Lawsuits involving anonymous bloggers and attempts to out them were prominent in the news last week. How do the courts handle attempts to unmask bloggers and how can bloggers fight back if they have been outed? Last week, model Liskula Cohen succeeded in getting a New York court to order Google to reveal the name…
Category: Featured News
Has there been a failure of anonymization?
Paul Ohm recently put out an article where he makes the dramatic claim that de-identification has failed (see http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1450006). I have heard that argument before and the argument’s primary weakness is amplified in this article – therefore I feel compelled to comment. Paul Ohm’s argument about the failure of anonymization is based on evidence that…
Do DNA ‘prints’ invade privacy?
Being fingerprinted upon arrest is so commonplace, few people think twice about it. But what if the arresting agency wanted to take DNA? And run it against an index of unsolved crimes? And then store it in a database for eternity? Over the past several years, DNA collection has become more common, and it’s regularly…
Swiss privacy commissioner says “nein” to Google Street View
Hanspeter Thür, the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC), has accused Google of not having taken the necessary steps to safeguard the privacy of Swiss citizens. Thür has demanded that “Google Inc. immediately withdraw its online service Google Street View concerning Switzerland,” according to a statement. In the months leading up to its…