ChoicePoint to Pay $15 Million in Data Breach Settlement

Published by EPIC

On January 26, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it had reached a multi-million dollar settlement with data broker Choicepoint regarding the company's poor privacy and data security practices, as well as violations of federal law. Choicepoint will pay $10 million to the Commission and will have to pay an additional $5 million to redress the harms suffered by consumers. It is the largest civil penalty in FTC history. Further information at EPIC


LINKS:

Federal Trade Commission Press Release:

Federal Trade Commission Court Documents:

EPIC's 2004 Complaint:

Jeff Jonas interview at Technology Review

Technology Review interviews Jeff Jonas, who founded Systems Research and Development (SRD), a firm that provided software to identify people and determine who was in their circle of friends. In January 2005, IBM acquired SRD and Jonas became chief scientist in the company's Entity Analytic Solutions group.

Interview by Kate Greene.

More Jonas' Interviews:

Betting on Private Data Search (Wired News)

IAPP National Summit 2006

The International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), the world's largest association of professionals in the privacy industry, announced the opening of registration for its National Summit 2006.

Keynote speakers at the National Summit 2006:

-- Jonathan Zittrain, Co-Founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

-- Brad Smith, Senior Vice President, General Counsel, for Microsoft, who helped spearhead the company's global campaigns to bring enforcement actions against those responsible for illegal spamming, virus creation and software counterfeiting.

-- David J. Brailer, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Brailer heads President Bush's efforts to deploy widespread health-information technology within the next 10 years.

-- Christophe Pallez, Secretaire general de la CNIL, France. Secretary General Pallez has served as head of the French data protection authority since September 2005.

and my favorite ones:


4A Privacy Digital Rights Management:

Rena Mears, Partner, Deloitte
Irfan Saif, Senior Manager, Deloitte
Gary Terrell, Senior Manager, Information Security, Adobe

Digital rights management and secure documents continue to grow in importance in today’s marketplace. But they do raise serious privacy issues. Join our experts as they explore the integration of privacy protections into these technologies, and the effect upon existing privacy policies and programs.

5E Privacy and Modesty

Anita Allen Castellito, Professor of Law and Philosophy,
University of Pennsylvania School of Law

Ms. Castellito, a leading expert on the law and philosophy of privacy, will explore the constitutional and conceptual underpinnings of the law of “modesty,” a key physical aspect of privacy.

Workplace Privacy & Protecting Confidential Information Webcast

Vontu, is the industry leader in Data Loss Prevention.

Now is available this webcast:

Workplace Privacy & Protecting Confidential Information Webcast

Panel of Privacy Experts:

Gary Clayton, Privacy Compliance Group
Hilary Wandall, Director Corporate Legal/Merck Privacy Office, Merck & Co.

The big challenge in monitoring employee communications is striking a balance between protecting confidential information and employee privacy. If you are considering or have started monitoring network communications, it is important to consider the protection of employee privacy, the capacity of data that can be collected, and compliance with U.S. and E.U. Privacy Laws.

This Webcast will allow you to hear first hand from the privacy experts at Privacy Compliance Group and Merck on how to protect confidential information while safeguarding employee privacy, integrate data privacy and security, and address the complexity of U.S. and E.U. privacy laws.

Bush Visits Security Agency and Defends Surveillance

By ELISABETH BUMILLER and ERIC LICHTBLAU

Published at The New York Times: January 26, 2006

WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 — President Bush went Wednesday to the heart of the debate over the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program, the supersecret agency itself, where he sought to bolster employee morale and make a case for ordering a surveillance program that has come under increasing political attack.

Read more at: NYT

And I remenber these words by Prof. Marx:


"In one sense, there are two problems with the new surveillance technologies. One is that they don’t work and the other is that they work too well. If the first, they fail to prevent disasters, bring miscarriages of justice, and waste resources. If the second, they can further inequality and invidious social categorization; they chill liberty. These twin threats are part of the enduring paradox of democratic government that must be strong enough to maintain reasonable order, but not so strong as to become undemocratic." Gary T. MARX
Soft Surveillance: The Growth of Mandatory Volunteerism in Collecting Personal Information --“Hey Buddy Can You Spare a DNA?”

