Huge electronic privacy news out of Washington. In an historic unanimous decision on United States vs. Jones, the United States Supreme Court found that “the Government’s attachment of the GPS device to the vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.” That means that [...]
Posts and thoughts on the 2011 South by Southwest Interactive Festival are still making their way out of my hard drive. On the first day of the conference, I moderated a panel on ”Social Network Users’ Bill of Rights” that has received continued interest in the press.This correspondent moderated a panel on a “social networking bill [...]
There’s a new deputy chief technology officer in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy: Danny Weitzner. He’ll be taking over the policy portfolio that Andrew McLaughlin held. The appointment appears to have been reported first by Julia Angwin in her story on a proposed bill for an online privacy bill of rights [...]
The Federal Trade Commission released an online privacy report today that will reshape how companies, consumers and businesses interact on the Internet. The agency will take questions from reporters at 1 PM EST and from the public on Twitter in its first Twitter chat at 3 PM EST. The recommendation that “companies should adopt a [...]
This fall, online privacy debates have been heating up in Washington. Tomorrow, the Federal Trade Commission will finally deliver its long awaited online privacy report. Chairman. Over the past year FTC has explored new online privacy frameworks and examined the strength of cloud computing privacy in a series of privacy roundtables. The FTC has issued [...]
Today in Washington, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the landmark 1986 legislation that governs the protections citizens have when they communicate using the Internet or cellphones. The statements of the witnesses before the Senate from the Commerce Department, Justice Department and witnesses are embedded in ths post. [...]
How will regulations and laws that address the new challenges of online privacy evolve? What are the tradeoffs between societal benefit and individual rights? How should the opportunities inherent in data mining be balanced with harm-based standards? What are the responsibilities of governments, businesses and citizens to protect privacy? Yesterday at the Gov 2.0 Summit [...]
Alexander B. Howard is Radar's Government 2.0 Correspondent for O’Reilly Media, where he reports on technology, open government and online civics.
