Audio and Slides available

Photo by Binitu

Slides from SWAMI (Safeguards in a world of ambient intelligence) conference are available at SWAMI website.

Audio from Symposium, Search and Seizure in the Digital Age, Stanford Law School, is available.

Privacy Blogs

http://www.concurringopinions.com

http://www.numbrx.net

http://pipeda.blogspot.com

http://politicsofprivacy.blogspot.com

http://www.hasbrouck.org/blog/index.html

http://www.privsecblog.com

http://rfidtoday.blogspot.com

http://www.theprivacyplace.org/blog/

http://blog.truste.org/

http://privacynotes.com/privacy_blog/

http://blogs.oracle.com/identityprivacy/

Privacy and Public Policy Challenges of Social Technology

Privacy and Public Policy Challenges of Social Technology

Mar 5 2007 - 12:30pm

Stanford Law School Room 280 A

Chris Kelly, Chief Privacy Officer of Facebook


The rise of social technology through sites like Facebook empowers users to model their connections with other people in the real world and allows them to share information more effectively and efficiently with their friends. Most of this sharing is unquestionably socially beneficial. But fears that some of the sharing can be harmful lead to regulatory and other efforts focusing on privacy, safety, and asserted illegal use of material protected by copyright and other intellectual property regimes.


http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/5173

Europe's Plan to Track Phone and Net Use

Europe's Plan to Track Phone and Net Use

Article published at Spiegel online.

A proposed law would require companies to keep detailed data about people's Internet and phone use.

European governments are preparing legislation to require companies to keep detailed data about people's Internet and phone use that goes beyond what the countries will be required to do under a European Union directive.

In Germany, a proposal from the Ministry of Justice would essentially prohibit using false information to create an e-mail account, making the standard Internet practice of creating accounts with pseudonyms illegal.

A draft law in the Netherlands would likewise go further than the European Union requires, in this case by requiring phone companies to save records of a caller's precise location during an entire mobile phone conversation.

Read the full article

Australia: Smart-card privacy warning for patients

Smart-card privacy warning for patients
Article published at The Australian by Adam Cresswell, Health editor
February 22, 2007

PATIENTS have been warned to be careful about loading health information on to the federal Government's proposed Access smart card, after an official taskforce looking into the card's uses warned of potential privacy breaches.

The Access Card Consumer and Privacy Taskforce yesterday called on the Government to reiterate that the card was not an electronic health record.

The taskforce set up by the Government to sort out how the card should operate said in a discussion paper released yesterday that cardholders who chose to put health information on the card's chip "must accept they are putting sensitive personal information, effectively, into the public domain".

The card is designed to replace the existing Medicare card and up to 16 other magnetic-stripe cards that give access to a range of health and other benefits, such as Centrelink and veterans' payments. The Government claims it will save $3billion in fraud over 10 years.

Read the full article

Scentric Launches Free Data Privacy Assessment Tool

Press Release

Scentric, the provider of the world’s first universal data classification solution, today announced the availability of Scentric Destiny Enterprise Suites for Data Privacy, e-Discovery, and Compliance. Each suite combines software, services, and maintenance pre-configured to address the specific challenges of these emerging information management issues in large enterprises. Each suite starts at 25 terabytes and includes options for 50, 100 and 150 terabytes.

"Customers have told us their early experience with competitive products have been less than satisfactory primarily because of scale issues in their large environments," said Jeff Hornung, president and CEO of Scentric. "Many of the issues had to do with the need to cluster multiple devices for scale and even then, the clusters topped out at something less than an enterprise configuration. With Scentric's software-only solution, even the largest organization can achieve the scale necessary to manage large data stores with a single policy engine."

Read the full press release

T-Rays Advance Toward Airport Screening

T-Rays Advance Toward Airport Screening

By Neil Savage at Technology Review Tuesday, February 20, 2007

A new laser design helps create usable terahertz radiation, which penetrates common materials but doesn't harm tissue.

