Tag Archives: privacy

The Minority Report is coming true. The FBI is gearing up to create a massive computer database of people’s physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI wants to use eye scans, combined with other data, to help identify suspects. But it’s an issue that raises major privacy concerns — …

In his seventh annual State Of The City address today, Mayor Michael Bloomberg revealed his plan to ask Albany for the power to gather DNA from anybody arrested in New York City, innocent or guilty, for any crime, including simple misdemeanors such as participating in civil disobedience. Why this? Why NOW? We already live in the safest (by FAR) large …

From the New Yorker, via Raw Story: National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a “walk in the park,” according to an interview published in the New Yorker‘s print edition today. Debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “will be a walk in the …

The ACLU has filed a friend of the the court brief in support of Sen. Larry Craig’s bid to overturn his disorderly conduct conviction, arguing that according that people who have sex in public restrooms have an expectation of privacy. From the brief: “The government cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Senator Craig was inviting the undercover officer to …

Poor Ann Coulter is so upset by her hate mail that she has had her address removed from the public record in Palm Beach County, Florida. People who petition the county can have their homes removed from the property appraisers’ rolls if they can demonstrate they are the victims of stalking or harassment. Coulter, 45, has called Democratic presidential candidate …

You may recall back in September when I passed along an alert from the NGLTF regarding the expansion of the 2257 Regulations, which would have required internet social networking and hook-up sites like Facebook and Manhunt to maintain your photo ID on file, information many would be loathe to put in the hands of such parties. Fear no more. On …

A couple of weeks I mentioned that today would be the last day to object to Section 2257, the government’s plan to require that social networking/hookup sites have your driver’s license on file. If you have not yet done so, please go the the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force’s site for an easy to copy protest letter.

“When those private lives are in direct conflict with the public policy that these officials espouse, I think it’s fair game that their private lives be brought into this. And I have to blog to do that with. Here’s the question: What community is expected to protect its own enemies? Don’t beat up the gay community, and then expect us …

In a precedent-setting decision, a New York judge has ruled that the city can fire a 21-year employee of the school system after GPS-tracking secretly installed on his city-issued cellphone revealed that he had left the job early on 83 occasions and may have falsified his timecards to cover his tracks. Although the secret tracking also revealed that the employee …

Attention Manhunters, Facebookers, and DudesNudies: the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force has issued an alert regarding pending new regulations that may kill social networking sites, rules ostensibily meant to fight child pornography. The federal government is proposing regulations that would effectively kill adult social-networking sites. This is being done under the guise of fighting child pornography. You have until …

Yesterday Dubya signed a law expanding the ability of the government to eavesdrop on our international phone conversations and emails without warrants. The law was enacted in order to protect the major telecommunication companies that are now facing numerous lawsuits for having secretly cooperated in previous warrantless wiretappings. These companies have been pressuring the Bush administration to enact legislation freeing …

We talk a lot about privacy and the internet here, so I’m rather curious what you think about an interesting story out of San Francisco. The owner of Castro porn shop Auto-Erotica downloaded a naked photo of a man from the internet, photoshopped a sex toy onto the bed next to him, and posted the photo in his store’s window …

Google Map’s new Street View feature is quickly raising privacy concerns from people dismayed to find they can zoom right in on their homes, with one woman even spotting her cat sitting in her window. At the present, Street View only has complete street-level images of New York, San Francisco, Denver, Las Vegas and Miami, with more cities to be …