Normally, I would just sigh and think, “Here we go again,” but it was the second paragraph of a news story on news.com.au that caught my eye: Intimate photographs of an Australian Olympian having sex with his wife were stolen by staff at a Sydney computer shop after the prominent star brought his machine in…
Category: Laws
Senate: Drones Need to Operate “Freely and Routinely” In U.S.
Steven Aftergood writes: The integration of drones or unmanned aerial systems (UAS) into the National Airspace System (NAS) needs to be expedited, the Senate Armed Services Committee said in its report on the FY2013 defense authorization bill last week. “While progress has been made in the last 5 years, the pace of development must be accelerated; greater…
Privacy law rots from the head
Stewart Baker writes: Privacy kills. Fish, this time. The main difference between US and European data protection law is this: in the United States, laws are usually written to solve a particular privacy problem, whereas in Europe all personal data is broadly protected by a set of grand principles. Both privacy regimes produce plenty of…
Department of Homeland Security Exempts Massive Database from Privacy Act
When our government starts exempting itself from disclosure, it’s time to be concerned. EPIC reports: The Department of Homeland Security issued a final rule exempting its Operations System from various Privacy Act safeguards, including provisions that permit individuals to access information about them held by the agency. The system “fuses” information from many sources which the agency uses for investigatory…