Former Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr comments: The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has become increasingly aggressive in expanding its responsibility from simply searching passengers to ensure no weapons or explosives are brought on board commercial aircraft. The agency, housed in the federal Department of Homeland Security, has moved in recent years to assume for itself…
Category: Govt
Obama’s cyber plan raises privacy hackles
Andy Greenberg of Forbes discusses the initial concerns and reactions of privacy advocates to Obama’s cybersecurity plan. Concerns kicked into higher gear last week with news about NSA involvement in monitoring government traffic on private sectors and the Einstein 3 program. Greenberg reports: While the concerns over privacy and the NSA are valid, they could…
The SSN Study: Now What?
Since yesterday, when Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross of Carnegie Mellon University released a study demonstrating that it is relatively easy to predict an individual’s Social Security Number (SSN) using data from readily available public records, the security world has been buzzing. As someone who was given a draft copy of the paper to read…
Does the PASS ID Act Protect Privacy?
Jim Harper of the Cato Institute takes aim at PASS ID and CDT’s praise for it. Here are a few snippets: One of the more interesting privacy “protections” in the PASS ID Act is a requirement that individuals may access, amend, and correct their own personally identifiable information. This is a new and different security/identity…