In a time when chat rooms, social networking and online forums are commonplace, how far can a company go in monitoring them for negative comments from discontented employees before they are guilty of “cybersnooping”? A case decided last week, involving two servers at the Houston’s Restaurant in Hackensack, posed that question, and a federal jury…
Category: Business
FBI justifies gag order — in secret
When the FBI uses a national security letter (NSL) to force the cooperation of an ISP or phone company in the surveillance of a suspect, the agency typically slaps a gag order on the service provider to prevent it from revealing the existence of the NSL. Civil liberties groups have successfully challenged the DOJ on…
Privacy policies: public vs. private sector
In a Brookings Institute study, “Comparing Technology Innovation in the Private and Public Sectors” (pdf), authors Darrell M. West and Jenny Lu compared the sectors on a number of factors, including privacy and security. They report, in part: A growing number of websites offer privacy and security statements, yet they remain more prevalent on commercial…
Clear explains plans to protect data
The operator of Clear, a Registered Travel program, e-mailed members on Friday describing how it intends to protect all of the private information it had collected on members. The email, published in the Denver Business Journal, says, in part: How is Clear securing personal information? Clear stands by our commitment to protect our customer’s personally…