The current events in Iran have spurred digital rights advocates to renew calls for Congress to investigate deep packet inspection technology. This morning, groups including the Open Internet Coalition, Free Press, Public Knowledge and the ACLU wrote to Congress to ask for hearings about how U.S. companies are using deep packet inspection, or “virtual wiretap”…
Category: Online
Google monopoly means packet snooping
Richard Bennett, a Silicon Valley network architect and technical consultant, offers some commentary in The Register today about what he characterizes as a “fit of temporary sanity” in Washington over regulating online behavioral advertising. From his commentary: The new consensus dictates that the key issues are the protection of archived information from abuse, consumer notification…
Password-protected comments off limits to boss
In a time when chat rooms, social networking and online forums are commonplace, how far can a company go in monitoring them for negative comments from discontented employees before they are guilty of “cybersnooping”? A case decided last week, involving two servers at the Houston’s Restaurant in Hackensack, posed that question, and a federal jury…
Privacy policies: public vs. private sector
In a Brookings Institute study, “Comparing Technology Innovation in the Private and Public Sectors” (pdf), authors Darrell M. West and Jenny Lu compared the sectors on a number of factors, including privacy and security. They report, in part: A growing number of websites offer privacy and security statements, yet they remain more prevalent on commercial…