FBI's James Comey: 'There is no such thing as absolute privacy in America'; Guardian, March 8, 2017

Julian Borger, Guardian; 

FBI's James Comey: 'There is no such thing as absolute privacy in America'

[Kip Currier: 2,000th post since starting this Ethics Blog in 2010. Very thought-provoking privacy (are we now in a "post-privacy world"?) quote by FBI Director Comey--great fodder for Information Ethics class discussions, as well as around "the dinner table" and workplace water cooler/caffeine dispenser!]

"“There is no such thing as absolute privacy in America,” the FBI director, James Comey, has declared after the disclosure of a range of hacking tools used by the CIA.

Comey was delivering prepared remarks at a cybersecurity conference in Boston, but his assessment has deepened privacy concerns already raised by the details of CIA tools to hack consumer electronics for espionage published by WikiLeaks on Tuesday.

“All of us have a reasonable expectation of privacy in our homes, in our cars, and in our devices. But it also means with good reason, in court, government, through law enforcement, can invade our private spaces,” Comey said at the conference on Wednesday. “Even our memories aren’t private. Any of us can be compelled to say what we saw … In appropriate circumstances, a judge can compel any of us to testify in court on those private communications.”"

Would You Want To Know The Secrets Hidden In Your Baby's Genes?; NPR, 10/31/16

[Podcast] Mary Harris, NPR; Would You Want To Know The Secrets Hidden In Your Baby's Genes? :

"Lauren and Ian Patrick, the parents of baby Finn, are a good case study.

Initially, they were convinced they wanted the screening. But after an hour talking to a genetic counselor about all the ways this sequencing could go wrong, they decided against it.

They learned that any genetic sequencing would go in their son's medical record, and it wouldn't be able to be removed. And while federal law prohibits genetic discrimination by health care providers and in the workplace, life insurers can still use genetic information to pick and choose whom they'll sell policies to. By the time the meeting was over, the Patricks' excitement had been replaced with concern."

Everything Librarians Need To Know About Pokemon Go!; Where We're Going, We Don't Need Shelves, July 2016

Where We're Going, We Don't Need Shelves; Everything Librarians Need To Know About Pokemon Go! :

[Kip Currier: Though the blogger's enthusiasm for welcoming Pokemon Go players to libraries is admirable, nothing in the post mentions ANY of the significant Pokemon Go privacy concerns that have been identified.]

"What does any of this have to do with libraries?

In the Pokemon Video Games, players catch and train Pokemon in order to compete at Gyms. Pokemon Gyms, in the Pokemon Universe, are places where trainers can compete and battle for prestige, earn badges, and make their Pokemon bigger, badder, and better.

In Pokemon Go, Gyms are attached to free, safe, public places that all players can get to.

This means us, the libraries.

Thousands of libraries across the country have been made virtual Gyms, and this has already caused an increase of foot traffic for our buildings, attracting teens and young adults who may not typically be library patrons. Personally, I believe this is a huge blessing. It opens doors for new patrons, it gives librarians the ability to make connections with a section of our demographics we don’t normally get the chance to talk to, and it gives us the opportunity to do some really, really fun programs and displays.

So what do I do with this information?

- Firstly, get the app! You can get it on any Android or Apple IOS smartphone. If you don’t have one, or aren’t comfortable with technology, grab a coworker who is and explore it together. You don’t need to be a fan of Pokemon or a fan of video games to explore and get an idea of what it looks like. It’s also important for you to find out if your library is a Gym or a Pokestop."

Privacy Shield deal lets US tech firms transfer European customers' data again; Guardian, 7/8/16

Jemima Kiss, Guardian; Privacy Shield deal lets US tech firms transfer European customers' data again:

"Privacy Shield, the new commercial data transfer pact, was provisionally agreed by the EU and the US in February and will come into effect on Tuesday.

The EU’s top court had struck down the previous data transfer agreement, Safe Harbour, on concerns about intrusive US surveillance – leaving companies, including Google, Facebook and MasterCard, in legal limbo...

“It (the Privacy Shield) is fundamentally different from the old Safe Harbour: it imposes clear and strong obligations on companies handling the data and makes sure that these rules are followed and enforced in practice,” Ansip and Jourova said.

The United States will create an ombudsman within the state department to field complaints from EU citizens about US spying and has ruled out indiscriminate mass surveillance of Europeans’ data."

