privacy and technology

Kentucky Lawmaker Wants to Make Anonymous Internet Posting Illegal
Wednesday, Mar 05, 2008

Tim Couch Tim Couch filed a bill this week to make anonymous posting online illegal.

The bill would require anyone who contributes to a website to register their real name, address and e-mail address with that site.

Their full name would be used anytime a comment is posted.

If the bill becomes law, the website operator would have to pay if someone was allowed to post anonymously on their site. The fine would be five-hundred dollars for a first offense and one-thousand dollars for each offense after that.

Robert Mueller New FBI Privacy Violations Confirmed
By Lara Jakes Jordan
The Associated Press

Wednesday 05 March 2008

Washington - FBI Director Robert Mueller says an upcoming Justice Department report will show the bureau improperly used national security letters to obtain personal data on Americans during terror and spy investigations.

Mueller says the report focuses on national security letters issued only in 2006 - a year before the FBI enacted sweeping new reforms to prevent future lapses.

big brother keeping tabs Facebook Retreats on Online Tracking
By Louise Story and Brad Stone
The New York Times

Friday 30 November 2007

Faced with its second mass protest by members in its short life span, Facebook, the enormously popular social networking Web site, is reining in some aspects of a controversial new advertising program.

US doles out millions for street cameras

Local efforts raise privacy alarms

By Charlie Savage,
Globe Staff
August 12, 2007

Feeling you're being watched? There's every chance you are..
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Homeland Security is funneling millions of dollars to local governments nationwide for purchasing high-tech video camera networks, accelerating the rise of a "surveillance society" in which the sense of freedom that stems from being anonymous in public will be lost, privacy rights advocates warn.