After seeing Swedish voters send the Pirate Party to the European Parliament, the German branch of the group has now gotten a seat in the lower house of that nation’s parliament, the Bundestag. But the seat didn’t come about through an electoral triumph; instead a member of the Social Democrats, Jörg Trauss, changed allegiances, claiming…
Category: Govt
White House to Abandon Spy-Satellite Program
The Obama administration plans to kill a controversial Bush administration spy satellite program at the Department of Homeland Security, according to officials familiar with the decision. The program came under fire from its inception two years ago. Democratic lawmakers said it would lead to domestic spying. The program would have provided federal, state and local…
Kr: Customer Database to Get Better Protection
Korea is increasing the number of businesses and entities required to provide better data protection. Despite a strengthening of privacy protection, skeptics say that the root cause is the current practice in which businesses and organizations require people to submit their resident registration codes and other verifiable data for accessing even the simplest Web applications….
Tom Davis’ mixed privacy record
If the past is any predictor of the future, President Obama’s likely nominee for czar is no friend of privacy, according to Ryan Singel of Threat Level. Singel reports that former Republican Congressman Tom Davis voted repeatedly to expand the government’s internet wiretapping powers and helped author the REAL ID law that has been rejected…