News & Commentary
Government Backdoors Letting in the Wrong People?
Recently I wrote about the allegedly Chinese cyber attack on Google and how it highlighted a point that the ACLU and security experts have been making for years – that creating government backdoors into our communications network for the purpose of surveillance creates security problems.
Don't Keep Your Head in the Clouds: Demand Protection for the Data You Store in the Cloud
The FTC Explores the "App-Gap"
We've already blogged generally about the Federal Trade Commission's "Exploring Privacy" roundtable, and asked you to sign onto the ACLU of Northern California's petition demanding more transparency about when and why companies share our information with the government and others. In this blog post we're going to focus on the privacy implications of social networking sites and the ways that third parties can access users' information without their knowledge or explicit consent.
The FTC's "Watershed Moment In Privacy" - Don't Let Your Privacy Wash Away
On Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will be in California for the second of its "Exploring Privacy" roundtables. The ACLU will be there sounding the alarm about privacy implications of social networking and cloud computing services. (Check back here for blog posts drilling down into each of these services, with specific recommendations for how the FTC can improve privacy in these areas.) We want to make sure the FTC knows that the time is now to address growing online privacy issues.
In Through the Law Enforcement Backdoor?
Computerworld is reporting that the hacking attack on Google (which prompted it to tell the Chinese government it would no longer censor on its behalf) exploited a system the company set up to help the government access its users' data:
The Hard Numbers Behind Laptop Searches at the Border
Back in July 2008, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a new policy regarding searches of documents and electronic devices at the border. CBP asserts it has the right to conduct these searches of any traveler – citizens and noncitizen alike "absent individualized suspicion," – meaning no suspicion of wrongdoing is even required to conduct a search. Despite an update to the policy in August 2009, everything from the photos of your kids on your camera phone to your company's trade secrets on your laptop, is fair game.
Is Privacy on Facebook So Last Decade?
Over the past several years, there have been two reliable things about Facebook: it has often stated that privacy was important to the company – two years ago, privacy was "the vector around which Facebook operates" – and its actions have often contradicted that.
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