Privacy Fears: Panel Has Advice for Drone Operators; Associated Press via New York Times, 5/20/16

Associated Press via New York Times; Privacy Fears: Panel Has Advice for Drone Operators:

"A panel of privacy experts and technology companies organized by the Obama administration has issued guidelines for using drones without being overly intrusive.

The suggestions are voluntary, but some business interests involved in the debate hope the guidelines head off tougher regulations that they fear could smother the drone industry in its infancy. News organizations are exempt from the guidelines on free-press grounds.

Supporters say drones could provide huge benefits, from inspecting power lines to delivering medicine to remote areas. Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. want to use them for deliveries. Falling prices have made drones popular among hobbyists, too.

However, their small size and ability to go just about anywhere — while carrying cameras and sensors — have raised privacy concerns.

The Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration on Thursday released the "best practices," which were supported by drone makers, Amazon and other technology companies and retailers, and privacy advocates. The suggestions are aimed at both commercial and private drone users."

Privacy versus speech in the Hulk Hogan sex tape trial; Los Angeles Times, 3/14/16

Erwin Chemerinsky, Los Angeles Times; Privacy versus speech in the Hulk Hogan sex tape trial:

"Indeed, this case reflects how the changing notions of privacy in society make it much harder to decide what would be offensive to the reasonable person and what isn't of public concern.

But juries, it's said, make decisions based on emotion, on the gut. Accordingly, St. Petersburg jurors may ultimately find it hard to accept that Gawker's speech rights reach into Bollea's bedroom, notwithstanding the plaintiff's lewd persona. There is a difference, after all, between talking about sex and watching it.

If the jury sides with Bollea, 1st Amendment absolutists will worry about the “chilling effect” the verdict may have on speech, and will claim it's impossible to draw a line between permissible and impermissible expression. Speech is speech.

But I can imagine a clear rule: No videos of people having sex should be made public unless all of the participants consent. I think the media will survive the restriction."

What The Hulk Hogan Verdict Means For Freedom Of The Press; Huffington Post, 3/19/16

Chris D'Angelo, Huffington Post; What The Hulk Hogan Verdict Means For Freedom Of The Press:

"Mary-Rose Papandrea, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, agreed it likely won’t have a larger effect, because “most journalists and most publishers are careful, and err on the side of protecting privacy.”

Even so, there is currently an “anything goes“ mentality when it comes to publishing information about celebrities, Eric Goldman, co-director of Santa Clara University’s High Tech Law Institute, told Fusion. Indeed, Gawker had argued in court that by repeatedly discussing his own sex life in public, Hogan made the subject fair game. Their loss, Goldman said, might result in “some rethinking of that mentality.”

Since the verdict, Nick Denton, Gawker’s founder, made clear Gawker plans to appeal.

Until then, one can only assume the $115 million verdict will result in other outlets thinking long and hard before publishing the next sex tape that surfaces."

The Apple Case Will Grope Its Way Into Your Future; New York Times, 2/24/16

Farhad Manjoo, New York Times; The Apple Case Will Grope Its Way Into Your Future:

"To understand what’s at stake in the battle between Apple and the F.B.I. over cracking open a terrorist’s smartphone, it helps to be able to predict the future of the tech industry.

For that, here’s one bet you’ll never lose money on: Digital technology always grows hungrier for more personal information, and we users nearly always accede to its demands. Today’s smartphones hold a lot of personal data — your correspondence, your photos, your location, your dignity. But tomorrow’s devices, many of which are already around in rudimentary forms, will hold a lot more...

But if Apple is forced to break its own security to get inside a phone that it had promised users was inviolable, the supposed safety of the always-watching future starts to fall apart. If every device can monitor you, and if they can all be tapped by law enforcement officials under court order, can anyone ever have a truly private conversation? Are we building a world in which there’s no longer any room for keeping secrets?

“This case can’t be a one-time deal,” said Neil Richards, a professor at the Washington University School of Law. “This is about the future.”

Mr. Richards is the author of “Intellectual Privacy,” a book that examines the dangers of a society in which technology and law conspire to eliminate the possibility of thinking without fear of surveillance. He argues that intellectual creativity depends on a baseline measure of privacy, and that privacy is being eroded by cameras, microphones and sensors we’re all voluntarily surrounding ourselves with."

A Message to Our Customers; Apple, 2/16/16

Tim Cook, Apple; A Message to Our Customers:

"The implications of the government’s demands are chilling. If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data. The government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge.

