Privacy

If anyone had any remaining doubts that Rep. Joe Barton has it in for Google, fresh evidence arrived in the mail Wednesday.

The Texas Republican sent a letter to Google on Wednesday with 15 interrogatories, mostly demanding answers about how it will merge its operations and procedures with DoubleClick. As an example, one interrogatory says "please identify the data that will be merged, including, but not limited to, cookie data."

Another demanded information about filtering out cross-side scripting attacks from search results. The letter asks for a response by June 6.

This follows two more letters that Barton … Read more

Online advertising has ballooned into a roughly $45 billion-a-year business, to the benefit of Google, Yahoo, ad networks, and innumerable speciality and hobbyist Web sites.

One corner of this ecosystem that hasn't managed to cash in on advertising is, by some measurements, the largest: broadband providers. So it may have been inevitable that they would seek additional revenue by monitoring their customers' online activities and creating behavioral profiles that could yield hyper-relevant ads.

The only problem with this practice is that it may not be entirely, well, legal. The first warning sign came last week when two members of … Read more

Two prominent members of the U.S. Congress are asking Charter Communications to hold off on its plan to monitor its customers' Web browsing and deliver relevant advertisements.

In a letter to Charter chief executive Neil Smit, Reps. Ed Markey and Joe Barton say the monitoring plan may violate federal privacy laws and ask that the company "not move forward" until "we have an opportunity to discuss" it. Markey is the Democratic chairman of a House Internet subcommittee and Barton is the senior Republican on the House Energy and Commerce committee.

Charter did not immediately respond … Read more

Charter Communications is planning to monitor its customers' Web surfing and then, anonymously, display relevant advertisements.

What the third-largest U.S. cable operator, headquartered in St. Louis, Mo., probably wasn't planning on was a privacy-fueled Internet backlash that began a few days ago after it began notifying customers of its intentions. For its part, Charter describes its behavioral profiling plans this way: "innovative new technology in the field of online advertising enables Charter to provide you with an enhanced online experience that is more customized to your interests and activities."

The disclosure led to a flurry of … Read more

The United Kingdom has the most surveillance cameras per capita in the world. With the recent news that CCTV cameras do not actually deter crime, how can the local town councils justify the massive surveillance program? By going after pooping dogs.

In a recent interview with The Guardian, the head of the Metropolitan Police's Visual Images Office explained the failings of CCTV:

"Billions of pounds has been spent on it, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court. It's been an utter … Read more

There is no right to privacy at international borders. For those of us with laptops, this presents a pretty major problem: How do we get through U.S. Customs with our beloved portable devices, without having Uncle Sam peeking at every e-mail we've sent, every MP3 we've listened to, and every "home movie" we've made?

The obvious solution, encryption, is not enough. Non-Americans have no right to enter the U.S. Don't want to hand over your encryption keys? No problem--but you will be put on the next airplane back to your home country (… Read more

The FBI director and a Republican congressman sketched out a far-reaching plan this week for warrantless surveillance of the Internet.

During a House of Representatives Judiciary Committee hearing, the FBI's Robert Mueller and Rep. Darrell Issa of California talked about what amounts to a two-step approach. Step 1 involves asking Internet service providers to open their networks to the FBI voluntarily; step 2 would be a federal law forcing companies to do just that.

Both have their problems, legal and practical, but let's look at step 1 first. Issa suggested that Internet providers could get "consent from … Read more

When the FBI suggested that it should be able to perform wide-scale Internet monitoring to detect "illegal activity" on Wednesday, the bureau raised more questions than it answered.

To help clear things up, we're providing the transcript of FBI Director Robert Mueller's exchange at a House of Representatives hearing with Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican. Issa made his fortune by founding Directed Electronics, a publicly traded company that sells car alarms and home theater loudspeakers.

Issa also is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, which is holding a closed hearing on Thursday devoted to … Read more

WASHINGTON--The FBI and multiple members of Congress said on Wednesday that Internet service providers must be legally required to keep records of their users' activities for later review by police.

Their suggestions for mandatory data retention revive a push for potentially sweeping federal laws--which civil libertarians oppose--that flagged last year after the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the idea's most prominent proponent.

FBI Director Robert Mueller told a House of Representatives committee that Internet service providers should be required to keep records of users' activities for two years.

"From the perspective of an investigator, having that backlog … Read more