From FCW: Privacy advocates are puzzled and dismayed by the Homeland Security Department’s recent addition of new categories of personal information it plans to collect and store for all employees, contractors and volunteers who regularly access DHS facilities. The new categories of information include mother’s maiden name and financial history, according to a June 25…
Power.com gets in Facebook’s face
Power.com is fighting back against Facebook’s lawsuit (pdf). Today, Power.com filed a response and countersuit (pdf). In the filing, Power.com claims that some of the actions attributed to Power.com by Facebook, such as sending out emails to contacts, actually were the doing of Facebook itself and that it was Facebook itself which inserts the Facebook…
Consumer activism produces results: iDrive Lite
It started with a situation described on The Consumerist: Don’t install the iPhone app iDrive Lite if you value the privacy of your contact list. Avi Muchnick, one of the developers behind the free, consumer-friendly online graphics suite Aviary, used iDrive to backup his Gmail contact list when switching to a new phone. The next…
NZ to plug privacy gaps in law
New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner, Marie Shroff, in a submission to the Law Commission, has supported closing gaps in the current legal framework around privacy. The Commissioner made a submission to the Law Commission’s Stage 3 issues paper “Invasion of Privacy: Penalties and Remedies”, which looks at changes needed to the criminal and civil law to…