Time is up for Facebook to find a way to live up to Canada’s privacy law after this country’s privacy watchdog gave the social-networking website one month to close its “serious privacy gaps.” And if Jennifer Stoddart, Canada’s privacy commissioner, isn’t satisfied with Facebook’s final response Monday, she has two weeks to take the California-based…
NZ: Privacy fears end ‘shame’ lists
A ban on publishing the names of all drink drivers in the Wellington region has made the crime an “anonymous offence” and could lead to an increase in drink-driving, police say. After nearly a decade of publishing a list of all excess blood-alcohol convictions, The Dominion Post no longer receives information from the police, who…
Facebook Cornering Market on E-Friends
Facebook just bought the rights to nearly everything you do online. And it cost them only $47.5 million. Facebook’s purchase of FriendFeed, an obscure social-media platform, is potentially momentous. To understand why, we must understand FriendFeed, a start-up that is ubiquitous among techies and unknown to everybody else. It’s a sleek application that acts as…
Court orders sheriff to turn over password
We’ve seen a few cases in the past few years where someone was ordered to turn over a password to a computer system or the encryption key. But now a dispute over the security of a law enforcement database has two county agencies in Maricopa Arizona battling in court and a judge threatening the sheriff’s…