LEX ELECTRONICA: 1995-2005

Another fantastic magazine it is Lex Electronica, a bilingual electronic law review (French and English) published three times annually: in winter (January-February), spring (May-June) and fall (September-October). Lex Electronica is published by the Public Law Research Centre (CRDP) of the University of Montreal and it was created by Karim Benyekhlef in 1995.

In celebration of its tenth anniversary, Lex Electronica has gathered together eminent authors (Bourcier, Burkert, Gautrais, Geist, Gélinas, Guibault, Katsh, Mackaay, Marx, Poullet, Van Gyseghem, Vermeys) expressing their points of view on developments in thought on the impact of new technologies on law.

Few months ago we talk about Yves Poullet (CRID, Belgium) who writes this paper about Internet regulation “"Les aspects juridiques des systèmes d’information".

Another paper in the same issue is: “Soft Surveillance: The Growth of Mandatory Volunteerism in Collecting Personal Information” by Gary T. Marx

Gary T. Marx is Professor Emeritus of Sociology from M.I.T. Major work in progress are books on new forms of surveillance and social control across borders.

"The accelerated development of communication and information processing technologies during the last few years has led the way to new methods of social control. Author Gary Marx believes that these new, non-coercive methods permit private and public actors to obtain private information on individuals without their consent, or even without their actual knowledge." LEX ELECTRONICA Summary

Beyond the ease of gathering DNA, consider the change from a urine drug test requiring an observer, to those that require a strand of hair, sweat, or saliva. Saliva is particularly interesting.

Whatever can be revealed from the analysis of blood or urine is also potentially found (although in smaller quantities) in saliva –not only evidence of disease and DNA, but also of drugs taken and pregnancy. The recent development of nonelectrical sensors now make it possible to detect molecules at minute levels in saliva. (New York Times, April 19, 2005).....

We value privacy not to protect wrongdoing, but because an appropriate degree of control over personal and social information is central to our sense of self, autonomy, and material well being-as well as being necessary for independent group actions.

Google vs. the US Government

Image source: BBC

Article from EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation)

"San Francisco - Yesterday (January 18), the Justice Department asked a federal court in San Jose, California to force Google to turn over search records for use as evidence in a case where the government is defending the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA).

Google has refused to comply with a subpoena for those records, based in part on its concern for its users' privacy.

COPA is a federal law that requires those who publish non-obscene, constitutionally protected sexual material online to take difficult and expensive steps to prevent access by minors, steps that would chill publishers of sexual material as well as the adults who want to access such material anonymously. EFF is one of the plaintiffs in the First Amendment challenge to COPA."

Full article at: EFF

Links:

News Analysis: Google Fight With Feds Sets Off Privacy Fears Mediapost.com

Online privacy may be illusion Monterey County Herald

Google vs the US Government iAfrica.com

Fishing in cyberspace International Herald Tribune

Google versus the Government in a War Over Your PrivacyWAWS

Open Course Ware. The learning revolution ¡

The MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) project has always had a dual mission:

• Provide free access to virtually all MIT course materials for educators and learners around the world.
• Extend the reach and impact of MIT OCW and the “opencourseware” concept.

The institutions listed below have publicly committed to the open publication of their materials in OCW initiatives, and are devoting resources to support these OCW projects.

China
Visit the portal page for 156 Chinese university OCW projects,

France
The engineering institutions (“Grandes Ecoles”) which form ParisTech have published the ParisTech OpenCourseWare project.

Japan
Japanese university OCW projects

United States
Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health
Tufts University
Utah State University

Vietnam
Fulbright Economics Teaching Program OCW

LEFIS: Legal Framework for the Information Society

The Legal Framework for the Information Society has as objective to introduce, starting from the elaboration of normative proposals, the Information and Communication Technologies in the Faculties and Schools of Law, and to promote the study of regulations and practice codes in the Polytechnic Centers. LEFIS wants to elaborate also didactic solutions with the possibilities that offers the use of the web and the didactic resources "on line".

Another objective of LEFIS is to elaborate policies on Law and new technologies coming from discussions originated in the different countries of the European Union and other regions, assisting to the own characteristic necessities, traditions and requirements of the groups of countries that integrate the Thematic Network.The LEFIS Network, supported by the European Union as Thematic Network, is part of the Archipelago Network. LEFIS includes also the activities of the AECI and ALFA Networks on electronic government, of European and Central- and Southamerican character.

