Privacy

As Google expands it book search service, consumer privacy protections are shrinking. Privacy watchdogs want the search giant to takes steps to ensure our privacy. And Dan Rather called on President Barack Obama to form a White House commission on journalism and public media.

The House considers legislation on protecting consumers from online marketers' secret data mining for behavioral advertising. Julius Genachowski become Chairman of the FCC, and the Personal Democracy Forum mashed up politics and technology for the sixth year.

The open nature of the Internet will be lost if Internet Service Providers are allowed to use a technology called Deep Packet Inspection to snoop on Internet users’ data and communications. And EFF’s “Surveillance Self-Defense” guide shows you how to legally protect your computer data against government spying.

from the Washington Post:

A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. "This laptop doesn't belong to me," he remembers protesting. "It belongs to my company." Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself.

Data mining on social networks is much more pervasive and secretive than most users know. Long-time media activists Jeff Chester and Kathryn Montgomery share their concerns about online marketing and surveillance.

By Brian Beutler, The Media Consortium, September 7, 2007 Filed under