The ACLU filed suit against the government with the New York-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals. Since 2008, over 6,500 people—more than 3,000 of them U.S. citizens—have been subject to warrantless border searches of computers, smartphones, and cameras, according to information obtained by the ACLU. This suit has been brought on behalf of a New York Man, 26-year-old Pascal Abidor, over the seizure of his laptop where the agency did not return the laptop for 11 days. The lawsuit asks that the government cease and desist such activities and adhere to the guidelines laid out in the 4th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and show probably cause for search and seizure of personal affects. A recent article on Ars Technic

A recent lawsuit out of California names Facebook a defendant in a class action lawsuit alleging that their advertising model misappropriates the likeness and names of teens who use the system. The lawsuit hinges on the fact that advertisements, while shown to everyone, can also be “Liked.” A function of Facebook where if a user appreciates something and wants their friends to be aware of their appreciation they click a button marked “Like” near the item. In almost every case, clicking “Like” republishes that element in a message on the walls of networked friends—and, in the case of advertisements, the person who clicked “Like” becomes a vehicle for the exposure of that advertisement. PR Newswire fills us in on the c

Social media has brought a lot of change, positive and negative, in our lives. The biggest positive is is definitely the added connectivity to our friends, especially those who live faraway. Among the negatives are privacy concerns. Our social media account is, in a way, the modern version of dear diary. More or less, it is a log of who we are, what we do, our likes, dislikes, activities, and what not. The presence of so much information online has given rise to online stalkers, digital identity theft, privacy issues. Many times we find ourselves in a situation where somebody knows too much about us (mainly via social media). Of course, there are privacy settings and all, but still the problem exists. Germany, a country keen on internet

Yesterday, Facebook launched Facebook Places. Not only can you broadcast your location to your Facebook friends, but your friends can tag your location for others to see unless you uncheck this setting. It’s strange how we lump so many of our contacts in one place. Some of my contacts on Facebook are professional. They are people who I don’t mind knowing most of my business, but I would prefer them to stay out of certain segments of my life like my dating situation. Some of them are my family. They don’t care what goes on in my professional life. Some are old drinking buddies. What’s odd is that I have grouped all of these people in one place, which is Facebook. Why do we do this? Well, it’s kind of hard to turn down friend requ

Facebook already has a long track record of privacy fiascoes, so users should really be wary when approaching applications that give FB more information than before. With the recent release of Facebook Places, the company is giving their users the ability to broadcast their location to friends, and vice versa, but as Jenna Wortham from the New York Times writes, this comes with it’s own set of worries: “Your friends’ apps may be able to access information about your most recent check-in by default as soon as you start using Places,” the organization said. “Even if you’ve already gone through your settings to limit the info that apps can access, you should do it again — you may find that you’ve been defaulted into sharing yo

The UK may have let Google off the hook for its wifi snooping, but the search engine giant isn’t out of the woods yet. Other European countries still have standing issues with Google’s data collection methods, including the U.S. Some, like the Germans, still wonder why Google was collecting Wi-Fi data from its Street Views cars at all. Nevertheless, Britain's Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has cleared Google of “snooping” after considering the data Google actually collected. From the ICO, as quoted in the Telegraph UK, The ICO said in a statement: “On the basis of the samples we saw, we are satisfied so far that it is unlikely that Google will have captured significant amounts of personal data. There is als

There’s nothing like bringing back a classic, something that Democrat senators Jay Rockefeller and John Kerry are trying this week at online privacy hearings this week in the Senate. I almost missed the news, but caught the recap this morning from Frank Reed over at Marketing Pilgrim: Don’t think that just because Facebook has managed to not completely trample people’s privacy as of late that there is not more activity around the subject. In fact, forces in Washington, this time the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), are speaking at ‘hearings’ that are looking into this issue right now with talk of a “do not track” list. This is not the first time the subject has been raised (2007 it got some attention) but in light of re

Last week there was a minor scandal involving the Washington Post and a blogger on their payroll who was covering conservative political issues for the Post. The short short version of the story is that the blogger, Dave Weigel, resigned after inappropriate and disparaging comments about the very people he was hired to cover were revealed on a private email listserv called Journolist, which is run by acknowledged liberal Ezra Klein, who by the way also acknowledges that he only invited center (more likely center-left) and liberal journalists into the group. That was the theory behind Journolist: An insulated space where the lure of a smart, ongoing conversation would encourage journalists, policy experts and assorted other observers to

I was recently listening to the Infosmack Po dcast #50 over at StorageMonkeys and the speakers were discussing location-based social networking applications. Specifically, they talked about Foursquare although the same discussion to could be had with any social networking tool where you disclose your location. For example, if you are a California Twitter user and Tweet about attending a show in Massachusetts. I think that there is value in sharing thoughts and locations, but it also creates new concerns about privacy and risk. The proliferation of data on the Internet means that it is simple to find detailed personal information on almost anyone. For example, you can find someone’s general location from where they work, GPS coordinates

Mark Zuckerberg just finished a press conference announcing a new set of privacy controls, where the most important changes seem to be a broader, less granular view that’s persistent through future iterations of privacy controls. In other words, when you make a decision today about what you want to share on Facebook, your settings won’t default to a more or less open setting when the next version of privacy controls are implemented. The changes should be rolled out the week following Memorial Day. Fellow SiliconANGLEr, Robert Scoble, sat down with Mark Zuckerberg after the press conference to talk about the changes in a bit more depth. Some choice Mark Zuckerberg quotes: Robert: “Why should we trust Facebook?” Mark: “Becaus