Eideard

Users of online social network sites such as Facebook are editing their pages and tightening their privacy settings to protect their reputations in the age of digital sharing, according to a new survey.

About two-thirds, or 63 percent, of social networking site users questioned in the Pew Research Center poll said they had deleted people from their “friends” lists, up from 56 percent in 2009. Another 44 percent said they had deleted comments that others have made on their profiles, up from 36 percent two years before.

Users also have become more likely to remove their names from photos that were tagged to identify them. Thirty-seven percent of profile owners have done that, up from 30 percent in 2009, the survey showed.

“Over time, as social networking sites have become a mainstream communications channel in everyday life, profile owners have become more active managers of their profiles and the content that is posted by others in their networks,” the report said.

The Pew report also touches on the privacy settings people use for their profiles. The issue of online privacy has drawn increasing concerns from consumers, and the Obama administration has called for a “privacy bill of rights” that would give users more control over their data.

Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed said their main profile was set to be private so only friends can see it.

Another 19 percent said they had set their profile to partially private so that friends of friends can see it. Only 20 percent have made their profile completely public.

The headlines in many articles on this topic describe folks was becoming “less social”. I’d say they’re just getting more sensible. Especially as reaction from members of the various networks react negatively to tales of broad swathes of info having been boosted by greedy marketers – positively as networks respond to criticism by offering more choices to limit distribution of personal demographics.

Daniel Gárate’s career came crashing to earth a few weeks ago. That’s when the Los Angeles Police Department warned local real estate agents not to hire photographers like Mr. Gárate, who was helping sell luxury property by using a drone to shoot sumptuous aerial movies. Flying drones for commercial purposes, the police said, violated federal aviation rules.

His career will soon get back on track. A new federal law, signed by the president on Tuesday, compels the Federal Aviation Administration to allow drones to be used for all sorts of commercial endeavors — from selling real estate and dusting crops, to monitoring oil spills and wildlife, even shooting Hollywood films. Local police and emergency services will also be freer to send up their own drones.

But while businesses, and drone manufacturers especially, are celebrating the opening of the skies to these unmanned aerial vehicles, the law raises new worries about how much detail the drones will capture about lives down below — and what will be done with that information. Safety concerns like midair collisions and property damage on the ground are also an issue…

“As privacy law stands today, you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy while out in public, nor almost anywhere visible from a public vantage,” said Ryan Calo, director of privacy and robotics at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University…

Drone proponents say the privacy concerns are overblown. Randy McDaniel, chief deputy of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department in Conroe, Tex., near Houston, whose agency bought a drone to use for various law enforcement operations, dismissed worries about surveillance, saying everyone everywhere can be photographed with cellphone cameras anyway. “We don’t spy on people,” he said. “We worry about criminal elements.”

Who determines who is an “criminal element”? You got it. Sheriff Randy McDaniel.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups are calling for new protections against what the A.C.L.U. has said could be “routine aerial surveillance of American life…”

“We see a huge potential market,” said Ben Gielow of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a drone maker trade group.

Anyone else see a huge potential for Uncle Sugar to watch over every waking moment of our lives spent outdoors?

Click image to enlarge

A new law promising internet users the “right to be forgotten” will be proposed by the European Commission on Wednesday. It says people will be able to ask for data about them to be deleted and firms will have to comply unless there are “legitimate” grounds to retain it…

Details of the revised law were unveiled by the Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich…

“These rules are particularly aimed at young people as they are not always as aware as they could be about the consequence of putting photos and other information on social network websites, or about the various privacy settings available,” said Matthew Newman.

He noted that this could cause problems later if the users had no way of deleting embarrassing material when applying for jobs. However, he stressed that it would not give them the right to ask for material such as their police or medical records to be deleted.

Although the existing directive already contains the principle of “data minimisation”, Mr Newman said that the new law would reinforce the idea by declaring it “a right”…

The commissioner said that firms would have to explicitly seek people’s permission to use data about them and could not proceed on the basis of “assumed” consent in situations where approval was required.

Her proposed law says that internet users must also be notified when their data is collected, and be told for what purpose it is being processed and for how long it will be stored.

The bill also suggests people must be given easier access to the data held on them, and should have the right to move it to another provider in addition to the right to have it deleted.

However, the commissioner said that she recognised there were some circumstances under which this right would not apply. “The archives of a newspaper are a good example. It is clear that the right to be forgotten cannot amount to a right of the total erasure of history,” Ms Reding told delegates.

RTFA. There’s a certain amount of regulatory crap I’ve left out. The core of the concept is worth discussing throughout the Web.

And, yes, there was a time when conservatives were as concerned with these topics as liberals or progressives. Not anymore, man.

It was bad enough for the University of Illinois when The Chicago Tribune’s 2009 series “Clout Goes to College” exposed the existence of a “clout list” that over five years gave hundreds of well-connected students an edge in admissions, and led to the resignations of the university president, the chancellor of the flagship Urbana-Champaign campus and most of the trustees.

