Privacy

Cloud Computing and Privacy

There has been a good deal of talk of late on the important topic of security and privacy in relation to cloud computing. Indeed there are some legitimate concerns and some work that needs to be done in this area in general, but I'm going to focus today on the latter term (indeed they are distinct -- as a CISSP security is my forte but I will talk more on this separately).

Hunting Unicorns: Myths and Realities of the Net Neutrality Debate

In many ways, the emotionally charged debate on Network Neutrality (NN) has been a lot like hunting Unicorns. While hunting the mythical horse could be filled with adrenalin, emotion, and likely be quite entertaining, the prize would ultimately prove to be elusive. As a myth, entertaining; but when myths become reality, then all bets are off. The Network Neutrality public and private debate has been filled with more emotion than rational discussion, and in its wake a number of myths have become accepted as reality. Unfortunately, public policy, consumer broadband services, and service provider business survival hang in the balance.

Deep Packet Inspection: When the Man-In-The-Middle Wants Money

Say you're walking down the sidewalk having a talk with your best friend about all kinds of things. What if you found out later that the sidewalk you were using wasn't really a sidewalk -- but instead a kind of false-front giant copying machine, unobstrusively vacuuming up what you were saying and adding to its database of information about you? Or, say you send a letter to a client of yours (to the extent you still do this), and it turns out later that your letter was intercepted, steamed open, and the contents were read...

Google, Viacom, Privacy and Copyright Meet the Social Web

In all the recent uproar (New York Times, "Google Told to Turn Over User Data of YouTube," Michael Helft, 4 July 2008) about the fact that Google has been forced to turn over a large pile of personally-identifiable information to Viacom as part of a copyright dispute (Opinion), there is a really interesting angle pointed out by Dan Brickley (co-creator of FOAF and general Semantic Web troublemaker)...

Swedish National Defense Radio Agency to Wiretap All Internet Traffic

Several people abroad have started mailing me and others asking if rumors of new legislation to be passed in Sweden on the 17th of June is for real. There are also reports in international forums starting to pop up. This is fairly old news, and I think that most of us are surprised that this has not generated more press both inside and outside Sweden earlier. This legislation will allow for the Swedish National Defense Radio Agency (FRA) to wiretap Internet traffic leaving the country...

CIRA Creates Backdoor WHOIS Exceptions for Police and IP Owners

Earlier this year, I wrote glowingly about the new CIRA whois policy, which took effect today and which I described as striking the right balance between access and privacy. The policy was to have provided new privacy protection to individual registrants - hundreds of thousands of Canadians - by removing the public disclosure of their personal contact information... Apparently I spoke too soon.

Storm Warning for Cloud Computing: More Like a Miasma

The approach is growing in popularity, and Google, Microsoft and Amazon are among the many large companies working on ways to attract users to their offerings, with Google Apps, Microsoft's Live Mesh and Amazon S3 all signing up customers as they try to figure out what works and what can turn a profit... In the real world national borders, commercial rivalries and political imperatives all come into play... The issue was recently highlighted by reports that the Canadian government has a policy of not allowing public sector IT projects to use US-based hosting services because of concerns over data protection.

Are Botnets Run by Spy Agencies?

A recent story today about discussions for an official defense Botnet in the USA prompted me to post a question I've been asking for the last year. Are some of the world's botnets secretly run by intelligence agencies, and if not, why not? Some estimates suggest that up to 1/3 of PCs are secretly part of a botnet. The main use of botnets is sending spam, but they are also used for DDOS extortion attacks and presumably other nasty things like identity theft. But consider this...

New CIRA Whois Policy Strikes Balance Between Privacy and Access

My weekly technology law column focuses this week on the new CIRA whois policy that is scheduled to take effect on June 10, 2008. The whois issue has attracted little public attention, yet it has been the subject of heated debate within the domain name community for many years. It revolves around the whois database, a publicly accessible, searchable list of domain name registrant information (as in "who is" the registrant of a particular domain name).

Important New Jersey Supreme Court Decision in Internet Privacy

The New Jersey Supreme Court has issued an important decision on Internet users' right to privacy. The case involves a dispute about whether an ISP violated a user's privacy rights by turning over subscriber information (name, address, billing details) associated with a particular IP address. It ends up that the subpoena served on the ISP was invalid for a variety of reasons. As the user had a 'reasonable expectation of privacy' in her Internet activities and identifying information, and because the subpoena served on the ISP was invalid, the New Jersey court determined that the ISP should not have turned over the personal data...