The claim by London’s Metropolitan Police that the interception of messages is only illegal when the message has not been listened to, read or collected by the recipient has been challenged by a privacy law expert. The Met’s Assistant Commissioner John Yates told MPs that the police force’s legal advice was that it was not…
Category: Breaches
Facebook fraud a ‘major issue’
Josh Halliday reports: Hacking of Facebook accounts to scam people out of money has become a “major issue” for the social networking site, its head of European public policy, Lord Richard Allan, has told the Guardian. As a result the site is implementing new ways of detecting when its users’ accounts have been hacked, and…
Trust and Betrayal Online and Offline
Mike Spinney has a thoughtful commentary on Ponemon.org about reactions to recent revelations that a Google engineer had improperly accessed user accounts. He writes: To focus on Google (or, less specifically, the Internet) as the bad actor in this story is to miss the bigger picture: online or offline life involves risk, and the…
Upcoming Congressional Hearings
A flurry of activity in Congress next week on privacy-related issues. In chronological order: Senate Judiciary Committee Full Committee hearing, “The Electronic Communications Privacy Act: Promoting Security and Protecting Privacy in the Digital Age” DATE: September 22, 2010 TIME: 10:00 AM ROOM: Dirksen-226 WEBCAST The Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance Subcommittee of the Senate…