Julian Sanchez comes out swinging on the government’s dangerous proposal to expand their surveillance capabilities by requiring more backdoors into what should be our private matters: Taking a cue from the authoritarian regimes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, American law-enforcement and intelligence agencies are seeking to re-engineer the Internet and other digital communications…
Category: Business
Why Comcast can (but probably won’t) read your e-mails, IMs
Nate Anderson writes: For some time, Comcast has had a curious passage buried in one of its several “terms and conditions” documents. The ISP makes clear to users that it doesn’t need a court order to monitor their Internet usage, “including without limitation e-mail, newsgroups, chat, IP audio and video, and Web space content.” If…
Fifteen Advocates Urge Google to Withdraw Privacy Policy Changes
Melissa Ngo writes: In a letter (pdf) to Google CEO Eric Schmidt (and CCed to Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jonathan Leibowitz), fifteen advocates (from organizations including the American Library Association, EPIC and World Privacy Forum) objected to changes to the company’s privacy policies that were announced Sept. 3 and went into effect Oct. 3. The letter said…
Ad Group Unveils Plan to Improve Web Privacy
Tanzina Vega reports: As the debate around online privacy and advertiser access to users’ data continues, a group of the advertising industry’s largest trade organizations was to announce on Monday the details of a self-regulatory program that would allow users to opt out of being tracked by its member organizations. The program provides details on…