Opposing this order is not something we take lightly. We feel we must speak up in the face of what we see as an overreach by the U.S. government.

We are challenging the FBI’s demands with the deepest respect for American democracy and a love of our country. We believe it would be in the best interest of everyone to step back and consider the implications.

While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.

Tim Cook"

Apple Fights Order to Unlock San Bernardino Gunman’s iPhone; New York Times, 2/17/16

Katie Benner and Eric Lichtblau, New York Times; Apple Fights Order to Unlock San Bernardino Gunman’s iPhone:

" Apple said on Wednesday that it would oppose and challenge a federal court order to help the F.B.I. unlock an iPhone used by one of the two attackers who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., in December.

On Tuesday, in a significant victory for the government, Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym of the Federal District Court for the District of Central California ordered Apple to bypass security functions on an iPhone 5c used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who was killed by the police along with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, after they attacked Mr. Farook’s co-workers at a holiday gathering.

Judge Pym ordered Apple to build special software that would essentially act as a skeleton key capable of unlocking the phone.

But hours later, in a statement by its chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, Apple announced its refusal to comply...

As Apple noted, the F.B.I., instead of asking Congress to pass legislation resolving the encryption fight, has proposed what appears to be a novel reading of the All Writs Act of 1789.

The law lets judges “issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.”"

The internet of things: how your TV, car and toys could spy on you; Guardian, 2/10/16

Sam Thielman, Guardian; The internet of things: how your TV, car and toys could spy on you:

"Can your smart TV spy on you? Absolutely, says the US director of national intelligence. The ever-widening array of “smart” web-enabled devices pundits have dubbed the internet of things [IoT] is a welcome gift to intelligence officials and law enforcement, according to director James Clapper.

“In the future, intelligence services might use the [internet of things] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials,” Clapper told the Senate in public testimony on Tuesday.

As a category, the internet of things is useful to eavesdroppers both official and unofficial for a variety of reasons, the main one being the leakiness of the data. “[O]ne helpful feature for surveillance is that private sector IoT generally blabs a lot, routinely into some server, somewhere,” said Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “That data blabbing can be insecure in the air, or obtained from storage.”"

French privacy regulator cracks down on Facebook's use of personal data; Reuters via Guardian, 2/8/16

Reuters via Guardian; French privacy regulator cracks down on Facebook's use of personal data:

"The French data protection authority on Monday gave Facebook three months to stop tracking non-users’ web activity without their consent and ordered the social network to stop some transfers of personal data to the US.

The French order is the first significant action to be taken against a company transferring Europeans’ data to the US following an EU court ruling last year that struck down an agreement that had been relied on by thousands of companies, including Facebook, to avoid cumbersome EU data transfer rules."

When a Public Family Is Publicly Attacked; New York Times, 2/5/16

KJ Dell'Antonia, New York Times; When a Public Family Is Publicly Attacked:

"While Ms. Howerton and her supporters report Twitter accounts for abuse, she is also asking YouTube to take down the video commentary that makes use of her video and other family images. She has filed a privacy complaint, which YouTube rejected, and is waiting for it to respond to her new complaint, alleging copyright violation. Neil Richards, a law professor at Washington University and author of “Intellectual Privacy: Rethinking Civil Liberties in the Digital Age,” said he thinks Ms. Howerton’s belief that she can regain control of the footage may be overly optimistic.

“The use of home video and family images for political debate is something that has real consequences,” he said. “She has made her life choices, her experiences, her children’ experiences, a matter for public debate. When people do this they do expose themselves to criticism and attacks and some of them are quite unpleasant.”

Eric Goldman, a professor of law and director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law, agreed that because Ms. Howerton herself used family video as part of a political discussion, she may have little legal recourse when that video is used as part of a larger video engaged in social commentary on the same topic. In many situations, videos or pictures posted online can become “fair game” for critics to use in online attacks against the poster’s position or for other undesirable political or social statements, Mr. Goldman said in an email."

Americans don't trust companies with their data, but give it up anyway; FedScoop, 1/14/16

Greg Otto, FedScoop; Americans don't trust companies with their data, but give it up anyway:

"According to research unveiled Thursday, most Americans are willing to sacrifice their data privacy if they believe it will somehow benefit them; otherwise they are resigned to the fact they have no control over their personal information if they plan on being a consumer in the modern, Internet-connected, data-driven retail space.

