Sarah D. Sparks reports: In its effort to clarify student data privacy rules for researchers and education officials alike, the U.S. Department of Education proposed several changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, on Thursday and named its first chief privacy officer. “Data should only be shared with the right people…
Category: Laws
Justice Department opposes digital privacy reforms
Declan McCullagh reports: The U.S. Justice Department today offered what amounts to a frontal attack on proposals to amend federal law to better protect Americans’ privacy. James Baker, the associate deputy attorney general, warned that rewriting a 1986 privacy law to grant cloud computing users more privacy protections and to require court approval before tracking…
Does Government Own Your Remotely Backed Up Computer Files, Your Emails, or Your Cell Phone GPS Info?
Warner Todd Huston writes: Did you know that there are no laws to prevent government agencies from raiding your computer’s remotely hosted back up files, your third party emails, your cloud computing files, or your cell phone GPS location records? Well, there aren’t. As the law stands today government can go into your private computer…
Democrats call for update to e-surveillance law
Grant Gross reports: Congress needs to rewrite a law governing law enforcement access to mobile-phone data, e-mail messages and other electronic communications to reflect changes in technology, including a growing reliance on cloud computing, several senators said Wednesday. Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee called for changes to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA),…