Privacy

An emerging dispute over electronic privacy is testing whether President Obama will live up to his promise to protect Americans' online rights.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Justice criticized changes backed by Internet companies and privacy groups that would update a 1986 federal law to extend greater legal protections to cloud-computing and mobile-device users.

Yet strengthening privacy laws is precisely what Obama pledged during the 2008 presidential campaign. He told CNET at the time that: "I will work with leading legislators, privacy advocates, and business leaders to strengthen both voluntary and legally required privacy protections." … Read more

The U.S. Justice Department today offered what amounts to a frontal attack on proposals to amend federal law to better protect Americans' privacy.

James Baker, the associate deputy attorney general, warned that rewriting a 1986 privacy law to grant cloud computing users more privacy protections and to require court approval before tracking Americans' cell phones would hinder police investigations.

This appears the first time that the Justice Department has publicly responded to a set of digital privacy proposals unveiled last year by a coalition of businesses and advocacy groups including AT&T, Google, Microsoft, eBay, the American Civil … Read more

Two congressmen are trying to pry information out of wireless carriers about how closely they track their customers' whereabouts.

Letters sent to AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile this week ask what personally identifiable information is stored, how long it is kept, and for what other purposes it's used.

Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) asked for responses no later than April 19. Their request came after Germany's Zeit Online published data showing that a cellular provider kept track of tens of thousands of locations that one person visited over six months.

Their letters could … Read more

Google has agreed to establish a "comprehensive privacy program" to settle allegations that last year's launch of Google Buzz, a foray by the Web giant into social networking, initially shared more information than users reasonably expected.

The Federal Trade Commission said today that the Mountain View, Calif.-based company has entered into a settlement agreement, which does not admit any wrongdoing, that includes regular reports on its privacy practices prepared by an independent professional for the next 20 years.

"When companies make privacy pledges, they need to honor them," said Jon Leibowitz, the Democratic chairman … Read more

Attorneys representing WikiLeaks volunteers today asked a Virginia judge to overturn an earlier ruling and bar the U.S. Department of Justice from gaining access to their clients' Twitter accounts.

The appeal, which was expected, seeks to throw out a magistrate judge's ruling on March 11 that granted prosecutors access to the accounts, including information about what Internet and e-mail addresses are associated with them. The government sought the court order as part of a grand jury probe that appears to be investigating whether WikiLeaks principals, including editor Julian Assange, violated U.S. criminal laws.

In a 41-page brief (… Read more

A long-known but little-discussed vulnerability in the modern Internet's design was highlighted yesterday by a report that hackers traced to Iran spoofed the encryption procedures used to secure connections to Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and other major Web sites.

This design, pioneered by Netscape in the early and mid-1990s, allows the creation of encrypted channels to Web sites, an important security feature typically identified by a closed lock icon in a browser. The system relies on third parties to issue so-called certificates that prove that a Web site is legitimate when making an "https://" connection.

The problem, however, … Read more

A malicious attacker that appears to be the Iranian government managed to obtain supposedly secure digital certificates that can be used to impersonate Google, Yahoo, Skype, and other major Web sites, the security company affected by the breach said today.

Comodo, a Jersey City, N.J.-based firm that issues digital certificates, said the nine certificates were fraudulently obtained, including one for Microsoft's Live.com, have already been revoked. A fraudulent certificate allows someone to impersonate the secure versions of those Web sites--the ones that are used when encrypted connections are enabled--in some circumstances.

The Internet Protocol addresses used … Read more

Draft legislation would provide new privacy protections for Americans by requiring police to obtain search warrants to track the locations of cars and cell phones.

The forthcoming bill being prepared by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and reviewed by CNET would provide legal protections for "geolocation information," meaning data that can locate a person through a wireless device or through a GPS tracker placed on a vehicle.

Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones and implanting GPS bugs thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a … Read more

The White House is urging Congress to enact a new "privacy bill of rights" that would provide clearer guidelines to online users and businesses about the collecting of personal information over the Internet.

Speaking in Washington yesterday at a special hearing devoted to online consumer privacy, Assistant Commerce Secretary Lawrence Strickling acknowledged that the ability to store information about customers helps make online companies more efficient. But he said that consumers are growing increasingly uneasy about how their personal information is being collected and used.

With the lengthy privacy policies now offered by Web sites proving confusing and … Read more