Tag Archives: privacy

One of the Rutgers students involved in the Tyler Clementi case has accepted a plea deal in return for agreeing to testify against Clementi’s roommate. Part of the deal requires Molly Wei, 19, of West Windsor to testify against Dharun Rhavi, the roommate of Tyler Clementi [left] who leaped off the George Washington Bridge last fall after learning he had …

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Also learned by a certain Senate staffer. (Source)

Remember the Pennsylvania school district that issued its students laptops and then remotely activated the machines’ webcams to spy on its students in their homes? They’ve agreed to settle one student’s lawsuit for $610,000. The tracking software came to light when Robbins, a student at the high school, was allegedly called into the assistant principal’s office and accused of taking …

Two Rutgers University students have been charged with invasion of privacy after secretly live-streaming video of a gay student having sex with a man in his dorm room. Reportedly the gay student then committed suicide. Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, both 18, were charged with two counts of invasion of privacy after allegedly putting a camera in a fellow student’s …

Last month the Federal Trade Commission issued an unprecedented warning to the owners of the defunct XY Magazine, telling them that a plan to sell its massive subscriber list could endanger some of the title’s former readers who still lived with their parents. JMG reader Band tips us today that the magazine’s publisher has agreed to destroy those records. The …

If you’re one of the folks upset with Facebook’s privacy standards, one group is calling for a mass exodus from the site on May 31st. As controversy swells around Facebook’s latest changes to its privacy policy–which is now longer than the Constitution and offers some 50 settings and over 170 options–users’ interest in deleting their Facebook accounts has soared. A …

Despite the public outcry about the new law in Arizona, Democrats are pushing to force all Americans to carry a biometric ID card. From their immigration reform bill: The national ID program would be titled the Believe System, an acronym for Biometric Enrollment, Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment. It would require all workers across the nation to …

It might seem impossible, but Congress has renewed the Patriot Act for another year. In the Senate, important privacy protections failed to be included due to the loss of the Democratic supermajority. Key provisions of the nation’s primary counterterrorism law would be extended for a year under a bill passed by the House last night after Democrats retreated from adding …

Concerned that employers or insurance companies may one day forcibly implant microchips into people, yesterday the Virginia legislature made such a thing illegal without written consent. But the bill’s sponsor had an additional agenda. Del. Mark L. Cole (R-Fredericksburg), the bill’s sponsor, said that privacy issues are the chief concern behind his attempt to criminalize the involuntary implantation of microchips. …

The Washington Post reveals today that the Maryland state police considered the LGBT activism group Equality Maryland to be terrorists. Equality Maryland, the state’s largest gay rights group, was among the peaceful protest groups to be classified as terrorists in a Maryland State Police database. The group was designated a “security threat” by the Homeland Security and Intelligence Division, which …

Via Wired: NSA whistleblower Russell Tice was back on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC program Thursday evening to expand on his Wednesday revelations that the National Security Agency spied on individual U.S. journalists, entire U.S. news agencies as well as “tens of thousands” of other Americans. Tice said on Wednesday that the NSA had vacuumed in all domestic communications of Americans, including, …

Room Eight, a blog about NYC politics co-founded by popular Politico.com columnist Ben Smith, has been quietly fighting a subpoena from Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson’s office. The subpoena demanded to know the identity of the Room Eight anonymous blogger “Republican Dissident” who had criticized Johnson’s office. The subpoena carried a warning in capital letters that disclosing its very existence …

Yesterday Dubya signed away another piece of democracy when he gleefully scratched his name in blood onto the FISA bill. George W. Bush Thursday signed a law expanding legal authority for wiretaps by spy agencies which he hailed as vital for America’s security, after a fierce Congress battle. “This law will play a critical role in helping to prevent another …

Thanks to today’s Senate vote to approve the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, warrantless wiretapping, arguably the most intrusive violation of Americans’ right to privacy, will become legal. Oh, and everybody who’s already done it is now immunized against lawsuits. A list of how each Senator voted is here. The Democratic-led Congress this afternoon voted to put an end to the …

In a case that has privacy advocates outraged, a federal court has ordered Google to give Viacom the list of videos viewed by every YouTube visitor. Last year Viacom sued YouTube for over $1B, charging them with “massive intentional copyright infringement”. A US judge has ordered Google to expose to Viacom the video-viewing habits of everyone who has ever used …

Barack Obama has had his right-turn blinker on for several days. More backlash: Senator Barack Obama’s decision to support legislation granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants has led to an intense backlash among some of his most ardent supporters. Thousands of them are now using the same grass-roots organizing …

Barack Obama’s passport information was breached by three State Department employees. Two contract employees of the State Department were fired and a third person was disciplined for inappropriately looking at Democratic Sen. Barack Obama’s passport file. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the department itself detected the instances of “imprudent curiosity,” which occurred separately on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and …