The past week has seen some extraordinary allegations that the US National Security Agency (NSA) was intercepting all online communications. It is also alleged that the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters…
Recent news of widespread phone and internet surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA) has raised serious questions over the ethical and legal obligations private companies face to protect the…
Careful what you type. Big brother knows.
Martin Keene/PA
The US National Security Agency (NSA) has direct access to information on the servers of major American internet companies, according to reports published in the Guardian and the Washington Post.
The…
Ok, so you don’t actually have to wear a mask.
Frédéric Bisson
In May, the US Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records from reporters of the Associated Press (AP), a multinational non-profit news agency. AP’s chief executive Gary Pruitt…
No escape from the all seeing eye.
Dominic Lipinski/PA
We know that as we browse the internet, we leave behind a trail. Search results reflect our browsing history; usernames and passwords are remembered on long-forgotten websites; and personalised adverts…
Raytheon’s “extreme-scale analytics” system can track people’s movements like never before.
c-reel.com
The recent publication of a leaked video demonstrating American security firm Raytheon’s social media mining tool RIOT (Rapid Information Overlay Technology) has rightly incensed individuals and online…
Graph Search will allow users (and businesses) to pick out the information they want … assuming we let them in.
vincos/Flickr
Initial responses to Facebook’s newly announced Graph Search (a name only a software engineer could love) appear to be split into two main camps:
those who have celebrated the level of nuanced detail…
Telstra listened to customer complaints about data privacy, but they could have done more.
gailjadehamilton
Telstra’s first attempt to introduce a cyber-safety service for mobile customers in June was a flop of significant proportions.
Customers and concerned members of the public reacted strongly to the collection…
European data protection law and Google seem to be at odds.
Vermin Inc
We all know the basics: when you sign up for a Google account you provide valuable personal information that allows hardworking people at the company to build a profile of you. This will include your age…
Online stalking gets far too much attention, but it’s worth making some changes to prevent it happening to you.
Flickr/Ed Yourdon
Recent cases of online abuse against Charlotte Dawson and NRL player Robbie Farah have attracted considerable media attention and triggered public debate about how to respond to this issue.
But how big…
Proposals to extend our national security agencies' surveillance powers over our electronic communications has caused much controversy.
Ludovic Bertron
In the “age of the social graph”, it is possible to profile people by tracking their relationships with friends and associates rather than by looking at the content of their communications.
Debate about…
Short urls serve a purpose for users and their creators alike.
Mexicanwave
With each passing day commercial interests seem to find new ways to harness the tools on which the web was built.
Policy initiatives such as the US’s now-defunct SOPA and in-progress CISPA now involve…
Debates about online copyright protection have been particularly heated of late.
marfis75
IDEAS AND OWNERSHIP: The concept of protecting ideas and innovation by legal means dates back to antiquity. But many of our existing laws are under strain, their suitability and ultimate purpose called…
Should legislation be used to tame the search engine’s appetite?
COG LOG LAB
We all know Google has a history of privacy-related misdemeanors but a report in the Wall Street Journal last week
suggests the search giant hasn’t learn from its mistakes.
The report, about the findings…
Are online dating sites preying on the vulnerable or do they foster love and relationships?
flickr/ZakVTA
Regulation of our intimate lives has always been a thorny issue. The anti-sodomy laws of the past and the same-sex marriage issue today illustrate times when policymakers can get it very, very wrong. Legislation…
Apple might not use location information for its own benefit, so why collect it?
AAP
Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, hit back at reports yesterday that the company’s iPhones track the movements of its 100 million users.
The charge was that Apple was storing a database of this information, to which…
Where we are says a lot about who we are.
tulja/Flickr
PRIVACY – Your location is arguably more personal than your genetic profile; even identical twins can’t be in the same place at the same time. In terms of value, it’s on a par with your medical records…
Do you trust Facebook as much as you would your best friend?
Karen Bleier/AFP
Unless you’ve been chained to a fax machine for the past seven years, you’ll have noticed that Facebook is immensely popular.
Users numbered 641 million by February of this year.
Making and maintaining…
Last week’s Google Books ruling was a win for copyright protection.
AAP
The decision by a US Federal Court judge last week to reject a $US125 million settlement between Google Books and the publishing industry allows authors to protect their copyright and prevents Google from…