There are 4 blog availables:

LEFIS en castellano
LEFIS in english
LEFIS in greek
LEFIS em portugués
LEFIS Lietuviškai

Lefis is one of the projects by Prof. Fernando Galindo, who teaches law at the Universidad de Zaragoza.(Spain)

It is available on line this book by Prof. Galindo "Derecho, Confianza e Internet" (spanish)

Also Galindo writes papers and reviews at: Electronic Law Journals, ' The Governance of Privacy: Policy Instruments in Global Perspective’, Book Review.

PrivacyNetwork.info

Privacynetwork.info, it is a website dedicated to research projects on privacy and data protection, coordinated by the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society (TILT) of Tilburg University, the Netherlands.

PrivacyNetwork is a part of the research program 'Reasonable expectations of privacy and the reality of data protection'. In this project legal professionals from all over the world are working together. The main objective is to analyse the differences in interpretation of privacy and data protection.

They have also these websites:

DNAnetwork.info, a website dedicated to research projects on DNA forensics
Ultrafast.nl, a website dedicated to the ethical aspects of ultrafast communication networks

Data sharing and Privacy in Multi-agency Working

Data sharing and Privacy in Multi-agency Working, is a major research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), studying data-sharing and privacy in selected public organisations in England and Scotland. Work commenced on 1 August 2003 under the joint leadership of:

Professor Christine Bellamy, Nottingham Trent University;
Professor Charles Raab, Edinburgh University;
Professor Perri 6, Nottingham Trent University*.

In addition, two Research Fellows were employed: Dr Adam Warren (Nottingham Trent University) and Cate Heeney (Edinburgh University). Cate Heeney's contract ended on 14 January 2005. Adam Warren leaves the project in August 2005 to take up a post at another university.

CONTEXT

Under the slogan 'joined-up government', the UK Labour government has since 1997 committed itself to greater coordination and integration of public services. At the same time, the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Human Rights Act 1998 were enacted - respectively granting individuals improved rights concerning the protection of their personal data and obliging UK courts to take into account an individual's right to privacy (among other rights) in cases brought before them. The 1999 White Paper, Modernising Government, indicated that the government was addressing the tensions between data sharing and privacy, declaring:

'[t]here is concern that information technology could lead to mistaken identity, inadvertent disclosure and inappropriate transfer of data. The government will address these concerns and will demonstrate our belief that data is an objective of information age government, not an obstacle to it.' (Cm 4310; emphasis in original).

In 2002, a major policy paper, Privacy and data sharing (PDF; 951KB), was published by the Government's Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU).

The Richmond Journal of Law and Technology

The Richmond Journal of Law and Technology was the first law review in the world to be published exclusively online. First published on April 10, 1995, the Journal focuses on the impact that computer-related and other emerging technologies have on the law. The Journal is published entirely by students of the University of Richmond School of Law.

The current Issue Volume XII, Issue 2, Fall 2005, there is a paper about RFID and legal aspects by Reuven R. Levary, who is Professor of Decision Sciences at Saint Louis University and David Thompson, Kristen Kot and Julie Brothers, students at Saint Louis University.

Past issues.

Demos: corporate security

Demos is an english think tank, their aim is to put this democratic idea into practice by working with organisations in ways that make them more effective and legitimate.

They focus on six areas: public services; science and technology; cities and public space; people and communities; arts and culture; and global security.

Few months ago we talked about a privacy report by Demos:

"The Future of Privacy" by Perri 6

Future of privacy, volume 1, The
This book analyses the forces – technological, economic, political and cultural – shaping the future of privacy.

Future of privacy, volume 2, The
What kinds of organisations do we trust with database information and what do we trust them to do, or not to do, with our personal information? This book reviews what is known about public concerns.

The next Wednesday 18th January 2006, Demos will host:

Corporate Security: Past, present and future (18 January 2006)One of Britain’s foremost corporate security experts, David Burrill, will reflect on the progress made in corporate security during his time in the profession before setting out a challenging and provoking agenda for future reform. Find out more about the event or register to attend here.

The Customer Respect Group: First Quarter 2006 Report

The Customer Respect Group, an international research and consulting firm that focuses on how corporations treat their online customers, today released findings from its First Quarter 2006 Online Customer Respect Study of the High-Technology and Computer Industry.

