Declan McCullagh reports: A Federal Trade Commission representative delivered a stern indictment of current privacy laws on Monday, saying they fail to protect American consumers and instead place too much of a “burden” on them. The existing constellation of privacy laws, which relies heavily on disclosure of data collection and use practices and informed consumer…
Category: U.S.
NY law would be 1st to take DNA from all criminals
Michael Virtanen reports for the AP: Gov. David Paterson has proposed roughly doubling New York’s DNA database to include samples from even low-level offenders, making it the first in the nation to so broadly collect and use this evidence to solve crimes and exonerate people wrongly convicted. New York’s law would require adding about 48,000…
Napolitano: Internet Monitoring Needed to Fight Homegrown Terrorism
The Associated Press reports: Fighting homegrown terrorism by monitoring Internet communications is a civil liberties trade-off the U.S. government must make to beef up national security, the nation’s homeland security chief said Friday. As terrorists increasingly recruit U.S. citizens, the government needs to constantly balance Americans’ civil rights and privacy with the need to keep…
NYC Dept. of Education Going After Teen ‘Sexting’ — In The Home
Parents and schools struggle with the role technology plays in kids’ lives. But a new push to keep them safe has some saying it goes too far. Schools now want to punish students caught “sexting” — no matter where they do it. The Department of Education wants to ban both cyber bullying and sexting in…