From EPIC.org: The Federal Bureau of Investigation has exempted the FBI Data Warehouse System, from important Privacy Act safeguards. The database ingests troves of personally identifiable information including race, birthdate, biometric information, social security numbers, and financial information from various government agencies. The database contains information on a surprisingly broad category of individuals, including “subjects, suspects, victims, witnesses,…
AU: Web snooping plan suppressed by government
Looks like Australia’s government has decided that transparency is not as important as, say…. everything else. It’s refusing to release details of its super-secret data retention plan. Philip Dorling reports: National security bureaucrats are keeping secret the details of a plan to store the internet history of all Australians for at least two years. The…
Why you should check your Verizon Wireless privacy settings right now
Suzanne Choney writes: Wireless carriers get their monthly take from you, but they’re cashing in on you in other ways, too — unless you tell them otherwise: Carriers sell information about your mobile Web searches and other data to marketing companies. The good news is, you can easily opt out of providing such info. The bad news is,…
Senator Opens Investigation of Data Brokers
Natasha Singer reports: The multibillion-dollar data brokerage industry, a growing force in online marketing, is drawing intensified government scrutiny. On Wednesday, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, opened an extensive investigation of nine leading information brokers. Because Americans now conduct much of their daily business online, the senator said he was concerned that…