The study is the only one to bring an objective and consistent measure to the analysis of corporate performance from an online customer’s perspective. It assigns a Customer Respect Index (CRI™) rating for each company. The Customer Respect Index is a qualitative and quantitative in-depth analysis and an independent measure of a customer’s experience when interacting with companies via the Internet.

Overall, the High-Technology industry scored a CRI rating of 6.4, showing no change from the previous report six months ago. The best sector was Internet Services at 7.0, led by eBay with a rating of 8.4. The worst performing sector was Computer and Data Services at 6.1 despite an excellent rating for Electronic Data Services (EDS) with a report-best rating of 8.7. Surprisingly, 37 percent of companies reviewed received a lower rating than six months ago, a concerning trend. Just 23 percent of companies improved their performance. The most improved company was EDS, up 23 percent. NETGEAR, a previously good corporate communicator, saw its rating decrease the most due in part to a degradation in responsiveness.

The top-rated High technology and Computer Industry companies and their CRI rating include the following:

1 Electronic Data Systems www.eds.com

2 eBay www.ebay.com

3 Xerox www.xerox.com

4 Intuit www.intuit.com

Click here for a complete table of the companies evaluated and the resulting ratings

DOAJ Directory of Open Access Journals

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a service that provides access to quality controlled Open Access Journals. The Directory aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use an appropriate quality control system, and it will not be limited to particular languages or subject areas.

Directory of Open Access Journals is hosted by Lund University Libraries Head Office . The project is funded by Open Society Institute - Budapest and also supported by SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition).

At doaj.org, there is available a list of magazines about law & technology:

E Law - Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law
ISSN: 13218247
Publisher: Murdoch University, School of Law

Journal of Information, Law and Technology
ISSN: 13614169
Publisher: University of Strathclyde, Centre for Law, Computers and Technology

Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review
ISSN: 15288625
Publisher: University of Michigan

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property
ISSN: 15498271
Publisher: Northwestern University School of Law

Richmond Journal of Law and Technology
ISSN: 10917322
Publisher: University of Richmond School of Law

SCRIPT-ed
ISSN: 17442567
Publisher: AHRB Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology

Stanford Technology Law Review
ISSN: d0000044
Publisher: Stanford Law School

University of Ottawa Law and Technology Journal
ISSN: 17106028EISSN: 1715006X
Publisher: University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law

eWEEK

eWEEK.com is a tech news site, the vast majority of the stories presented on eWEEK.com are authored by eWEEK.com's reporters and editors.

eWEEK has a special report on privacy:

H&R Block Mailing Reveals Customers' SSNs
The company says its use of customers' Social Security numbers in package tracking IDs was an unprecedented mistake and will not recur.

RFID Fears Create Their Own Market
Opinion: A grad student's invention may hint at what lies ahead for the wireless world: wallets that block RFID signals.

StealthText, Should You Choose to Accept It
Staellium UK introduces a text-messaging service that allows users such as executives and celebrities to send messages that vanish after 40 seconds.

North Carolina Certifies Voting Machine Vendors
The state's Board of Elections certifies Diebold to continue selling electronic voting machines in the state and conditionally certifies Election Systems & Software and conditionally certified Sequoia Voting Systems.

Senate Panel Approves Data-Breach Bill
Legislation dealing with spyware and disclosure of data breaches is making its way through the Senate.

Adware Vendors Back Trusted Download Program
Nonprofit online privacy group TrustE's proposed registration program for downloadable software has the support of major vendors, as well as the FTC, but Google and Microsoft are remaining aloof for now.

Futher information and complete articles at: eWEEK

Privacy is good for business

We talk about privacy as a right, but if privacy was good for business? it could?

There are a lot of people working on privacy and economics, and research of economics of privacy such as Alessandro Acquisti, and privacy consult firms such as Open Business Innovation founded by Stephan J. Engberg.

About this subject I have found this interview with IBM's chief privacy officer, Harriet Pearson.


Privacy is good for business


I'm an example of what has become basically a new profession".

