Articles Tagged with ''privacy concerns''

It’s time for design thinking to break out of the privacy office into the culture at large.

Thousands of Canadians joined in a protest across the country March 14 to denounce the Conservative government’s proposed anti-terror legislation, Bill C-51, which opponents say will allow to government to stifle protest and dissent.

In the event of a breach, you need to have a written plan to take immediate steps and know who is going to analyze the problem, who will notify the people impacted by the breach, and who you can call for help, among other things.

The House passed legislation Thursday to end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of American phone records. The compromise measure (called “watered down” by Democrat Jan Schakowsky of Illinois) passed by a vote of 303 to 120, with nine members not voting.

Three in four Britons are concerned about Internet privacy, according to a new poll from Ipsos MORI. Furthermore, 62 percent of Britons would rather keep their online activities private, even if it means that they lose out on personalized services and relevant recommendations. That puts Britain on a similar level to the United States, which countries such as France, Germany, Australia and Sweden are even less likely to say they would trade privacy for personalized services.

American telephone metadata was only found to have played a role in initiating 1.8 percent of investigations, with a total contribution from NSA surveillance to investigations coming to 7.5 percent of cases. Traditional investigative methods (informants, community tips, targeted intelligence) provided 59.6 percent of impetus for those investigations, the report states.

Facebook, Wal-Mart and other companies planning to use facial-recognition scans for security or tailored sales pitches are working to build the rules for how images and online profiles can be used, according to Newsday. The U.S. Department of Commerce will start meeting with industry and privacy advocates in February to draft a voluntary code of conduct for using facial recognition products, and the draft will be ready by June.

Within days of reports about the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance efforts, it was revealed that French intelligence services operated a similar system with minimal oversight, The New York Times reports. Last week, with little public debate, the French legislature approved a law that critics fear would expand electronic surveillance of French residents and businesses. The provision was quietly passed as part of a routine military spending bill, and it defines the conditions under which intelligence agencies may gain access to or record telephone conversations, emails, Internet activity, personal location data and additional electronic communications, the article reports.