But two years later, the university is still mired in litigation before the federal appeals court in Chicago, fighting the release of more documents the newspaper has asked for, including the names and addresses of the parents on the clout list. The university has turned over about 5,200 pages of documents to the newspaper. But in a separate state court proceeding, The Tribune is seeking the grade point averages and ACT scores of the students accepted from the clout list.

Those requests set off a shootout between the state’s freedom of information law and the federal privacy law for educational records…

Mr. Skinner said the university’s position is that anything anyone sends in about any applicant is a student record protected by the law.

But The Tribune, backed by media groups including The New York Times, argues that the documents are not education records under the federal law, but rather records of questionable conduct, so the public’s right to know should prevail.

“When Governor Blagojevich calls the chancellor and says, ‘Admit this favored person,’ that’s not an admission record kept in someone’s file,” said James Klenk, a lawyer for The Tribune. “That’s something that should be disclosed to the public. We’re investigating public officials in their decision making. Some people were admitted not on their merits, while other people, on the merits, didn’t get those spots, and that’s wrong…”

Parents and university officials who used the clout list to bypass the merit-based application process, the brief said, “cannot now claim any reasonable right to privacy to cover their actions, as it is far outweighed by the newsworthiness of the scandal and the right of the public to hold accountable those responsible for perpetrating a fraud.”

Look at the whole array in the litigation: bureaucrats, lawyers, politicians – and the well-connected parents and students. Decide for yourself what’s really at stake. Privacy or public access to information about people who committed a crime?

German data watchdogs on Friday ordered state agencies to shut down their Facebook pages and remove “like” buttons from their Web sites, suggesting that anyone who uses Facebook will have their online activity tracked.

“All institutions in the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany [must] shut down their fan pages on Facebook and remove social plug-ins such as the ‘like’-button from their Web sites,” the German Data Protection Commissioner’s Office said in a statement. “Whoever visits facebook.com or uses a plug-in must expect that he or she will be tracked by the company for two years.”

After “thorough and legal analysis,” the commission said it concluded that Facebook and its “like” button violates Germany’s Telemedia Act and its Federal Data Protection Act because data is transferred to the U.S. and Web analytics are sent to Web site owners…

German agencies have until the end of September to stop using Facebook for official business. Failure to do so could result in fines. Commissioner Thilo Weichert said in a statement that those agencies “cannot shift their responsibility for data privacy” to Facebook or the user.

Facebook, however, denied that its activity was in violation of any EU laws…

The commission said today’s ban is “only the beginning of a continuing privacy impact analysis of Facebook applications.” It also advised people to “keep their fingers from clicking on social plug-ins such as the ‘like’-button and not to set up a Facebook account if they wish to avoid a comprehensive profiling by this company.”

There are solid historic reasons for Germans to prefer to have a nanny state protect their rights to privacy. There also are pretty good reasons to classify the heavy-handed approach as total crap equally reminiscent of a totalitarian past.

Not especially different from conservatives who blather against political correctness – unless the topic is one of their ongoing campaigns to legislate morality, sex, music and thought that might displease someone with their brain still stuck into the 19th Century. Or the 14th Century.

Think about all the data — photos, videos, text messages, calendar items, apps, call log, voice mail, and e-mail — on your cell phone right now. If you’re arrested, could the police search your cell phone? And would they need a warrant?

That depends on which state you’re in.

In California, it is legal for police to search an arrestee’s cell phone without a warrant — ever since a January decision by the California Supreme Court. California civil rights advocates are pushing back. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is supporting California Assembly Bill SB 914, which would require police in that state to get a warrant before searching an arrestee’s cell phone…

Meanwhile, in Florida, an appellate court decision upheld warrantless cell phone searches, defining the phone as a kind of “container.” This case may be considered by the Florida Supreme Court.

A similar Georgia appellate court decision upheld a warrantless search of a cell phone found in an arrestee’s car (not on her person).

In contrast, the Ohio Supreme Court has barred warrantless cell phone searches…

The pattern appears to be that around the U.S., some state and local police officers are taking the initiative to search arrestees’ cell phones. In some cases this yields information relevant to the alleged crime, which has contributed to indictments and convictions.

Only then do some of these cases wind up in appellate or state supreme courts in a process that often takes years.

If you’re concerned about police or anyone else getting into your cell phone, a basic precaution is to configure your phone’s security settings to always require a passcode or pattern to access any of the phone’s data or functions.

According to Catherine Crump of the American Civil Liberties Union, “The police can ask you to unlock the phone — which many people will do — but they almost certainly cannot compel you to unlock your phone without the involvement of a judge.”

Police are supposed to protect and serve within the definitions of law and Constitution. Snooping without oversight from a court – as gutless as many judges may be – is outside the mandate of American law and order.

Yes, this isn’t the first time that fear and whimpering leads to police-state solutions. Cops have been portable gangs used to suppress unions from organizing, people from protest and dissent. But, the eventual reaction from the people of this land is rejection of Big Brother as judge and jury on the street.

Toilet reserved for Mugabe

When the call of nature comes, it cannot always be denied. Few have answered it in such an unfortunate fashion as Alois Mabhunu.

While on duty at a trade fair the Zimbabwean police sergeant simply could not hold on and allegedly dashed to the nearest toilet – disastrously, as it transpired, a toilet specially reserved for President Robert Mugabe.

