Italy Convicts Google Execs To Protect Privacy: Via NPR.

Europeans are debating the overall reach of the Internet into their lives. An Italian court recently convicted three Google executives for privacy violations after a clip was posted on Google Video showing a disabled student being bullied by classmates in Turin. The ruling highlights a deep trans-Atlantic cultural gap: Americans see the ruling as undermining the concept of freedom of expression, while Europeans put privacy first — they consider it a fundamental human right. [ Read more ... ]

Minds for Sale | Berkman Center: Via The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

Minds for Sale

Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society

Monday, February 22, 5:30PM
Austin East Classroom, Austin Hall, Harvard Law School (Map)
Register Here for Harvard Alumni (Alumni / Friends $5)
For Community Members, email haa_alumnieducation@harvard.edu or call 617-495-1920.
This event will be webcast live and archived on our site shortly after. [ Read more ... ]

Discussing Citizens United with Larry Lessig: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

Just in case readers here forgot how angry they were with me for my partial defense of the Citizens United decision, permit me to risk once again provoking the hornets' nest by recommending this 20-minute discussion I had on Monday night with Harvard Law Professor Larry Lessig on The Young Turks.  At The Huffington Post, Lessig wrote this response to the arguments I made about the case, and we had what I thought was a very constructive and enlightening discussion of the relevant issues:

Read Original Article:(Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.)

Salon Radio: ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

In October, 2008, the ACLU issued a report outlining the policies needed to restore civil liberties and America's constitutional framework in the wake of the Bush assault, entitled "Actions for Restoring America."  On the one-year anniversary of Obama's inauguration as President, the ACLU has issued a new report -- pointedly and revealingly entitled "America Unrestored" -- which details Obama's record in these areas.  Although there have been a few isolated bright spots (the DOJ's intensified domestic enforcement of civil rights laws), Obama's overall civil liberties record has been extremely disappointing, and this report from the ACLU (with which I consult) comprehensively documents the failures. [ Read more ... ]

Science Friday: Facial Recognition: Via NPR's Science Friday.

Photo management programs such as Picasa and iPhoto can pick out a snapshot of your cousin Dave from a stack of party pictures -- but what about more complex uses of facial recognition in less controlled situations? In this segment, we'll take a look at the state of the art in facial recognition, from 'Google Goggles' that give you additional information about things your cell phone camera sees, to security applications that scan faces at airports. How good is the technology, and how can it be employed while respecting privacy concerns? [ Read more ... ]

Data Mining in the Mobile World: Via NPR Science Friday Archive.

Data collected from mobile electronics such as cell phones has the potential to aid research in a wide variety of fields -- from predicting traffic patterns to studying air quality. But how can researchers balance personal privacy and the desire to take full advantage of real-time data analysis technologies? In this segment, we'll talk about the potential benefits offered by such data collection, and about the risks to privacy. [ Read more ... ]

A short video - http://RebelChristmasCard2009.com/

Hope your holiday is going better than his.

Salon Radio: Critical state secrets hearing today: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

(updated below w/transcript - Update II)

[link to recorder fixed]

The case of Mohamed v. Jeppesen -- brought by five victims of Bush's torture/rendition program against the Boeing subsidiary that shipped them to be tortured -- was the Obama DOJ's first test of its commitment to restore basic accountability and the rule of law.  Back in February, it resoundingly failed that test when they demanded that the case be dismissed in its entirety by invoking the same radicalized version of the "state secrets" privilege which the Bush DOJ, to great controversy, repeatedly invoked.  That was the first sign that things would go terribly awry with Obama's rule of law and civil liberties record.  This warped rendition of the "state secrets" doctrine transforms it from a long-standing, simple evidentiary privilege (i.e., this specific document is too sensitive to use in the litigation) into a sweeping, dangerous shield of immunity for government lawbreaking (i.e., courts have no right to review the legality of the crimes we commit in secret). 

The Obama administration now insists that courts must dismiss lawsuits alleging presidential lawbreaking whenever the CIA Director claims the lawsuit would jeopardize state secrets; or, as the ACLU Brief puts it, "torture victims must be denied a day in court based on an Affidavit submitted by their torturers."  The Obama DOJ has gone on to invoke that same Bush-created version of the secrecy theory to demand dismissal of numerous other cases alleging various types of lawbreaking by the Executive Branch. [ Read more ... ]

Development of the Right to Privacy [ACS]: Via JURIST - Video Monitor.