Researchers around the world are trying to tap a barely used portion of the electromagnetic spectrum--terahertz radiation--to scan airline passengers for explosives and illegal drugs. The rays are particularly attractive: they can see through clothing, paper, leather, plastic, wood, and ceramics. They don't penetrate as well as x-rays, but they also don't damage living tissue. And they can read spectroscopic signatures, detecting the difference between, say, hair gel and an explosive.

While some commercial systems are already available for limited applications--one Japanese device scans mail for contraband drugs--a machine to scan airline passengers has been slow to evolve, mainly due to the difficulty of creating the terahertz radiation. The ideal scanner would send out a beam of t-rays at passing objects or at people a few meters away, then measure the rays reflected off the subjects and check them against a database of spectroscopic signatures. But most existing sources of t-rays only provide weak beams, which make detection slower and harder.


Read the full article

The new mu-chip by Hitachi

Image source www.pinktentacle.com

Text Source: Hitachi website

The RFID, wireless semiconductor integrated circuit that stores an ID number in its memory, was proposed about a decade ago as an alternative to the barcode. Its use, however, has so far been limited to a few applications where its advantages offset its relatively high cost.


The µ-chip is Hitachi's response to resolving some of the issues associated with conventional RFID technology. The µ-chip uses the frequency of 2.45GHz. It has a 128-bit ROM for storing the ID with no write-read and no anti-collision capabilities. Its unique ID numbers can be used to individually identify trillions of trillions of objects with no duplication. Moreover with a size of 0.4mm square, the µ-chip is small enough to be attached to a variety of minute objects including embedding in paper.

Sources:

Hitachi develops RFID powder

Codigo Cero

The Privacy Myth

Jeremy Wagstaff, is a technology columnist, author and journalist, and writes for The Wall Street Journal and the BBC. He asks over at his Loose Wire blog whether we have overcome our concerns about privacy.

I can't speak for the younger generation, having been kicked out of it some years ago. But if we're talking more generally about folk who have embraced the Net in the past 10 years, I'd have to say I don't think it's that we don't care about privacy. We just don't understand it. In that sense nothing has changed. I think what is happening is the same as before: People don't really understand the privacy issues of what they're doing, because the technology, and its liberating sensuality, are moving faster than we can assimilate to our culture. (Jeremy Wagstaff)

J. Angelo Racoma analyses it in this post As The Media Becomes Social, Do We Really Still Care About Privacy? at BlogHerald.

Do we really care much about privacy? Most would probably consider privacy to be important. But I would agree with Jeremy Wagstaff that it’s because of the “liberating sensuality” of technology that many have preferred to go the easy way. (J. Angelo Racoma)

Privacy debate must enter 21st century

Bryan Glick publishs this article at computing.co.uk

Privacy debate must enter 21st century

Personal details are quickly becoming a new currency, but will this form of trading turn into a preserve of the rich?

When Information Commissioner Richard Thomas first coined the expression ‘sleepwalking into a surveillance society’ in an interview in 2004, he probably did not realise he was creating a catchphrase.

The quote has become a byword for the wide belief that technology inevitably means a dangerous loss of privacy.

The privacy debate is a looming crisis, which will have to be publicly tackled soon. Today, there is little rational debate on the subject – only opposing, black-or-white opinions.
Take the recent announcement that the government wants to join up its databases for better information sharing between departments. This is a sensible and much-needed objective, given that a bereaved family currently has to inform up to 44 different departments about a relative’s death, for example.

Read the full article

The Inundated Consumer

Brand Channel.com it is my favorite branding magazine.

Alycia de Mesa writes this article: A Branding New Year, about Branding Predictions for 2007


One of these predictions. . . . .





The Inundated Consumer





"I believe that brands in 2007 will begin to experience an increasingly hostile resistance to the relentless invasion of privacy that marketers are unleashing on their unsuspecting audiences. I'm not talking about 'privacy' as in identity theft; I'm talking about privacy as in the need to live through a solitary moment when we're not battered with unwanted commercial messaging. There's a limit to the unsolicited marketing messages that audiences can handle, and we're going to see that limit come into plain sight, beginning in 2007."





Lynn Upshaw


Principal, Upshaw Consulting Member,


Marketing Faculty, Haas School of Business, UC-Berkeley


Read more predictions. . . .