Mabhunu’s relief was thus shortlived. He was arrested and has languished in jail for two weeks on suspicion of invading the presidential privy…

Under the headline “Never Use Toilet Reserved For President!” VOP’s website reported that Mabhunu was on duty at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair grounds during its official opening by Mugabe and Jean-Louis Ekra, the president of Afreximbank.

“Mabhunu, due to the call of nature, rushed to the toilets reserved for Mugabe and his guest Ekra, but was stopped by other officers guarding the toilets,” VOP said. “…He was arrested the following day on 7 May after a report was made to Mugabe’s security men and to senior police officers in the city.”

Mabhunu, a murder detective, is in police detention at barracks on the outskirts of Bulawayo. The legality of the case against him was challenged by Beatrice Mtetwa, one of Zimbabwe’s leading human rights lawyers.

“There has to be a law saying the toilet is the president’s, but this was a public one,” she said. “They will have had to issue a proclamation in the government gazette specifying it. I bet they didn’t do that.”

Mugabe’s personal space – and reputation as father of the independent nation – are fiercely protected. Several motorists are said to have been assaulted by his security personnel for not giving way to the presidential motorcade.

Insulting the president is punishable by up to a year in jail. Even if the insult is generated by your digestive tract. Apparently.

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has introduced a new “Do Not Track” bill to Congress that aims to hold companies accountable for collecting information on consumers after they’ve expressed a desire to opt out. Called the Do-Not-Track Online Act of 2011 [.pdf], the bill would create a “universal legal obligation” for companies to honor users’ opt-out requests on the Internet and mobile devices, and would give the Federal Trade Commission the power to take action against companies that don’t comply…

According to the bill, the FTC would be tasked with coming up with standards for companies to implement within a year of the bill being signed into law. After a user makes a request to stop being tracked, the companies in question would only be able to continue collecting certain information on customers if it’s absolutely necessary in order for the site or service to function. That information must still be anonymized or destroyed after its usefulness expires, and the user must still give explicit consent for the information to be used that way…

Privacy groups seem impressed with the bill, pointing out that the FTC has a good deal of flexibility in tailoring a persistent opt-out mechanism. “This legislation would give Americans the right and the right tools to browse the Internet without their every click being tracked,” Consumer Protection director Susan Grant said on a call to discuss the bill after it was introduced. Chris Calabrese from the ACLU agreed, describing the bill as “a crucial civil liberties protection for the twenty-first century…”

Of course, the final details for how companies are supposed to comply with the guidelines of Rockefeller’s bill have yet to be hammered out, but the privacy groups seemed optimistic that the FTC could handle the burden. After all, the FTC itself has been pushing for a Do Not Track mechanism online since 2010, and the Obama administration has voiced its support for some kind of “consumer privacy bill of rights.” Also, three of the four major browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari) either already support or will soon support Do Not Track opt-out headers originally developed by Mozilla, giving the FTC an easier launching point.

Geeks generally come in three flavors of concern: those perfectly happy with providing their own means of security; those who could care less; and the ever-popular paranoid look-under-your-mouse-pad-every-night for electronic listening devices. I believe the average non-geek consumer fits in the middle category.

None of which predicts the response to the bill if it passes. I would think even the unconcerned would opt for non-tracking if it was a simple process. Paranoids won’t believe it’s possible in the first place – and will probably skip opting out because it might point out their presence on the planet.

The proposal is contained in a draft policy on relationships at work produced by human resources officials at Fenland District Council, which covers a rural area in central England north of Cambridge.

“Any employee who embarks on a close personal relationship with a colleague working in the same team must declare the relationship to his/her manager in writing,” the document said, adding the details would go on the employees’ personal files.

Furthermore, the policy warns that “intimate behaviour during work time is not acceptable.”

Lust in the stationery closet ain’t permitted.

“This applies during all working time (not flexed off time), both on and off Council sites,” the document added. “Any breach of this could be regarded as a disciplinary offence … leading to disciplinary action.”

The Trades Union Congress, Britain’s union umbrella body, condemned the proposal, saying workers should not have to disclose details about their private lives outside office time, which their bosses probably did not want to know about either.

“It’s quite common for relationships to start in the office, but having to declare your feelings via the HR department is hardly the most romantic way to make a move,” said Sarah Veale, TUC Head of Employment Rights.

Now, here’s management with entirely too much free time on their hands.

German home-owners who have chosen to opt out of Google’s Street View service appear to have become the unsuspecting victims of anti-privacy vandals.

Local media report that homes in Essen, west Germany have been pelted with eggs and had ‘Google’s cool’ notices pinned to their doors.

The properties involved have all chosen to be blurred on Google’s Street View service.

So far, this appears to be a one-time bit of anarchy – though most dipshit student anarchists defend their privacy with gusto – figuring it may protect their boring middle-class lives after school.

Street View is rolling out across Germany this month and is proving a hit with users, according to Google.

The German government took a hard line on the service, mandating that citizens be allowed to opt out, before pictures went live. Almost 250,000 Germans requested that Google blur pictures of their homes on the service.