Anne Flaherty of AP reports: Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and skeptic of broad government surveillance, objected Tuesday to a bill that would have required social media and online sites like Google, Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook to alert federal authorities of any terrorist activity. The proposal, by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., had been tucked…
Category: Online
German regulator orders Facebook to allow pseudonyms
Woohoo! Julia Fioretti reports: Facebook may not prevent its users from using fake names, a German privacy watchdog said on Tuesday, in the latest privacy setback for the U.S. company in Europe. The Hamburg data protection authority, which is responsible for policing Facebook in Germany, said the social network firm could not unilaterally change users’ chosen…
AU: Labor to rethink support for data retention
Hannah Francis reports: Labor will review its support for the government’s controversial data retention legislation just four months after it helped pass it into law, as ongoing internal ructions over the issue resurfaced at the party’s national conference. […] An amendment to review Labor’s policy on data retention passed the conference floor on Friday, citing concerns…
W3C Moves Closer to Do Not Track Standards
Christopher Avery and Bryan Thompson write: The long running struggle to develop technical standards for the implementation of a do not track (DNT) specification is moving closer to completion. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) working group recently released a “last call working draft” of its tracking compliance specification. The specification would establish server-side standards for honoring a…