Wireless sensors extend reach of Internet into the real world

Text Source: Wireless sensors extend reach of Internet into the real world. by Alicia Chang, The Associated Press. USA TODAY.


LOS ANGELES — To the untrained eye, the sleek, airy building constructed atop a decommissioned nuclear reactor at the University of California at Los Angeles could pass for high-tech office space.

A closer inspection of the glass-and-steel facade reveals dozens of miniature, low-resolution cameras and sensors. They're wirelessly linked to computers throughout the 6,000-square-foot space, keeping tabs on traffic flow in public areas and monitoring temperature, humidity and acoustics.

The building serves as a testing ground for developing and perfecting wireless sensing technology to connect major chunks of the real world to the Internet. Such networks could monitor the environment for pollutants, gauge whether structures are at risk of collapse or remotely follow medical patients in real time.

"I see this as the next wave of extending the Internet into the physical world," said computer scientist Deborah Estrin, who heads the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, a UCLA-based consortium of six schools.

Read the full article at USATODAY

European Commission acts to boost confidence in digital world

A major new drive to fundamentally overhaul core EU consumer rules – including guarantees, refunds, cooling off periods - to adapt them to the challenges of a fast changing digital world has been launched today with the adoption of a European Commission Green Paper reviewing the existing rules. Consumer spending (households and non-profile institutions) accounts for a total of 58% of EU GDP. Consumer confidence is a key factor determining how and when consumers spend their money in different sectors of the economy. All the evidence is that consumers are not yet "comfortable" enough in the digital and online world to seize its full potential. Only tiny fraction - 6% of EU consumers - are currently shopping online cross border. With the help of the feedback from the Green Paper, the Commission aims to boost consumer confidence in the EU Single Market, with a single and simple set of rules which empower consumers to know their rights, make sound choices and ensure adequate protection when things go wrong. Clear legal rules will also incentivise operators, particularly SMEs to venture beyond borders un-tapping the potential for integration for the retail side of the market. The Green Paper invites comments and contains over 28 concrete suggestions (cutting across 8 Directives) for possible new action.

See MEMO/07/48 for details of basic EU consumer rights and the most common

Copyright, DRM Technologies, and Consumer Protection

Image source: BCLT

Copyright, DRM Technologies, and Consumer Protection

March 9 & 10, 2007 ~ University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law

Co-sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology (BCLT), the Berkeley Technology Law Journal (BTLJ), and the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam (IViR).

RSA Announces Agreement to Acquire Valyd Software Private Ltd.

RSA Press Release

RSA, The Security Division of EMC (NYSE: EMC), today announced a major expansion of its enterprise data protection (EDP) strategy that will help enable customers to secure encryption endpoints across the enterprise. By protecting data wherever it resides, this will empower customers to pursue and accelerate their primary business objectives with confidence.

Core to this development, RSA has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Hyderabad, India-based Valyd Software Private Ltd. for an undisclosed sum, and has established strategic partnerships with CipherOptics, Decru, NeoScale Systems and EpicorCRS.

The acquisition of Valyd is expected to close later in Q1-2007. Upon completion, it will immediately provide RSA's customers with solutions for effective enterprise-wide data protection for a variety of database management systems and protection of sensitive data maintained in files - against internal and external attacks.

Read the full press release

HHS, GAO criticized over privacy report

HHS, GAO criticized over privacy report
Published at ModernHealthcare.com by: Joseph Conn

Last week, the Government Accountability Office issued a mild rebuke to HHS over its handling of privacy and security issues while the department leads the federal effort to promote development of a national healthcare information network.

Reaction to the GAO report within the privacy community was far more strident. In fact, both HHS and the GAO were zinged with criticism.

