The social networking site Facebook has been under scrutiny lately for lax security with its applications feature. Applications in Facebook are created by third-party software developers and are run on third-party servers. These applications can take many forms – a quiz, a game, or just another way to reach out to friends – but the common feature in all is that they allow software developers to access Facebook users’ personal data.
Read moreThey are, according to one of London’s top police officers. In an interview with The Guardian, Mick Neville, head of New Scotland Yard’s Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office, says that even though Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe, CCTV cameras have, so far, helped solve just three per cent of street robberies in London.
Read moreLast week, Al Kamen of the Washington Post published an ironic article lightly criticizing his Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff about his statement that fingerprints aren’t personal information.
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The Privacy Act, the federal privacy law requiring federal government bodies to respect individual privacy rights, hasn’t been substantially updated since 1982 – the same year the Commodore 64 was released and we stopped calling July 1 Dominion Day. What’s interesting about these changes is they could be implemented immediately and relatively easily – and the benefit to Canadians would be a privacy law that is modern, responsive and efficient.
Read moreLast week, the Seattle Times reported on an experiment the University of Washington is conducting with radio frequency identification, or RFID. The university, responsible for one of the largest experiments using wireless tags in a social setting, has effectively created a futuristic atmosphere where RFID is everywhere. With this in place, they hope to uncover problems before the technology becomes widely adopted.
Read moreWe recently referenced this Q&A in the Times Online with Facebook’s chief privacy officer. Privacy guru Michael Zimmer pokes fun at the questions posed by the interviewer in a recent blog post and comes up with what he calls “a real set of questions” for the chief privacy officer at Facebook. Some samples:
Read moreThe Office of Communications in the U.K. has just released a research report on young peoples’ use of social networking sites. Among their findings:
Read moreLast month, a correspondent with Popular Science conducted his own privacy experiment — to be as anonymous as possible while still living a normal life. His conclusion? That it’s nearly impossible.
Read moreUniversity of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist has launched iOptOut, a website allowing Canadians to opt out of unsolicited phone calls and emails. iOptOut is meant to complement the federal government’s Do-Not-Call list, expected sometime in the fall of this year:
Read moreDay to day, our actions are being captured, and increasingly, it’s being done by surveillance cameras. This technology – like RFID tags – is being used by more organizations everyday to improve security and deter thieves. And while that’s a perfectly legitimate reason to employ cameras, organizations should also be ensuring their surveillance activities minimize the impact on people’s privacy.
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