Louis Brandeis and the Development of the Right to Privacy, ACS, November 10, 2009. Flash Embed, 73 minutes.

Read Original Article:(Via JURIST - Video Monitor.)

Salon Radio: Rep. Jerry Nadler on State Secrets Act: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

Last Friday, the House Judiciary Committee, by a vote of 18-12, approved a bill entitled The State Secret Protection Act of 2009, which, if enacted, would be the first law ever to regulate and limit the President's ability to use the "state secrets privilege" to compel the dismissal of lawsuits that allege lawbreaking by executive branch officials.  The bill was first introduced in 2007 in response to the Bush administration's radical abuse and expansion of the privilege, and was re-introduced earlier this year in response to the Obama administration's identical abuses.

The lead House sponsor of the bill is Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, the Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.  He's my guest today on Salon Radio to discuss why these limits are so imperative, how the Obama DOJ has been abusing the privilege, and why internal, voluntary DOJ safeguards are inadequate.  [ Read more ... ]

Is Your Facebook Profile As Private As You Think?: Via NPR.

Much has been made in recent years of the so-called Facebook generation, which supposedly consists of 20-somethings who like to go online and spill their guts without regard for privacy. The reality is more complex.

Yes, social network users post a lot of personal information. But they're sharing it within a circle of online "friends." And they fiercely resist outsiders' attempts to get a peek.

Last summer, city administrators in Bozeman, Mont., began requiring job applicants to provide usernames and passwords to their social networking accounts, as part of the background check. The new requirement caused such an uproar, the city manager held a press conference to apologize.

Social network users assume a degree of privacy within their circle of friends — but it's not a safe assumption to make. [ Read more ... ]

Copyright and Science: A plea for skeptics: Via Lawrence Lessig on Blip.tv .

Talk given at Tokyo University October 5, 2009. This is a plea for scientists to be skeptical about presumptions about how IP should regulate it, and a bit about the work (the GREAT work) of Science Commons in this space.

Read Original Article:(Via Lawrence Lessig on Blip.tv .)

Fact Check on FOX News' Misleading PATRIOT Act Reporting: Via EFF.org Updates.

Unfortunately, it appears that the only television news network that's been regularly covering the PATRIOT Act renewal process in Congress has been FOX News, and their coverage has seemed a lot more like pro-PATRIOT propaganda than unbiased news reporting. Fortunately, Julian Sanchez of The Cato Institute has been fact-checking them closely, in this detailed blog post and in this illuminating video: [ Read more ... ]

VIDEO: Washington Legal Foundation: Via CDT - PolicyBeta.

Recently, CDT Policy Analyst, Andrew McDiarmid spoke at the Washington Legal Foundation about privacy issues in the Google Books Settlement. The video of Andrew’s discussion, as well as several other videos from the event, are available here.

Read Original Article:(Via CDT - PolicyBeta.)

Salon Radio: Patriot Act and FISA reforms: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

(updated below - Update II)

When Congress enacted the Patriot Act in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, it provided for a four-year expiration date for some of the more controversial provisions.  In 2005, when it was time for Congress to decide if those should be extended, the Bush administration insisted that none of those powers had been abused yet (like everything) they were critical to fighting Terrorism.  As a result, the Congress thus overwhelmingly voted to extend them for four more years, though this time they required the issuance of a report from the Inspector General of the Justice Depratment to determine if there had, in fact, been any abuses.  Unsurprisingly, the IG's Report that issued in 2007 and 2008 documented extreme abuse at the FBI with many of those powers.  Moreover, it was recently revealed that, far more often than not, federal law enforcement agencies use these powers (including the pernicious "sneak and peek" searches) in cases having nothing whatsoever to do with Terrorism. [ Read more ... ]

Graph Identification and Privacy in Social Networks: Via Google Tech Talks.

Google Tech Talks
December 16, 2008

ABSTRACT

Graph identification refers to methods that transform observational data described as a noisy, input graph into an inferred "clean" output graph. Examples include inferring social networks from communication data, identifying gene regulatory networks from protein-protein interactions, etc. On the flip-side, there is a growing interest in anonymizing social network data, and understanding the different types of privacy threats inherent in relational data. In this talk, I will discuss some of the key processes involved in identification (entity resolution, link prediction, collective classification and group detection) and I will overview results showing that on several well-known social media sites, we can easily and accurately recover information that users may wish to remain private. [ Read more ... ]

Who, Why, and What the EFF? Ask the Electronic Frontier Foundation about Copyright, Innovation, and the NSA: Via Google Tech Talk.

