Danny Sullivan writes: Earlier this week, news broke that a Google employee had been fired in July for accessing the private information of a few individuals without permission, in violation of Google’s policies. Isn’t that something Google should be reporting itself, I wondered? It makes sense to me, but don’t expect Google to do so. Read…
Category: Breaches
Why the snooping ex Google engineer is in trouble
Tamlin Magee of TechEYE.net has compiled a number of state and federal laws that Magee thinks might apply to the Google employee who engaged in privacy-invasive (at the best) or illegal (at the worst) conduct. The article discusses how each of these statutes might apply to the situation: The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (“ECPA”)…
Four Questions Google Still Needs to Answer
As a follow-up to the revelation that Google fired an employee, David Barksdale, for accessing user accounts and harassing minors, Gawker.com has posed four useful questions to Google: 1) Has everyone whose privacy was violated by Barksdale been notified? 2) Why weren’t Barksdale’s actions reported to the police? 3) What specific steps is Google taking…
A New Zealand MP is apparently an ID thief
Martin Kay, Ian Steward and Tracy Watkins report on a political scandal in New Zealand involving ACT MP David Garrett. Among the other concerns about his past, it turns out the MP is an identity thief, having used the identity of a dead baby to get a passport. He claims that he was inspired by…