Roberta Rampton reports: The White House released draft legislation on Friday that would give consumers more control over how the trail of data they leave behind them on the internet is used, stored and sold. The 24-page “discussion draft” on data privacy immediately sparked sharp reaction from the technology industry, which said the proposal would…
Category: Govt
UK: Scottish plans for central identity database spark privacy criticism
Severin Carrell reports: Privacy and civil rights campaigners have urged the Scottish government to drop plans for a new identity database which could allow public bodies, including tax authorities, to share every adult’s private data. Scottish ministers have been accused of introducing a central database by stealth after civil servants quietly published plans to expand an NHS register…
NZ government agency accidentally discloses informant’s identity to employer after workplace complaint
Oops. The New Zealand Privacy Commissioner’s Office has posted a summary of a case it investigated. The gist of the situation is that a woman made a complaint about her employer to a government agency and asked that they keep her name confidential. But when the government investigator went to the workplace, the investigator showed the employer…
EFF to NSA: If The Rule of Law is Important, Start Acting Like It
Nate Cardozo and Eva Galperin write: In comments yesterday during a cybersecurity conference at the New America Foundation, the Director of the NSA, Admiral Mike Rogers faced vocal criticism from the tech community (including cryptography expert Bruce Schneier and Yahoo CISO Alex Stamos). The criticism focused on the Obama administration’s insistence that it should have access to…