As IBM's chief privacy officer, Harriet Pearson oversees our policies for gathering, sharing and using personal information from customers and employees. It's a pioneering position, but it's hardly a lonely one. In her words:

"There are thousands of privacy professionals now, in the U.S. and Europe and Asia. Most of the Fortune 100 have a privacy officer or some sort of equivalent".

This high-level concern for privacy is a direct result of the Internet's explosive growth. Once used only for "surfing", the Web has become a destination for shopping, banking—even looking after our health and relationships. As the details of our lives accumulate in other people's databases, privacy has become a source of consumer anxiety—and corporate concern.

If individuals fear an Orwellian loss of privacy, businesses and governments fear the opposite scenario: that consumer's worries may lead them to opt out of online data gathering, or to simply avoid participating in an increasingly networked economy. But beyond that anxiety is the growing idea that safeguarding personal data is a corporate responsibility—not just to the customer, but to the business itself. If the information is valuable enough to be collected and warehoused, then it is valuable enough to be carefully managed and protected, just as much as any other corporate asset.

As Pearson puts it, "Privacy is good for business".

Full interview at IBM

Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario

The role of the Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario (IPC) is set out in three statutes: the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, and the Personal Health Information Protection Act (the Acts). The IPC acts independently of government to uphold and promote open government and the protection of personal privacy.

Under its statutory mandate, the IPC is responsible for:

1. resolving appeals from refusals to provide access to information;
2. investigating privacy complaints about information held by government organizations;
3. ensuring that the government organizations comply with the access and privacy provisions of the Acts;
4. educating the public about Ontario's access and privacy laws;
5. and conducting research on access and privacy issues, and providing advice and comment on proposed government legislation and programs.

Privacy at Technische Universität Dresden

The Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden) founded in 1828 does not only rank among the oldest technical universities in Germany but also among the most important ones as far as research is concerned.

With its 34.575 students and almost 4.000 employees, among them 438 professors, it is the largest university in Saxony, today ( not counting the Faculty of Medicine).

One of university’s department is the Department of Computer Science and Institute for Sistem Architecture , where professor Andreas Pfitzmann works on privacy & security.

Prof. Dr. Andreas Pfitzmann is head of the privacy and security group at Dresden University of Technology. For more than 20 years, his research interests include privacy and multilateral security, mainly in communication networks, mobile computing, and distributed applications. Current research projects are on "anonymous web surfing" (JAP), "privacy enhancing identity management" (PRIME), and "steganography". Andreas Pfitzmann received diploma and doctoral degrees in computer science from the University of Karlsruhe. He is a member of ACM, IEEE, and GI, where he served as chairman of the Special Interest Group on Dependable IT-Systems for ten years.

Institute for Pervasive Computing

Image source: Institute for Pervasive Computing

There is a new edition of Pictures of Future (Fall 2005) by Siemens with three special issues:

Intelligent networking, Auto electronics and Digital Health.

There is an interesting interview to Friedemann Mattern, who is a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and is Director of its Institute for Pervasive Computing.
(page 22)

And at the Institute for Pervasive Computing, works in these research topics:

1. Smart Cooperative Objects

2. Sensor Networks

3. Privacy

The massive deployment of smart cooperating objects with fine-grained sensing and large-scale communication capabilities has potentially large consequences for our personal privacy. We are investigating how future ubiquitous computing systems can support a sufficient level of privacy awareness.

Privacy-Aware Ubiquitous-Computing Systems, and Marc Langheinrich, who has Published his PhD thesis “Personal Privacy in Ubiquitous Computing. Tools and System Support” and we have to read it. No excuses

another paper to read:
Jürgen Bohn, Vlad Coroama, Marc Langheinrich, Friedemann Mattern, Michael Rohs
Living in a World of Smart Everyday Objects – Social, Economic, and Ethical Implications.
Journal of Human and Ecological Risk Assessment, Vol. 10, No. 5, pp. 763-786, October 2004Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)


4. Social Implications Privacy is but one aspect of our everyday that might substantially be altered by the deployment of ubiquitous computing environments. In order to better understand the non-technical requirements of such systems, we are investigating the social, economic, and ethical implications of ubiquitous computing.

another paper:

Vlad Coroama, Jürgen Bohn, Friedemann MatternLiving in a Smart Environment – Implications for the Coming Ubiquitous Information Society.Proceedings of the International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics 2004 (IEEE SMC 2004), pp. 5633-5638, The Hague, The Netherlands, October 10-13, 2004Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)

If the IBM Privacy Faculty Award 2005 was to Carnegie Mellon University, in 2006.....the Institute for Pervasive Computing?

