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…
Category: Online
Social networks subject to EU laws
Social networking sites are legally responsible for their users’ privacy, Europe’s privacy watchdogs have confirmed. A committee of data protection regulators has said that the sites are ‘data controllers’, with all the legal obligations that brings. Users of the sites are also data controllers with legal obligations when they are posting on behalf of a…
No mistakes? NH P2P case highlights MediaSentry’s issues
When a middle-aged New Hampshire woman was accused of sharing songs like “Jigga My Nigga” using BearShare, she initially thought that her federal lawsuit from the recording industry was some kind of “scam”—and she almost paid the price for not showing up in court. But she fought back with the help of the Franklin Pierce…
Trial of Google executives set to start in Italy
What is almost certain to be a landmark court case on internet privacy and the liability of hosting sites starts tomorrow in an Italian court with Google executives as the defendants. The case began in 2006, when four boys in Turin verbally and physically harassed a classmate with Down’s Syndrome. The boy was so upset…