Google Tech Talk
April 27, 2009

ABSTRACT

Who, Why, and What the EFF? Ask the Electronic Frontier Foundation about Copyright, Innovation, and the NSA

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is one of the leading online civil liberties groups. Join EFF attorneys as they deliver the the latest on the fight against warrantless wiretapping, promoting increased government transparency, and protecting your right to use the media you own. From the DMCA to DefCon, NSA to RIAA, they'll spell out what's happening where law, tech, and civil liberties collide.

Panelists are Fred von Lohmann, Marcia Hofmann, and Kurt Opsahl. [ Read more ... ]

Online Privacy: Industry Self-Regulation in Practice (Google Tech Talks): Via YouTube :: Videos by googletechtalks.

Online Privacy: Industry Self-Regulation in Practice


Google Tech Talk
September 17, 2009

ABSTRACT

Aleecia M. McDonald will speak about industry self-regulation for online privacy. After a brief overview of how we got here, we will explore the status quo through two studies. First, what is the user burden if people read online privacy policies? How long would it take to do so, and what is the economic value of that time? Second, how well can users understand privacy policies? We evaluated six privacy policies in three different presentation formats and found standardized formats do not help users as much as their proponents might like. Finally, we conclude with an overview of public policy options for online privacy. Bring your ideas, we could have a lively discussion. [ Read more ... ]

Investigating global crime networks: Misha Glenny on TED.com: Via TED Blog.

Journalist Misha Glenny spent several years in a courageous investigation of organized crime networks worldwide, which have grown to an estimated 15% of the global economy. From the Russian mafia, to giant drug cartels, his sources include not just intelligence and law enforcement officials but criminal insiders. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2009, in Oxford, England. Duration: 19:30) [ Read more ... ]

"I Agreed to WHAT?!" Re-envisioning License Agreements and Privacy Statements: Via Google Tech Talk.

Presented by Michael Terry (mterry@cs.uwaterloo.ca)

License agreements and privacy statements are common features of software and software services, but less than 2% of the population actually read them. While many companies have little motivation to compel users to read such agreements, there are nonetheless times when it is advantageous to effectively communicate legal terms to one's user base. [ Read more ... ]

RIAA Seeks Web Removal of ‘Illegal’ Court Recordings: Via Wired: Threat Level.

The Recording Industry Association of America on Monday demanded a federal judge order Harvard University’s Charles Nesson to remove from the internet “unauthorized and illegal recordings” of pretrial hearings and depositions in a file-sharing lawsuit headed to trial.

“Enough is enough. For the past five months, this court has repeatedly warned defense counsel regarding his insistence on engaging unauthorized and illegal recordings of counsel and proceedings in this case,” RIAA attorney Daniel Cloherty wrote (.pdf) U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner of Massachusetts. Cloherty urged the court to sanction Nesson, the founder of the 12-year-old Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

“The idea that a court is being asked by them to order educational material to be removed from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society website seems a questionable intrusion both on my liberty and the public interest,” said Nesson in a telephone interview. “I certainly don’t agree that I am violating any law.” [ Read more ... ]

How To Circumvent an Internet Proxy Video: Via General Internet Videos | Howcast.com.

Some governments and organizations employ proxy servers to filter web content, permitting access to some web sites while blocking others. Here are several ways to get around these censorship policies. For more information, go to http://youthmovements.howcast.com

Read Original Article:(Via .)

Towards Privacy-aware OpenSocial Applications: Via YouTube :: Videos by googletechtalks. [ Read more ... ]

Christine Peterson - Open Source Physical Security: Can We Have Both Privacy and Safety?: Via IT Conversations.

Christine Peterson is a founder and Vice-President of Foresight Institute, and focuses effort on educating the public on nanotechnology issues. In this emotionally-charged presentation at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Peterson lays out the potential privacy concerns of using nanotechnology and closed-source software to monitor for a future terrorist attack.

Read Original Article:(Via IT Conversations.)

Welcome to Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2009, the 19th annual CFP conference.

June 1-4, 2009, Washington DC Marvin Center at George Washington University, Third Floor

Please join us online via video and twitter [ Read more ... ]