Charlie Savage reports: The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention. The F.B.I. soon plans to issue a new edition of its…
Category: Featured News
An Analysis of Google Logs Retention Policies
Vincent Toubiana of Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs and Helen Nissenbaum of New York University have published an article, “An Analysis of Google Logs Retention Policies,” in the Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality (2011): Vol. 3: Iss. 1, Article 2. Here’s the Abstract: To preserve search log data utility, Google groups search queries in log bundles by…
Another family sues Lower Merion School District over “webcamgate”
If you thought the soap opera involving Lower Merion School District’s “webcamgate” was over, guess again. Reuben Kramer reports that another lawsuit has been filed by another student whose images were captured when the webcam on his district-provided laptop was remotely activated: Plaintiff Joshua Levin’s suit describes an ominous night when he and his family discovered…
American Express’s call centers put customer data at risk of warrantless search and seizure – complaint
Seen at Courthouse News: A federal class action claims that American Express routes customers’ calls to foreign call centers without their permission or knowledge, subjecting them to intrusive, warrantless snooping by the U.S. government. The case is Pickman v. American Express Travel Services and was filed in Superior Court of California in Alameda on June…