The Hot List by Entrepreneur

Entrepreneur.com, the business magazine, publishs " The Hot List " December 2005 By the staff of Entrepreneur magazine .

Hot List on security business:

ID-Theft Prevention and Recovery

Identity theft has become a clear and present danger to consumers, and now they're looking for ways to fight back. A June survey by Privacy & American Business and Deloitte & Touche estimates that 44 million American adults have been victims of identity fraud or theft, up from 33 million victims in 2003.

One of the first companies to take a proactive approach to identity theft is Identity Cops Inc. in Westbrook, Maine. The startup offers automated recovery services as well as proprietary web-based software that alerts subscribers to any suspicious activity. "This is not only a market that is ripe, but there are [also] a lot of people that need our help," says co-founder and vice president of technology Justin Page, 38. The company just launched its initial offering, a subscription service starting at $10 per month.

This market is still very young, but the demand is there, so expect it to grow quickly. Rebecca Weinstein, 38, president and co-founder of Identity Cops, says of the company's reception, "People are anxious to get their hands on a subscription because there has been so much publicity around the issue." Now's the time to get in on this untapped market.--Amanda C. Kooser

Surveillance Cameras

With recent events like 9/11 and the London bombings fueling terrorism fears nationwide, we're seeing an increased interest in security and surveillance products. Video surveillance cameras are a huge part of that trend: Consulting firm Frost & Sullivan estimates surveillance cameras will be a $4.09 billion market by 2010.

Simon Harris, senior analyst at IMS Research in Wellingborough, England, believes much of the opportunity lies in software, particularly video content analysis software, a projected $839 million market by 2009. The applications, while widespread, include the ability to analyze live or recorded video streams to detect suspicious activities, events or behavior patterns. One market leader is ObjectVideo in Reston, Virginia. The multimillion-dollar firm creates security software products currently in use by several airports, the Marine Corps in Fallujah, and at U.S./Canada and U.S./Mexico border checkpoints.

IMS Research predicts that residential users, too, will be a huge market. Paul Brewer, co-founder of ObjectVideo, concurs, adding that installation and maintenance of the systems will be a hot opportunity. "As the technology gets out into the mass market, the opportunity is there for somebody to act as a channel for [manufacturers]," says Brewer, 38. Learn more by visiting the Securities Industry Association website.--April Y. Pennington

ISSUES TO WATCH IN 2006 by EPIC

These are the issues to watch in 2006 by EPIC:


Nomination of Samuel Alito
2006 begins with the hearings for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.But which Alito will testify?

Future of REAL ID
In 2005 Congress quietly passed a law to turn the state driverslicense into a national ID card without a hearing or a vote.

"Welcome to the US. Fingerprints, please."
The United States is dramatically expanding the collection offingerprints, particularly for visitors to the United States.

Workplace Privacy
The computer you use at work belongs to your employer; the time youspend at work belongs to your employer--who does your privacy belongto?

Student Privacy
Schools are becoming the new frontline in the battle over privacy. RFID vendors are pressing schools to mandate spychip-equipped studentIDs.

Location Tracking
Highway administrators in the US and UK are looking for new ways tomeasure traffic flow and decrease congestion, as well as collect taxeson the use of roads.

New Revelations About Government Datamining
It was not long ago that John Poindexter's Total Information Awarenesswas brought to an end. But datamining in the federal governmentdidn't stop.

Wiretapping the Internet
2006 will see a major debate over wiretapping and the Internet. TheFederal Communications Commission wants to apply a 1994 law intendedfor wiretapping the telephone network to new communication services onthe Internet.

DNA Databases and Genetic Privacy Legislation
Police are stepping up efforts to build DNA profiling databases.The hope is that these measures will allow investigators to compareDNA found at a crime scene against a database of known individuals.

Data Broker Regulation
With security breaches on the rise and the cost of identity theftpassing the $50b mark, Congress will almost certainly act in 2006 ondata broker legislation. Not only are legislators concerned withrequiring companies to disclose data breaches, many are arguing forincreased oversight of the largely unregulated data broker industry.