Consumer Online Privacy

05/31/2012

ACLU Backs Up Twitter In Court Over Attempt to Defend Users’ Rights

By Aden Fine, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 2:52pm

We filed a friend-of-the-court brief today in New York state court in support of Twitter’s efforts to protect the constitutional rights of one of its users. As we posted earlier this month, Twitter took a great step to defend its users’ rights by filing a motion to quash a subpoena that the District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan issued in connection with the prosecution of an Occupy Wall Street protester.

05/16/2012

Facebook

Facebook: $100 Billion IPO. Almost 1 Billion Users. You Do the Math.

By Chris Conley, ACLU of Northern California at 8:35am

The big news in the business world this week is Facebook’s ongoing Initial Public Offering, where the company is selling shares to the public based on an estimated value of around one hundred billion dollars. [Or, as Dr. Evil would say: one hundred billion dollars.]

05/08/2012

Online Privacy

BREAKING NEWS: Twitter Stands Up For One Of Its Users

By Aden Fine, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 12:59pm

Twitter has filed a motion in state court in New York seeking to quash a court order requiring it to turn over information about one of its users and his communications on Twitter. This particular case involves a Twitter user, Malcolm Harris, who is being prosecuted by the District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan for disorderly conduct in connection with the Occupy Wall Street protest that occurred on the Brooklyn Bridge last year.

05/07/2012

Consumer Online Privacy

Email, Companies and Social Norms

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 10:51am

I wanted to make note of an interesting anomaly in a new survey that looks at Americans’ attitudes toward the privacy issues implicated by the use of mobile phones to pay for things (instead of cash or a credit card).

The survey (which is online here and is summarized by the New York Times here) finds that Americans react very negatively to the kinds of privacy invasions that mobile payments can bring.

04/30/2012

Data Mining

The Potential Chilling Effects of Big Data

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 11:46am

Last week I posted about “Big Data” and how it is being used to discover new facts about people, to sift and sort them based on subtle patterns, to flag them as “risks” in this field or that, to predict their behavior, and to manipulate them for maximum profit.

Of course, humans are not sheep, and we don’t sit still when things like this happen to us. We perceive what is happening, and we change our behavior in response. We react. The effects of Big Data on privacy and society will be a game of three-dimensional chess, not checkers.

04/23/2012

Civil Liberties in the Digital Age

Free Future!

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 10:57am

This week we launched Free Future, a new blog that will feature a range of forward-looking technology issues.

04/10/2012

Do Not Track

Making Do Not Track a Reality

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 7:24pm

The ACLU has stated concern again and again about the new model of internet advertising which relies heavily on tracking users as they move from website to website and creates a detailed profile about their viewing habits. Our suggested solution has been a Do Not Track (DNT) mechanism, one that would allow users to opt out and convey that they don’t want to be tracked. But what does it mean not to track someone online?

04/09/2012

Civil Liberties in the Digital Age

Civil Liberties in the Digital Age: Weekly Highlights (4/9/2012)

By Anna Salem, ACLU of Northern California at 11:10am

In the digital age that we live in today, we are constantly exposing our personal information online. From using cell phones and GPS devices to online shopping and sending e-mail, the things we do and say online leave behind ever-growing trails of personal information. The ACLU believes that Americans shouldn’t have to choose between using new technology and keeping control of your private information. Each week, we feature some of the most interesting news related to technology and civil liberties that we’ve spotted from the previous week.

04/02/2012

Online Privacy

A Primer for the Online Privacy Multistakeholder Process

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:12pm

What the heck is a multistakeholder process (MSP)? The word multistakeholder is so obscure that my computer's spell check doesn't even recognize it, yet it's come to dominate the online privacy conversation in recent weeks. That discussion will begin in earnest today with a filing deadline for comments to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration describing how a process should work and what it should cover (the comments we submitted are here). So what's going on with this MSP and what's in it for consumers?

03/30/2012

Civil Liberties in the Digital Age

Civil Liberties in the Digital Age: Weekly Highlights (3/30/2012)

By Anna Salem, ACLU of Northern California at 10:51am

American Civil Liberties Union