The former conclusion is suggested by a study released by the Pew Research Center Thursday, which measured attitudes to privacy and surveillance among a nationally representative and statistically valid sample of adult Americans, and then explored the results in a series of focus groups.

A majority of respondents told Pew they have low levels of confidence in both business and government when it comes to data collection; but many were prepared to put their concerns aside if there was a trade-off — some benefit they got in return. Supermarket loyalty cards, for instance, track holders' shopping preferences in return for discounts on products — a trade-off seen as acceptable by 47 percent of survey respondents.

By contrast, research presented at the Federal Trade Commission’s PrivacyCon Thursday suggested that marketers are taking advantage of the widespread acceptance of certain kinds of trade-offs to collect massive amounts of data — and thereby inspiring cynicism and resignation among Americans about their privacy."

FTC warns companies that ‘big data’ comes with the potential for big problems; Washington Post, 1/7/16

Andrea Peterson, Washington Post; FTC warns companies that ‘big data’ comes with the potential for big problems:

"Companies are tracking more data about consumers than ever. Practically every click you make online creates new records in some distant database, and your real world actions, too, can increasingly be tracked through your mobile phone or new commercial surveillance advances.

But the Federal Trade Commission, one of the government's chief privacy watchdogs, just warned companies to think twice about how they use those vast data troves.

The agency on Wednesday released a new report that advises companies on how to avoid hurting the most vulnerable as they push further into the booming "big data" economy."

The new way police are surveilling you: Calculating your threat ‘score’; Washington Post, 1/10/16

Justin Jouvenal, Washington Post; The new way police are surveilling you: Calculating your threat ‘score’ :

"Police officials say such tools can provide critical information that can help uncover terrorists or thwart mass shootings, ensure the safety of officers and the public, find suspects, and crack open cases. They say that last year’s attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., have only underscored the need for such measures.

But the powerful systems also have become flash points for civil libertarians and activists, who say they represent a troubling intrusion on privacy, have been deployed with little public oversight and have potential for abuse or error. Some say laws are needed to protect the public."

Pearls Before Swine; GoComics.com, 12/20/15

GoComics.com; Stephan Pastis, Pearls Before Swine: [Never Read the Terms and Conditions]

Librarians in uproar after borrowing record of Haruki Murakami is leaked; Guardian, 12/1/15

Justin McCurry, Guardian; Librarians in uproar after borrowing record of Haruki Murakami is leaked:

"Librarians in Japan have ditched their traditional regard for silence to accuse a newspaper of violating the privacy of Haruki Murakami, Japan’s best-known contemporary writer, after it revealed his teenage reading habits...

The Kobe Shimbun revealed Murakami’s reading habits of half a century ago after obtaining the cards from the school’s library that carried borrower entries under the author’s name, Japanese media reported.

The newspaper defended its actions, but the Japan Librarian Association accused it of violating the privacy of Murakami and other students whose names appear on the cards.

“Disclosing the records of what books were read by a user, without the individual’s consent, violates the person’s privacy,” said an association report."

Why Facebook Is Monitoring Your Private Videos; Huffington Post, 11/18/15

Huffington Post; Why Facebook Is Monitoring Your Private Videos:

"Parker Higgins, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, explains how Facebook's hunt for copyrighted material is playing out in users' private posts.

Justice Dept. to Require Warrants for Some Cellphone Tracking; New York Times, 9/3/15

Nicholas Fandos, New York Times; Justice Dept. to Require Warrants for Some Cellphone Tracking:

"The Justice Department will regularly require federal agents to seek warrants before using secretive equipment that can locate and track cellphones, the agency announced Thursday, the first regulations on an increasingly controversial technology.

The new policy, which also limits what information may be collected and how long it can be stored, puts a measure of judicial oversight on a technology that was designed to hunt terrorists overseas but has become a popular tool among federal agents and local police officers for fighting crime.

Civil libertarians have expressed grave privacy concerns about the technology’s proliferation, but the new Justice Department policies do not apply to local police forces.

The device, commonly called a cell-site simulator or StingRay, tricks cellphones into connecting with it by acting like a cell tower, allowing the authorities to determine the location of a tracked phone. In doing so, however, the equipment also connects with all other phones in the area, allowing investigators to collect information on people not suspected of any crime...

“The policy is really designed to try to promote transparency, consistency, and accountability, all while being mindful of the public’s privacy,” Ms. Yates told reporters."