News & Commentary

Following Facebook's announcement today about its new location-based product, Places, here's what the ACLU of Northern California has to say on the privacy front:

Last Friday, the district court in the Western District of Washington granted the motion to intervene that the ACLU filed on behalf of our clients in the lawsuit challenging the North Carolina Department of Revenue's (DOR) repeated requests for Amazon's customer records in the course of its tax audit of Amazon. These customer records reveal highly personal and intimate details of people's lives that DOR does not actually need for its tax audit, including what books people are reading, what films they are watching, and what other private and expressive materials they are purchasing. The First Amendment bars the government from demanding and collecting this information.

Got a cell phone? Use Facebook? What about Gmail? Read books on your shiny new iPad? Did you buy that new iPad online?

Earlier today, Facebook announced the rollout of privacy settings for mobile users. Providing privacy controls for mobile users is important and we hope that more companies will take this step. We were also pleased to see that these new Facebook mobile controls are even better than the normal web interface in some ways.

On June 16, ten of the nation's top privacy organizations sent a joint letter to Facebook detailing outstanding privacy concerns. Facebook's response glossed over many of the critical points raised about necessary next steps. The following reiterates our concerns and addresses Facebook's response to our June 16 letter. We look forward to discussing these issues and Facebook's plans in more detail to resolve these issues.

Today, ten of the nation's top privacy organizations, including the ACLU of Northern California, EFF, EPIC, and CDT, sent a joint letter to Facebook calling for the social networking giant to fix remaining issues concerning user privacy and control.

Update! The judge in two movie industry lawsuits against BitTorrent users has ordered the plaintiffs to explain why they lumped thousands of users into only two lawsuits. U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer of the District of Columbia issued orders in each of the cases yesterday requiring the plaintiff to show in writing by June 21 why all of the defendants except one in each case (that's defendants 2 through 2,000 in one case, 2 through 4,577 in the other) shouldn't be dismissed under a federal rule governing when defendants can and can't be joined together in one lawsuit.

Yahoo is making another attempt to move into the social networking space this week with the launch of "Pulse." It encourages users to share "Updates," including comments on news items, pictures posted to Flickr, and other content shared on various Yahoo services with others–and makes it easy for anyone to track these updates. Here's our quick take on Pulse's plusses and minuses for privacy.

Time Warner Cable recently asked a federal court to quash subpoenas it received seeking the identities of thousands of its customers. The subpoenas came as part of several lawsuits filed by members of the movie industry who allege the individuals downloaded certain movies using BitTorrent.