http://infoadvocate.org/blog Information Privacy Advocacy Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:50:42 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Many people have been critical of how the Democratic leadership handled the recent FISA deal.  Blogger Glenn Greenwald notes some of the reactions. There have even been quotes that the administration got "a better deal than they hoped to get."  I commented on the radio (KPFA, 19 minutes in) that ... http://infoadvocate.org/blog/2008/06/24/questioning-the-politics-of-the-fisa-deal/ Today's Washingon Post has an A1 story about Facebook Application privacy: Facebook fanatics who have covered their profiles on the popular social networking site with silly games and quirky trivia quizzes may be unknowingly giving a host of strangers an intimate peek at their lives. Those mini-programs, called widgets or applications, allow ... http://infoadvocate.org/blog/2008/06/12/social-networking-spyware-in-washington-post/ I ran into a Facebook App named "privacy." The operation is rather simple: Privacy, the application, is a utility that provides insight into what information applications can access just by you or your friends using them. I've previously blogged about the civil liberties implications of law enforcement applications.  Applications see your Facebook ... http://infoadvocate.org/blog/2008/06/09/neat-facebook-app-named-privacy/ [A version of this review appeared in the EPIC Alert, 15.09. Sign up for the EPIC Alert here.] Professor Zittrain's modestly titled "The Future of the Internet -- And How To Stop It" elucidates what has made the Internet so successful, so creative, and yet has also placed it in danger. ... http://infoadvocate.org/blog/2008/05/29/book-review-the-future-of-the-internet-and-how-to-stop-it/ At CFP's, panel on "Privacy, Reputation, and the Management of Online Communities" professor Frank Pasquale mentioned the idea of treating social networking service providers as regulated utilities. He may or may not have read about the Facebook VP that described Facebook as akin to a cable company. One carrying ... http://infoadvocate.org/blog/2008/05/27/social-networks-as-regulated-utilities/ Today I got to CFP 2008: Technology Policy '08 conference. Tomorrow I'll be presenting on what could be a hopeful new direction in spyware policy. I'll be speaking on the stalker spyware complaint EPIC filed earlier this year. In this digital age, spyware is used by employers and parents, as ... http://infoadvocate.org/blog/2008/05/21/computers-freedom-and-privacy-2008/ Google, MySpace, and Facebook have recently announced initiatives to share social networking information with third party sites. Google's announcement describes Google Friend Connect: This new service, announced as a preview release tonight at Campfire One, lets non-technical site owners sprinkle social features throughout their websites, so visitors will easily be ... http://infoadvocate.org/blog/2008/05/20/as-the-web-goes-social-where-is-privacy/ I earlier blogged about the civil liberties dangers that law enforcement Facebook applications pose. The problem: by default, applications have access to much of your and your friends' data. The BBC has written an application that shows how easy data collection can be. We wrote an evil data mining application called Miner, ... http://infoadvocate.org/blog/2008/05/02/bbc-creates-data-mining-facebook-application/ BoingBoing blogs on instructions for how to kill an RFID chip. It includes methods such as microwaving and hammering. Some methods leave a mark, others do not readily display the tampering. For example, hammering is touted: The last (and most covert) method for destroying a RFID tag is to ... http://infoadvocate.org/blog/2008/04/25/state-department-may-invalidate-disabled-e-passports/ It seems like it is not sometimes known what the privacy interests are that one has when using social networking sites. There seems to sometimes be this idea, which has been referred to as the "secrecy paradigm," that things which are "posted on a public website" cannot be the ... http://infoadvocate.org/blog/2008/04/24/sources-for-social-networking-privacy/