privacy

Just over a year after the European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding lifted the lid on plans to reform the data protection and privacy laws in the region, Brussels is facing its greatest challenge yet by no other than its own member states.

The Commission may "water down" proposals after a group of EU member states said they were heavily opposed to a number of proposed measures, according to the Financial Times of London. These include measures that could see EU-based firms fined up to 2 percent of a company's global revenue for data breaches.

Due to an … Read more

The FBI and other police agencies would be required to obtain search warrants before reading Americans' e-mail or tracking their mobile devices under a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives today.

It's not a new proposal: Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat whose district includes the heart of Silicon Valley, announced almost exactly the same measure last fall. But because the clock ran out without Congress acting, she's trying a second time.

"Fourth Amendment protections don't stop at the Internet," Lofgren said in a statement today. "Americans expect Constitutional protections to extend … Read more

PasswordBox keeps all of your online passwords in one convenient location accessible from any computer. This application is slowly becoming a preferred tool around the office known for decreasing log-in time increasing time spent on Facebook and Tumblr.

The installation file will you set you up with the PasswordBox add-ons for popular browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and IE. It runs from within the browser environment and works the same way across the board. PasswordBox is still in beta, and the setup is one way to make an account.

Essentially a vault for all of your online passwords, PasswordBox … Read more

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has customized its Predator drones, originally built for overseas military operations, to carry out at-home surveillance tasks that have civil libertarians worried: identifying civilians carrying guns and tracking their cell phones, government documents show.

The documents provide more details about the surveillance capabilities of the department's unmanned Predator B drones, which are primarily used to patrol the United States' northern and southern borders but have been pressed into service on behalf of a growing number of law enforcement agencies including the FBI, the Secret Service, the Texas Rangers, and local police. … Read more

As a society, we have become used to difficult, inappropriate, and embarrassing pictures being uploaded to Facebook.

No, it hasn't yet stopped us from marveling, musing, and laughing at their content.

But we've become more understanding about humans' urges to display themselves being greater than their capacity to think through the consequences of such a display.

Still, we should reserve our judgment about an image posted to Facebook that featured Tom Keller, the police chief of Confluence, Penn.

It is impossible to know precisely what confluence of events led to this picture appearing on his Facebook page.

What'… Read more

How Google and other American Internet companies operate in Europe could come down to a link that, depending on what side of the Atlantic Ocean you're on, should or should not be deleted.

A case heard Tuesday before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) hinges on a complaint submitted by a Spanish citizen who searched Google for his name and found a news article from several years earlier, saying his property would be auctioned because of failed payments to his social security contributions.

Spanish authorities argued that Google, other search engines, and other Web companies operating in Spain should … Read more

A new bill intended to grant more privacy protections to Internet users was introduced today by U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller.

Dubbed "Do-Not-Track Online Act of 2013," the bill would make it law for all Web browsers, online companies, and app makers to give users a choice of opting out of being tracked online, according to The New York Times. Advertisers and data brokers commonly track users to collect information on sites visited, search queries, purchasing patterns, and more.

"The privacy of Americans is increasingly under assault as more and more of their daily lives are conducted … Read more

If Koozoo CEO Drew Sechrist has his way, cameras will record every move you make in public -- and make your life better for it.

The San Francisco startup wants smartphone owners to deploy a network of streaming smartphone cameras that are accessible by anyone within the Koozoo network at any time. The network launches on iOS today in San Francisco and Austin, Texas, with plans to expand in the coming months.

Users can participate by posting recorded snippets -- these are a few minutes long -- to the network or to social media like Facebook and Twitter. Or, they … Read more

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has approved the $9.5 million settlement over Facebook's controversial Beacon advertising service, which could put an end to the four-year legal proceedings.

Most of the money will go toward establishing the Digital Trust Foundation, a nonprofit that will fund projects related to Internet privacy, with $2.3 million covering attorneys' fees. Objectors had originally said that the settlement terms did not go far enough to benefit Facebook users' privacy, but a majority of the 28 judges on the Court of Appeals decided Tuesday that the settlement is sufficient, Reuters reported. … Read more