The 52-page GAO report, issued Thursday, was the focus of discussion the following day in Washington at a meeting of the Senate subcommittee on federal government management, the federal workforce and the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Read the full article

Links:

Personal Health Records and Personal Health Records Systems

US Department of Health and Human Services

Cord Blood Bank

Image source: Wikipedia. Public Domain. This is a plate from Gray's Anatomy

TEXT SOURCE WIKIPEDIA

A cord blood bank is a place that stores umbilical cord blood for future use. Both private and public cord blood banks have developed since the mid to late 1990s in response to the success of cord blood transplants in treating diseases of the blood and immune systems, such as Fanconi's anemia and leukemia. Cord blood, once seen as waste to be discarded after a birth, is now viewed as a precious resource. Since the first successful cord blood transplant was performed on a child with Fanconi's anemia in 1988, over 3,500 patients have been treated with this procedure[1], including 14 who used their own blood cells.

In 2004, 600 of those transplants took place in the United States. Following the 1988 transplant, the National Institute of Health awarded a Grant to cord blood pioneer, Dr. Pablo Rubinstein, to begin the first National Cord Blood banking Program (NYCP) at the New York Blood Center, for public placental blood storage and research[2].

Private cord blood banking also poses problems. The cost of some private banks also prevents them from being an option available to all families. Private cord blood banks are sometimes criticized for preying upon the insecurity of new parents, on the grounds that currently the chances of a child needing his or her own cord blood are very small, whereas storage fees at some private banks are high. The ability to use the cord blood may also depend on the long-term commercial viability of the enterprise.[5] Accordingly, whether cord blood banking is a worthwhile expenditure for the expectant parent depends in part upon whether the expenditure is offset by the likelihood of ultimately using the cord blood and the benefits of such use.

Links

A Parent's Guide to Cord Blood Banks, informational site by a proponent of cord blood banking

Un nuevo plan de Sanidad limitará la privacidad de la sangre de cordón umbilical

Using the Internet Anonymously?

Using the Internet Anonymously?

published at Technology Review By Kate Greene

New open-source software by IBM could let people minimize their digital footprints, potentially curbing online fraud

Think about the last time you bought a DVD, booked a flight, rented a car, or signed up for a service or newsletter on the Internet. At some point, you had to fill out a form that asked for a lot of personal information. While it's a hassle unto itself, filling out forms can lead to a bigger problem: each time you give out your information, you provide an opportunity for your information to be picked off by identity thieves.

As more services migrate online, and as tactics of identity thieves become more sophisticated, people will need better ways to manage their information, says Nataraj Nagaratnam, chief architect of identity management for IBM Tivoli.

Nagaratnam and other IBM researchers have developed open-source software that they think can help. Called Identity Mixer (Idemix), the digital identity management software lets people make online transactions--from filling out forms to purchasing plane tickets--without disclosing personal information. The software lets a person use artificial identity information, in the form of digital "tokens," to make online transactions. Using these encrypted tokens, which are issued by trusted sources such as the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) or a bank, a person can effectively be anonymous to Web services such as Amazon.com or Expedia, never giving out his or her information.

Read the full article at Technology Review

Links:

IBM Privacy Research Institute

Brussels to fight for EU passenger privacy on US flights

Brussels to fight for EU passenger privacy on US flights
article published at EUoberver By Renata Goldirova


EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini has said he will push for a reduction in the amount of air passengers' data provided to the US, amid efforts to update a controversial EU-US data sharing agreement which will expire by the end of July.

The reduction of 34 pieces of passenger records – which Washington considers key to its security programme - "would not harm counter-terrorism efforts", Mr Frattini told the European Parliament in a debate which saw the commissioner grilled by MEPs on Wednesday (31 January).

Mr Frattini underlined the need to strike a balance between the requirements of fighting terrorism and concerns about data protection, saying that "privacy rights are non-negotiable."

His comments were echoed by German minister of State Günther Gloser, speaking on behalf of EU member states.

In around two weeks time Germany - currently holding the EU presidency - is expected to gain a negotiation mandate from EU capitals, which are currently hammering out its final terms.

The formal talks with Washington are expected to kick off in March.

According to Mr Gloser, negotiations will be "extremely torturous", as Washington is "not as interested in data protection" as the 27-nation bloc.

Under the current hard-fought deal, Washington collects 34 pieces of data on each EU traveller, including name, address, phone number, form of payment and credit card details, with airlines being threatened with fines of $6,000 per passenger or withdrawal of landing rights if they fly to the US without providing required information.


Read the full article at EUobserver.com