Privacy Inc.

A University of California at San Francisco professor of biochemistry told CNET today that the Obama administration's claim that full-body scanners pose no health risks to air travelers is in "error."

The administration's defense of the controversial machines, which use X-rays to perform what critics have dubbed naked strip searches, has "many misconceptions, and we will write a careful answer pointing out their errors," said John Sedat, a UCSF professor of biochemistry and biophysics and member of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Because four people are working on this, it will not be … Read more

Two months ago, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that the federal stimulus legislation would pay for the purchase of hundreds of controversial full-body scanners.

"Through the Recovery Act, we are able to continue our accelerated deployment of enhanced technology as part of our layered approach to security at airports nationwide," Napolitano said at the time.

The number of scanners has roughly doubled since Napolitano's announcement and they are now found in 68 U.S. airports, and the Transportation Security Administration says the controversial devices have proven to be a success.

"We have received minimal complaints,&… Read more

Rep. Tom Price, chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, said yesterday that this week's elections will provide "an opportunity for our Republican principles to shine through our policies."

But what that means for privacy, Net neutrality, and other regulatory areas that affect Internet companies isn't entirely clear.

The Contract from America, a set of grassroots-derived governing principles signed by some incoming Republicans and backed by dozens of Tea Party groups, stresses evaluating the constitutionality of government programs but doesn't specifically address technology. Neither does the Republican Party's 2010 Pledge to America.

This should … Read more

It's obvious that Facebook sees serious potential in mobile check-in service Foursquare: it tried to buy it for $125 million.

That didn't work. So Facebook started to get into the location game, too. It launched Facebook Places, its own geolocation service. And today, Facebook went ahead and launched a big new suite of mobile features that includes, notably, enhancements to Facebook Places that let businesses easily automate "deals" for when users check in. On the surface, given Facebook's scale, this looks like it could spell difficult times ahead for Foursquare.

Like Foursquare, Facebook's new … Read more

Facebook offered a pointed defense of its data protection practices in a letter to two members of Congress released today, saying recent reports of a privacy breach are "false" and misunderstood.

Marne Levine, the company's vice president for global public policy, said a widely circulated Wall Street Journal article last month was largely mistaken because it incorrectly claimed that the sharing of Facebook user IDs was a "privacy breach," when it did not "involve the sharing of any private user data."

In fact, Levine wrote (PDF), a Facebook UID "at most enables … Read more

The United Kingdom's Information Commissioner has found that Google violated the country's Data Protection Act when it collected data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks with its Street View vehicles.

"There was a significant breach of the Data Protection Act when Google Street View cars collected payload data as part of their Wi-Fi mapping exercise in the U.K.," the Information Commissioner's Office said in a statement today.

The country's Data Protection Act, which was enacted in 1998, determines policies related to the safekeeping of personal information in the U.K. The Information Commissioner's office … Read more

Art can sometimes gush from the strangest of springs.

So when I cast my eyes on the first images from the launch of Google Street View in Germany, I find myself more entranced than by anything that, say, Dale Chihuly might have mustered.

You see, recently Google deigned to allow Germans to remove their homes from Street View. And when the service launched today in the land of always beautiful bratwurst and suddenly attractive soccer some of the images were powerful indeed.

Almost 3 percent of German homeowners decreed that their homes should not be on Street View. Which has … Read more

Facebook has revealed that a data broker has been buying identifying Facebook user information from app developers, and as a result the social-networking powerhouse has placed some developers on a six-month suspension.

The announcement, which Facebook made Friday afternoon on its developer blog, comes on the heels of the revelation that many popular Facebook apps were transmitting user IDs--which can be used to look up a users' names and, in some cases, the names of the app user's friends--to at least 25 advertising and data firms.

According to Facebook's developer blog:

As we examined the circumstances of … Read more

A Texas court has ruled that a husband accused of monitoring his wife's computer through a keystroke logger did not violate federal wiretapping laws.

Larry Bagley was sued in June by his wife Rhea Bagley, who accused him of surreptitiously placing audio recording devices in their house as well as a software keystroke logger. The Bagleys are in the process of divorcing.

The complaint in this civil case says that during the divorce proceedings, the husband revealed the existence of the surveillance tech and acknowledged that the "software recorded screenshots of activity on this computer." The husband … Read more