Responding to political pressure can lead to bad law. The Associated Press reports: The state would charge $100 for a copy of President Obama’s birth records under a bill introduced in the Legislature by five Democrats. It would change a privacy law barring the release of birth records unless the person seeking them has a…
Category: Laws
What the US government can do to encourage Do Not Track
Chris Soghoian writes: Over the past few months, there has been a lot of discussion about Do Not Track. Although both the FTC and Commerce Department have recently issued privacy reports that mentioned Do Not Track, neither agency has the authority under existing law to make Do Not Track a reality. Either the industry can…
Can Privacy Self-Regulation Work for Consumers?
Chris Hoofnagle writes: The Department of Commerce’s Green Paper explores the idea that industries could create self-regulatory codes of conduct for privacy, and that the FTC could enforce those codes. In a previous post, I explain why the assumption that the FTC can police these promises is problematic. Here, I hope to remind participants in…
Senator proposes mobile-privacy legislation
Declan McCullagh reports: Federal law needs to be updated to halt the common police practice of tracking the whereabouts of Americans’ mobile devices without a search warrant, a Democratic senator said today. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said it was time for Congress to put an end to this privacy-intrusive practice, which the Obama Justice…