Privacy Inc.

I hope Global Payments doesn't strain itself patting its own back for containing a massive breach that occurred on its watch.

The company, which processes credit, debit, and gift card transactions between merchants, banks, and consumers, let a staggering 1.5 million credit card numbers get out in the open as a result of a still-to-be determined attack on its system. Yet it has barely shown any signs of contrition.

Most companies would have shown a bit of remorse for what has happened, but Global Payments has struck an almost self-congratulatory tone for how it identified the problem, alerted … Read more

Yahoo, Google, AOL, and Microsoft try not to let copyright-infringing Web sites sign up. Their advertising network contracts currently prohibit it.

But that isn't stopping the White House from pressuring those four companies to do more to satisfy Hollywood and other copyright holders who are peeved about online piracy -- in this case, that presumably means addressing piratical Web sites that cover their bandwidth costs through ad revenue.

A White House report (PDF) released today singles out those four companies by name, arguing that they and others should "act as checkpoints for infringing activity and reduce the distribution … Read more

Only weeks after protests over two digital copyright bills demonstrated the political muscle of Internet users, the White House is publicly endorsing new copyright legislation that also would target suspected pirate Web sites.

After the unprecedented outcry against the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act -- designed to target offshore copyright-infringing Web sites -- supporters of the bills on Capitol Hill backed down and moved on to other topics.

But the White House today reignited the congressional debate by throwing its weight behind legislation targeting offshore Web sites. "We believe that new legislative and non-legislative tools … Read more

A founder of the Bradley Manning Support Network, who says federal agents seized his laptop because of his support for the alleged Wiki-leaker, will have his day in court.

U.S. District Judge Denise Casper in Boston yesterday ruled that a lawsuit challenging activist David House's border searches and other interviews by government agents may continue.

In an opinion (PDF) rejecting the U.S. government's request to dismiss the case, Casper wrote that just because "the initial search and seizure occurred at the border does not strip House of his First Amendment rights," especially because it … Read more

The controversial -- if not exactly common -- practice of requiring job applicants to disclose their Facebook passwords briefly became ammunition for an unsuccessful Democratic effort to block an unrelated regulatory reform plan.

During the House of Representatives floor debate yesterday over a proposal (PDF) to reform the Federal Communications Commission, Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a Colorado Democrat, proposed that the bill be sent back to committee.

Then, Perlmutter proposed, the committee would be directed to send the bill back with a one-paragraph amendment allowing the FCC to prohibit telecommunications companies from requiring Facebook logins of prospective job applicants.

"If … Read more

Foes of the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate requiring Americans to buy health insurance have long argued that if the law is constitutional, a federal law forcing everyone to eat broccoli would be permitted as well.

During today's oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, the justices instead asked a lawyer for the Obama administration this: Could Congress constitutionally require Americans to buy cell phones?

In other words, if Obamacare, as critics have labeled the Act, can require Americans to engage in commerce merely because they're breathing -- which is unprecedented in the history of the United States … Read more

The City of Boston tacitly acknowledged today that arresting a man for recording a police officer in public may not exactly have been the wisest -- or most constitutional -- choice.

That acknowledgement comes in the form of a $170,000 payment to Simon Glik, a Boston attorney who was prosecuted under criminal wiretap laws for using his cell phone to record police arresting someone on the Boston Common. They prosecuted the wrong fellow: Glik himself specializes in criminal defense.

A spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department told CNET this afternoon that the city has taken steps to ensure arrests-for-recording … Read more

The Internet Society is hardly a fan of the Stop Online Piracy Act or the Protect IP Act. The venerable non-profit, which acts as the umbrella organization for the Internet's key standards bodies, bluntly warns that the pair of copyright laws would end the "viability of the Internet."

Which is why ISOC's decision this month to hire a senior executive from the Motion Picture Association of America -- a lawyer who has championed the wildly controversial legislation that would blacklist Web sites that supposedly violate copyright -- is raising eyebrows.

ISOC announced last week that it had hired Paul Brigner, … Read more

The Federal Trade Commission this morning released a wide-ranging report that stops short of endorsing a new "Do Not Track" law.

This morning's 120-page report instead asks Congress to enact a new law that "would provide consumers with access to information about them held by a data broker" such as Lexis Nexis, US Search, or Reed Elsevier subsidiary Choicepoint -- many of which have been the subject of FTC enforcement actions in the last few years.

But when it comes to a Do Not Track law targeting Web companies, which was proposed by legislation introduced last year, … Read more