Colleges face dilemma: privacy vs. public safety

The Oregonian published an article about The shooting rampage by a Virginia Tech

The shooting rampage by a Virginia Tech undergrad has intensified debate about how college administrators and campus counselors balance student privacy against public safety.

"That's a fine line," said Mary Beth Collins, director of the Student Health and Counseling Center at Portland State University. What a student tells a counselor remains confidential by law and professional ethics -- except when there is evidence of possible life-threatening harm "to self or others." In those cases, counselors have a "duty to protect" threatened lives.

Cho Seung-Hui, whom police have identified as the killer of 32 other people and himself on the Virginia campus, had a history of disturbing behavior and was briefly sent to a psychiatric hospital under court order because he was deemed dangerous, officials reported Wednesday.

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Health Information Privacy Conference

'Horror stories' at meeting on health privacy

Article published at CTV.ca

Canadian Press

REGINA -- The case of a medical office clerk who illegally checked the health records of her lover's wife was cited as an inappropriate breach of health information at a groundbreaking meeting on privacy.

The story was told to about 140 health and privacy experts gathered in Regina on Monday for the first Prairie health information privacy conference.

"This person did it. They accessed another person's very personal health records involving cancer and lab results and biopsies," Alberta privacy commissioner Frank Work said of the medical clerk.

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The European e-Identity Conference

ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency and eema, Europe's leading independent, industry association for e-Identity and e-Security are coorganising a two-day event on electronic identity. In two parallel tracks, more than 100 experts will discuss how to employee, citizen and private identities.

ENISA's track will focus on social networking, Web of Trust and authentication interoperability,while the eema stream will concentrate on more general business aspects of electronic identity.

More info: Conference Website

Cybercrime: Digital Cops In A Networked Environment

Cybercrime: Digital Cops in a Networked Environment, by J. M. Balkin (New York University Press, 2007).

Contributors: Jack M. Balkin, Susan W. Brenner, Daniel E. Geer, Jr., James Grimmelmann, Emily Hancock, Beryl A. Howell, Curtis E.A. Karnow, Eddan Katz, Orin S. Kerr, Nimrod Kozlovski, Helen Nissenbaum, Kim A.
Taipale, Lee Tien, Shlomit Wagman, and Tal Zarsky


"The Internet has dramatically altered the landscape of crime and national security, creating new threats, such as identity theft, computer viruses, and cyberattacks. Moreover, because cybercrimes are often not limited to a single site or nation, crime scenes themselves have changed. Consequently, law enforcement must confront these new dangers and embrace novel methods of prevention, as well as produce new tools for digital surveillance - which can jeopardize privacy and civil liberties. Cybercrime brings together leading experts in law, criminal justice, and security studies to describe crime prevention and security protection in the electronic age. Ranging from new government requirements that facilitate spying to new methods of digital proof, the book is essential to understand how criminal law-and even crime itself-have been transformed in our networked world."

FCC Adopts Tougher Phone Record Privacy Rules

Photo by unapersona

FCC Adopts Tougher Phone Record Privacy Rules

The FCC has issued an order aimed at toughening up protections for consumers' personal phone records after revelations last year of leaks. By Reuters InformationWeek

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission issued an order Monday aimed at toughening up protections for consumers' personal phone records after revelations last year of leaks.

The FCC said carriers such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., the two biggest telephone carriers, are prohibited from releasing customers' phone records when a customer calls the carrier except when a password is provided.

If a customer does not provide a password, carriers may not release the customer's phone call records except by sending it to the address of record or by the carrier calling the customer at the telephone number on record, the agency said.

Read the full article at Information week