Privacy

If an Argentine sports fan tried searching Yahoo Argentina for one of his country's most beloved athletes--soccer star Diego Maradona--these days, he'd be out of luck.

Both Yahoo and Google are locked in a legal battle with dozens of fashion models and other public figures like Maradona over whether the Internet companies should have to censor search results relating to those persons' names.

The result so far: since last year, Internet users have been left with abbreviated search results from Yahoo Argentina and Google Argentina, as a result of temporary restraining orders handed down by Argentine judges.

Companies including Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft on Tuesday joined with human rights groups to launch an initiative aimed at protecting free expression and privacy on the Internet on a global scale.

The Global Network Initiative will provide guidelines for communications technology companies to follow in response to laws in various countries that may interfere with an Internet user's privacy or freedom of expression. Members of the initiative have agreed to ensure that their activities and business operations reflect the principles it aims to protect.

"These principles provide a valuable road map for companies like Yahoo operating in markets … Read more

The government is taking steps to protect consumers by reducing its use of Social Security numbers, yet with identity theft complaints numbering in the millions, counties across the country are still making the numbers available in bulk or online to businesses and the public.

The President's Identity Theft Task Force released a report (PDF) Tuesday marking the progress of federal agencies in combating identity theft. Steps taken include better assisting identity theft victims and increasing prosecutions and other deterrent measures--federal identity theft convictions increased 26 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to the report.

Many steps have also been … Read more

In a purported effort to cut down on "ID sharing" in Beijing's Internet cafes, the government will require that by the end of 2008, first-time visitors will have their picture taken and ID scanned before being allowed online, according to The Beijing News and the China Media Project.

Users were already required to show identification when they entered, a rule that has been spottily enforced at times but more strictly, by most accounts, since preparations for the Olympics began. David Bandurski at China Media Project writes:

The newspaper quoted Li Fei (李菲), a spokesperson for the Beijing Cultural … Read more

Child predators will be easier to track online because of two new laws President Bush signed Monday.

The Protect Our Children Act--which includes provisions introduced by Sens. Joe Biden (D-Del.), Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), and John McCain, (R-Ariz.)--sets requirements for Internet companies to report incidences of child pornography. It also authorizes more than $320 million for the Justice Department over the next five years for, among other things, the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

The president on Monday also signed the Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act, which requires a sex offender to provide the … Read more

The U.S. Senate is investigating allegations by two National Security Agency whistleblowers who have described widespread monitoring of innocuous telephone conversations by the Bush administration's clandestine program.

The reports fill in some details about how the NSA's program works in practice. The two whistleblowers, Adrienne Kinne and David Murfee Faulk, are former military linguists who worked for a secretive NSA operation they say routinely intercepted phone calls of U.S. military officers, American journalists, American aid workers, and others who were calling home from abroad.

The two ex-military employees came forward independently and spoke to ABC News … Read more

WASHINGTON--The federal government is trying to find better ways to standardize and coordinate personal information about American citizens that is currently spread across thousands of databases, according to a White House official.

There are more than 3,000 programs or databases in the federal government that hold personal information--Social Security numbers, addresses, fingerprints, and so on--yet the government is only beginning to develop a plan for collecting, protecting, and using such information.

"You have a lot of duplication of data" among various agencies, said Duane Blackburn, a policy analyst in the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. … Read more

WASHINGTON--Is the idea of widespread biometric data collection still too spooky to win over the American public?

At some level, it's already becoming commonplace: California and some other states demand fingerprints from driver's license holders. The Verified Identity Pass program includes iris scans, as does the U.K's border control system. And prisoners have their blood forcibly drawn for a DNA sample.

But more widespread use of biometrics, especially by the government, raises substantial privacy concerns that may alarm many Americans and prove difficult to resolve, panelists at a conference here said Tuesday.

"How would I … Read more

The most extensive government report to date on whether terrorists can be identified through data mining has yielded an important conclusion: It doesn't really work.

A National Research Council report, years in the making and scheduled to be released Tuesday, concludes that automated identification of terrorists through data mining or any other mechanism "is neither feasible as an objective nor desirable as a goal of technology development efforts." Inevitable false positives will result in "ordinary, law-abiding citizens and businesses" being incorrectly flagged as suspects.

The whopping 352-page report, called "Protecting Individual Privacy in the … Read more