Privacy Inc.

NEW YORK--John Young was one of Wikileaks' early founders. Now he's one of the organization's more prominent critics.

Young, a 74-year-old architect who lives in Manhattan, publishes a document-leaking Web site called Cryptome.org that predates Wikileaks by over a decade. He's drawn fire from Microsoft after posting leaked internal documents about police requests, irked the U.K. government for disclosing the names of possible spies, and annoyed Homeland Security by disclosing a review of Democratic National Convention security measures.

Cryptome's history of publicizing leaks--while not yielding to pressure to remove them--is what led Young to … Read more

American businesses weren't very happy about a privacy bill that Rep. Rick Boucher announced in May. The Interactive Advertising Bureau, for instance, said the Virginia Democrat's draft legislation would have "major" effects on legitimate business practices.

Well, if they disliked the Boucher bill, they're really going to loathe a new Democratic proposal that would slap even more extensive regulations on virtually any U.S. business.

A bill introduced Monday by Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush, chairman of a House consumer subcommittee, would levy fines of up to $5 million on businesses and individuals unless they abide … Read more

A now-defunct Web site that catered to gay youth is now ensnared in a federal bankruptcy proceeding that the founder says could result in as many as 1 million profiles being sold to creditors, putting its former subscribers' privacy at risk.

XY, which billed itself as a young gay men's magazine and could be found at XY.com, ceased publishing in 2007. Its founder filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year, which could put names, addresses, e-mail addresses, unpublished personal stories, and other information about gay minors into creditors' hands.

The Federal Trade Commission recently expressed its concerns, saying … Read more

A Toronto-based law firm with a history of targeting litigation at corporations as varied as chocolate companies and silicone breast implant manufacturers has a new company in the crosshairs: Facebook.

Merchant Law Group, which has offices in 10 Canadian cities, last week launched litigation seeking class action status against the massive social-networking site, alleging the mishandling of sensitive user data--the latest development in a resurgence of action against the social network's privacy policies, after it looked for a while as if all the fuss had calmed down.

The suit alleges that Facebook changed user privacy settings and its terms … Read more

The White House is hoping to come up with a comprehensive strategy to better protect people in cyberspace and is asking the public for help.

Releasing a draft of the potential new National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (PDF) last Friday, the government is aiming to set up a system that would let people voluntarily create trusted identities to use in online transactions.

The goal, as described in a blog post by White House cybersecurity chief Howard Schmidt, is to secure and protect transactions in cyberspace through use of a special ID--a smart card or digital certificate--that would prove … Read more

A law requiring police to obtain a search warrant before tracking Americans' cell phones may imperil criminal investigations and endanger children's lives, a law enforcement representative told Congress this week.

Obtaining a search warrant when monitoring the whereabouts of someone "who may be attempting to victimize a child over the Internet will have a significant slowing effect on the processing of child exploitation leads," said Richard Littlehale of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. "If that is acceptable, so be it, but it is a downstream effect that must be considered."

Littlehale's remarks to a … Read more

A request by the North Carolina Department of Revenue for personally identifiable Amazon.com customer data that could be linked to purchases is unconstitutional because it violates Internet users' rights to privacy and free speech, the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday.

The ACLU, on behalf of seven Amazon customers, has intervened in a lawsuit that Amazon filed in April over an information request from the North Carolina Department of Revenue (NCDOR) for all the purchase records of customers with a North Carolina shipping address since August 2003, as part of a tax audit.

Amazon has provided the agency with … Read more

To nab a pair of men accused of robbing banks in Connecticut, court documents show the FBI turned to a novel investigative technique last year: warrantless monitoring of the locations of about 180 different cell phones, court documents show.

The FBI obtained a secret order--it has not been made public--commanding nine different telephone companies to provide federal police "with all cell site tracking data and cell site locator information for all incoming and outgoing calls to and from the target numbers."

But because the U.S. Justice Department did not obtain a warrant by proving to a judge … Read more

CALGARY, Alberta--A U.S. Federal Trade Commission representative delivered a stern indictment of current privacy laws on Monday, saying they fail to protect American consumers and instead place too much of a "burden" on them.

The existing constellation of privacy laws, which relies heavily on disclosure of data collection and use practices and on informed consumer choice, "in some very basic sense isn't working," said Kathryn Ratte, a senior attorney in the FTC's consumer protection bureau.

"We've put too much burden on the consumers to understand these policies," Ratte said here … Read more