Articles Tagged with ''privacy concerns''

Eight major technology companies, including Google, Facebook and Twitter, are joining forces to call for tighter controls on government surveillance, according to The Associated Press. The companies say in an open letter to President Barack Obama that while they sympathize with national security concerns, recent revelations make it clear that laws should be carefully tailored to balance them against individual rights.

Close to 1.5 percent of the Internet’s top websites track users without their knowledge or consent, even when visitors enable their browser’s Do Not Track options, according to a research team in Europe.

Close to 60 percent of Americans polled oppose the NSA’s collection of data on telephone and Internet usage, and a similar majority opposes the legal process supervised by a secret federal court that oversees the government’s classified surveillance, the AP report says.

In a New York Times/CBS NewsPoll, a week after the Boston Marathon attack, which was unraveled after the release of video footage of the two suspects flushed them out of hiding, 78 percent of people said surveillance cameras were a good idea.

State police in Virginia recorded and collected the whereabouts of potentially millions of people in an effort to monitor attendees at political rallies in 2008 and 2009, according to Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. 

The majority of Americans worry that the U.S. will go too far in violating privacy rights through NSA surveillance. 

The retention of license plate reader data for years or indefinitely is one of the ACLU's main concerns on the data's collection, especially for people who have broken no laws. 

NSA surveillance could have violated as many as five French privacy laws, according to a suit from the International Federation for Human Rights and the Human Rights League. 

U.S. border agents are allowed to search a traveler’s laptop, cellphone or other electronic device and keep copies of any data on them based on no more than a hunch, according to an internal study from the Homeland Security Department. 

78 percent of Americans polled after the Boston Marathon bombing said that public surveillance is a good idea, despite privacy infringement concerns.