Tag: privacy

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 2/12/09

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Looking for some good news about personal privacy in cyberspace? Well, finally, there is some. On Data Privacy Day 2009, the Dutch metasearch engine www.ixquick.com announced that the search engine would no longer record users’ IP addresses. This is a big deal: here’s why.

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 11/20/08

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

As you go about your daily business, do you find the merchants you deal with asking nonchalantly for your phone number or if you’d kindly sign on the electronic line in stead of a paper one? You don’t have to provide more information about yourself than the law requires, and it’s probably a good idea not to in this data mining digital age.

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 11/13/08

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

On this program, we’ve often looked at technologies which have the potential to impinge on the liberty and privacy of individuals. To see what a world might look like in which a combination of technologies, all of which are available today, are deployed by the state – in the name of combating terrorism, of course – check out “The Last Enemy,” a program set in the London of the very near future. It depicts what it might be like to live in such a world in a way no science report ever could.

Notes From the Electronic Cottage 8/07/08

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Do you like to travel outside the U.S. Do you carry a laptop or cell phone or iPod when you do? If so, you might want to think about what’s on your personal electronic device. Why? U.S. Customs and Border Protection has
recently released a policy document called “Policy Regarding Border Search of Information” that makes it clear that border agents can “search, review, retain, and share” pretty much anything on your computer or cell phone
without your permission and with absolutely no requirement of suspicion or probable cause of a crime. Take a listen.

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 7/10/08

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Today we follow-up on some topics we’ve looked at recently because in both the digital world and the physical world with which it interacts, things can change fast.   Let’s look at some updates on the FISA Amendments Act of 2008,  ISP tracking of user click streams, and Maine’s “no it isn’t, but yes it is” dance around the Real ID Act.

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 7/03/08

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Well, the Australians seem to have decided that a national ID card isn’t for them.   In the U.S., not only are we moving toward a de facto national ID card, we’re also spending a billion dollars of taxpayer money so the FBI can amass the largest biometric database in the world on U.S. Citizens – not just convicted felons or other criminals but hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of regular folks who need to apply for a job, whose parents think it’s a swell idea to register their fingerprints or iris scans when they are children, or people who are arrested by federal authorities – even park rangers – even if they are never even charged with a crime. Feel safer? Feel like you live in the land of the free?

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 6/26/08

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Think your Internet Service Provider (ISP) is a utility like your electric company or phone company? Think again. These days many ISPs are looking to “monetize their assets” and guess what their assets are? That’s right, you
and me and where we go and what we do on the Internet. To monetize us, they need to track us and what we do on the Internet, and that’s what at least some ISPs are doing right now.