After seeing Swedish voters send the Pirate Party to the European Parliament, the German branch of the group has now gotten a seat in the lower house of that nation’s parliament, the Bundestag. But the seat didn’t come about through an electoral triumph; instead a member of the Social Democrats, Jörg Trauss, changed allegiances, claiming…
White House to Abandon Spy-Satellite Program
The Obama administration plans to kill a controversial Bush administration spy satellite program at the Department of Homeland Security, according to officials familiar with the decision. The program came under fire from its inception two years ago. Democratic lawmakers said it would lead to domestic spying. The program would have provided federal, state and local…
LifeLock Files Motion to Reconsider
LifeLock issued a press release in which it says that it has filed a motion to reconsider in California’s U.S. District Court in the case of Experian v. LifeLock. Last month, the court had granted Experian’s motion for partial summary judgment and had blocked LifeLock from placing fraud alerts for customers. The court held that…
Privacy Requires Security, Not Abstinence
Simson Garfinkel has written a commentary on the state of privacy and security in Technology Review. Here’s a bit from his conclusion: For more than 100 years, American jurisprudence has recognized privacy as a requirement for democracy, social relations, and human dignity. For nearly 50, we’ve understood that protecting privacy takes more than just controlling…