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April 25, 2013

Snooper’s Charter Receives Fatal Blow?

Nick Clegg Snooper’s Charter Receives Fatal Blow?
Speaking on London’s LBC radio this morning, British Deputy PM Nick Clegg dealt what many perceive to be a fatal blow to the Communications Data Bill. Clegg said, “What people dub the Snoopers’ Charter, that’s not going to happen” explaining that mass spying on citizens was “not either necessarily workable nor proportionate”.

The Open Rights Group (ORG) believe that this statement is a sign that the public’s campaigning and protest against the bill has paid off and it appears as though many of the unpopular proposals in the bill will be dropped before it is announced in the Queen’s Speech on May 8th. Continue Reading

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March 7, 2013

New Privacy Bill Introduced That Would Prevent Police Accessing Email & Location Data Without Warrant

web New Privacy Bill Introduced That Would Prevent Police Accessing Email & Location Data Without Warrant
Privacy advocates in Congress have put forward a bi-partisan bill called the Online Communications and Geolocation Privacy Act that if passed would prevent police and other government agencies from accessing email and location data without a warrant.

The bill is intended to be a fix for the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA) which many argue is seriously outdated and desperately in need of amendment. As things currently stand, email and location data stored by third parties like Verizon or Google do not get the same level of protection as data that is stored on a personal computer. This proposed bill would see that change. Continue Reading

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February 22, 2013

ISP Comcast Expresses Support For CISPA

David Cohen ISP Comcast Expresses Support For CISPA
Internet service provider Comcast has publicly announced its support for the Cyber Intelligence Security Protection Act (CISPA).
Despite the fact that law is a controversial one that has been overtly condemned and criticized by privacy advocates because it easily allows companies to share citizens’ personal information with the government, Comcast does not appear to be afraid of a backlash by users and has expressed their wholehearted support.

Comcast is not the first big ISP to communicate their support for CISPA, when it was introduced for the first time in 2012, Verizon and AT&T were among the many companies to publically articulate their backing. Continue Reading

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December 19, 2012

Instagram Clarify Policy Changes – They’re Not Going To Sell Your Photos!

dacebook instagram Instagram Clarify Policy Changes – They’re Not Going To Sell Your Photos!

Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom has released a statement via the company blog that seeks to clarify some of the policy changes that have caused such uproar amongst the Instagram community in the last few days.

In the post, entitled “Thank you, and we’re listening” Systrom explains that the company appreciate the concerns raised by users over the amendments to the terms of use and are doing all that they can to try and address these issues.

On the issue of advertising, the part of the clause that everyone took to mean that Instagram would have the right to sell your photos without notification or compensation, Systrom says that this is not the case. Blaming “confusing” legal language, Systrom states that the company merely intends to “experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram…To be clear: It is not our intention to sell your photos”. Continue Reading

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December 18, 2012

Instagram In Controversial Policy Change That Gives Them The Right To Sell Your Pictures

dacebook instagram Instagram In Controversial Policy Change That Gives Them The Right To Sell Your Pictures

In their first major policy shift since they were acquired by Facebook a few months ago, Instragram has basically announced that they have the right to sell your photographs and there is nothing whatsoever that you can do about it if you want to continue using the service.

In an announcement made on Monday, Instagram announced the policy change that gives it the right to sell users’ photographs without payment or notification and the announcement has already caused public outrage!!

The new intellectual property policy will take effect from January 16th 2013. If users do not wish to agree to these new policy changes, their only option is to delete their accounts before that date. If users upload pictures after that date and then delete their account, they are allowing Instagram irrevocable rights to sell those images in perpetuity. Continue Reading

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December 18, 2012

Tor – The Anonymous Yet Controversial Way To Surf The Net

tor Tor The Anonymous Yet Controversial Way To Surf The Net

For those of you who don’t know, Tor is a free service that allows its users to surf the web anonymously by re-routing and concealing internet traffic.

The Wall Street Journal recently published an interesting article about Tor, detailing the pros and cons about the service, which began in 1996 as part of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s project called Onion Routing.

It looks at the case of William Weber, who recently had police turn up at his house in Austria, Graz accusing him of distributing child pornography. Weber claims that the porn isn’t his and that the charges have come about because he serves as a volunteer for Tor, with his computer acting as a node through which internet traffic is routed through. Weber, who has been working with Tor for more than 4 years said, that whilst it is “bad” that Tor can be used by criminals, there is little that he or the project founders can do about it. Continue Reading

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November 6, 2012

Federal Judge FBI To Be More Open About Internet ‘Backdoor’ Surveillance Requirements

fbi hq Federal Judge FBI To Be More Open About Internet ‘Backdoor’ Surveillance Requirements

A federal judge has told the FBI that they need to do more to comply with open government laws with regards to their attempts to get internet companies to build in backdoors for government surveillance.

CNET reports that U.S District Judge Richard Seeborg ruled on Tuesday that the government did not respond adequately to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Seeborg ordered that a “further review of the materials previously withheld” in the lawsuit which sought details about the FBI maneuver that has been dubbed “Going Dark”. It is the FBI’s ongoing attempts to make companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook and Yahoo alter their code so that they can be wiretapped. Continue Reading

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October 26, 2012

The Price Of A Million Facebook Names & Email Addresses? A Measly $5!!! WTF

The Price Of A Million Facebook Names & Email Addresses? A Measly $5!!! WTF

The majority of us are painfully aware that companies are persistently mining our personal data in their relentless quest to make a profit from it. You would think that something like your Facebook presence (& email address) would be particularly valuable, but what value you would you put on it?

I’m not a number crunching type, maths was never my strong point but I’d guess a buck or two, maybe less, maybe $0.50 – surely it can’t be less than that though, can it?

Well according to Czech IT Consultant Bogo Shopov it is considerably less than that! He claims to have paid just $5 for a spreadsheet containing ONE MILLION links to valid Facebook accounts which included the users’ real names and their email addresses!

That works out at just $0.000005 each if you are willing to buy in bulk, which all of the companies who go digging for your data like to do! Continue Reading

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June 19, 2012

Have You Heard Of Acxiom? No, Well They’ve Probably Heard Of You!

Acxiom head quarter Have You Heard Of Acxiom? No, Well They’ve Probably Heard Of You!

This week the New York Times published a fascinating article about the little-known company, the Acxiom Corporation, who experts believe have amassed the world’s largest commercial database on consumers.

Based in Conway, Arkansas – just north of Little Rock, Acxiom busily collect more than 50 trillion data transactions a year. It has been said that their databases contains information of approximately 500 million active consumers from around the world!

Though Acxiom’s data-mining raises serious concerns amongst privacy campaigners, the company’s methods are completely legal and seem to be paying off as they made a staggering profit of more than $77 million in the last financial year.Continue Reading

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June 15, 2012

Open Rights Group Fight Against The UK Government’s Communications Data Bill

Open Rights Group Open Rights Group Fight Against The UK Government’s Communications Data Bill

The new Communications Data Bill that the UK’s coalition government is trying to introduce has been met with a great deal of hostility from civil liberties organizations and also from several MP’s from within the coalition itself.

There are serious concerns that this new bill, which has been nicknamed the ‘Snooper’s Charter’ is a major infringement on our right to privacy as it will require internet service providers to keep records of our social networking movements, email activity and log the websites we visit – so basically – the government can access every single thing you do on the net!Continue Reading

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