search engines and privacy.
Google has released its map of the national brain and appetites for 2008, and it turns out that many, many people across America have been asking the Internet “what is love?” and “how to kiss.”
And to tighten the focus, Google has also provided [...]
Virgin Media, the British internet service provider that just announced a 50 megabits per second broadband service, is denying a Tuesday published report that it plans to throttle BitTorrent traffic as a congestion management plan.
“It’s not true,” Asam Ahmad, a company spokesman, said in telephone interview from London. “There are no changes planned in our traffic management policy.”
Virgin’s stated policygenerally limits the speeds of its heaviest data users during certain times of the day.
The
Register reported Tuesdaythat Neil Berkett, the company’s CEO, said the throttling was to come in mid-2009. The Register’s story did not quote Berkett directly. But the story had some legs, and was picked up by our sister blog,
Epicenter, and
ZDNet.
Unlike in the United States,
where regulators dinged Comcastfor throttling BitTorrent data, there appears to be little, if any, regulatory opposition to application throttling in the United Kingdom.
BitTorrentis the application of choice for the online pirating of movies, software and games. It has legitimate uses as well, allowing for the easy transfer of large files, including motion pictures rented online.
Virgin Media is one of the UK’s largest providers with 12 million customers.
By some estimates, BitTorrent data accounts for half the internet’s traffic.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wired27b/~3/487058072/virgin-media-de.html
or many years privacy advocates have claimed that if users were fully informed and aware of privacy policies then they would vote with their feet. Privacy policies would become part of the free market decision making process, in addition to price, brand, reputation, convenience, etc.
It appears this process is actually starting to take place in one industry: search engines. It is likely that they have been the first because of the significant public focus on privacy issues around search over the last few years.
First Google said they would “anonymize” their logs after 18 months, which they later shortened to 9. Yahoo countered with 13 months and has now gone to 90 days. I talked about Google’s 18 month policy back in March 2007. In August 2007 I mentioned a CNET Report on privacy ratings for Search engines.
This tit for tat shortening of the identifiable log retention policies suggests that pressure around this issue is meaningful to the search engine giants. What is somewhat less clear is whether the pressure is from the market, or from the media / politicians / government.
It is still the case that the logs are not actually deleted, but the rather the source IP address and user ID cookies are stripped out. There is a good Wikipedia article on the scandal around a release of “anonymized” AOL search information, and how it was still possible to identify individual users in the data.
The real proof of this trend towards privacy policy competition will be when we see elements of privacy policies being promoted front and center on diverse websites as part of their competitive positioning / marketing.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) and ten other civil liberties organizations today sent an open letter today to Michigan State University (MSU) President Lou Anna K. Simon in defense of MSU student government leader Kara Spencer. Ms. Spencer was formally warned by MSU and labeled a “spammer” for sending e-mails to 391 faculty members raising concerns about a controversial change in the university’s calendar.
MSU’s email policy prohibits the sending of unsolicited e-mail “for personal purposes, advertising or solicitations, or political statements or purposes” to more than about 20-30 recipients without prior approval of University officials. EFF and the other organizations noted that, especially by prohibiting “political statements” such as Ms. Spencer’s based on their content, the public university policy is constitutionally suspect. The policy also improperly grants unfettered discretion to MSU in selecting which messages can be sent to multiple students and faculty by requiring prior administration approval.
In signing today’s open letter, EFF and the other organizations agree that MSU’s actions against Ms. Spencer is “egregiously wrongheaded.” They ask that President Simon immediately overturn the finding that Ms. Spencer is a spammer, since that label implies criminal wrongdoing. The organizations also offered to assist MSU in developing a constitutional acceptable use policy for the university.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/12/eff-fire-and-others-urge-michigan-state-respect-st
Today, Yahoo upped the ante when it comes to protecting search engine users’ privacy, announcing a new data retention policy providing for anonymization of search queries — as well as page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks — after 90 days. This announcement comes on the heels of Google’s announcement in September that it would be anonymizing its logs after 9 months.
It’s always good to see search companies competing to provide more privacy to their users, and with this aggressive move, Yahoo has sent a serious shot across Google’s bow. Yahoo has shown that a retention period shorter than Google’s — much shorter than Google’s — is an achievable goal for a major search engine. This announcement should be followed by another from Google, promising to match or beat Yahoo’s retention period. If it isn’t, though, legislators, regulators and privacy advocates should demand an answer from Google to the question: “If Yahoo can do it, why can’t you?”(…)
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/12/yahoo-anonymize-logs-after-90-days-compared-google
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