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• Under the Obama administration the Department of Homeland Security has killed the satellite spying program within the US.
• Pirate Bay’s IPREDator anonymous VPN goes beta. Not sure how their current legal situation will play into this product.
• British Columbia’s Privacy Commissioner calls for end to BarWatch program which forces patrons to scan their drivers license… and I’ve hated since it began.
• Facebook privacy: a guide.
• CRTC posts updated stats on the Canadian Do-Not-Call list.

• A company has bought a Nova Scotia nuclear shelter to build a data warehouse. Canada does have fairly strict privacy laws buts its certainly not the most ideal country in the world for a data warehouse… but I guess it depends what you’re planning on storing there.
• Yahoo (probably in a move to save themselves from going out of business) has decided on a (much lower than Google) 90-day personal information retention scheme for there users collected data.
• A peek at what information US homeland security keeps on its citizens. IA reader and posted Rumplekilskin went through a similar process and obtained all his government records from the Canadian government.
• A new UK policy steps up efforts by police to hack home PCs.
• The US Intelligence Court (in a rare public opinion) has judged that federal wiretapping in the US was and is legal. Thank you secretive court for ruling that the president was right on this one. Sounds totally sketchy.

• Hackers have made their own RFID version of Elvis’ Passport. So the RFID enabled passports have already been hacked. Nice.
• Very little media discussion of this but domestic satellite spying has gone into effect in the US. Cough… Police State… Cough.
• Speaking of satellites, Google’s GeoEye-1 satellite launched so they can provide high definition map and geospatial data to the masses.
• Sony PS3’s new terms of service mean that Sony will be collecting and owning everything you do on the PS3.
• EPIC and the ALCU have won a small victory in being able to see 10 documents that were previously held secret regarding the US wiretapping fiasco. Some of these documents show that US government tracking users without phone companies help.
• In the wake of the US plummeting into a police-like state, Canada has backpedaled on data sharing of Canadian’s personal information with the US.
• Finally, the NSA is building a massive datacenter in San Antonio with the hope of data-mining from the vast wealth of unsecured data floating around the net.

Congress has asked for privacy information from Google, microsoft, AOL and Yahoo. Congress wants to know what they are collecting and for how long. Yay congress! Google has already responded saying and showing that they (somewhat shockingly) respect their user’s privacy… at least after 18 months when they anonymize the IP addresses in their logs. Since then, and based on pressure from the EU, Google has decided to half the time that IP addresses are held to 9 months, which is also great. What I don’t understand is why they can’t anonymize them right away…?

In other privacy news:

• The US has been secretly tracking its citizen’s boarder crossings in a great big database.
• In a bit of good news, the US FTC has banned pre-recorded telemarking calls. When will Canada do the same?
• Colorado Law School prof Paul Ohm warns against coming internet privacy apocalypse.
• Speculation on large-scale cell phone tracking in the US
• However, apparently the US DOJ needs a warrant to track your cell-phone’s GPS
• Most companies admit that their data (aka your private data) is at risk to loss

Many times, I’ve had conversations with people (mostly family) about CCTV cameras. Almost everyone who reads the news assumes that crime is out of control and that our cities are quickly approaching anarchy. However, as anyone who’s taken CRIM101 in university knows: crime rates have been dropping for the past 25 years… and indeed are at all-time lows. Some would argue that CCTV cameras have played a part in this trend. To those people I’d show one example: London. London has over 250,000 CCTV cameras throughout the city… even Orwell would be impressed… however London’s crime rate is still very high in comparison to many equally big cities: “Only three percent of crimes have been solved using CCTV footage, and offenders aren’t afraid of being caught on video”. CCTV is an invasion of our privacy and is only going to get worse as facial recognition software improves. Governments should ban these cameras if we have any hope of maintaining even a semblance of privacy.

• microsoft has helpfully provided police with a tool to extract information from computers used in cybercrimes. As if microsoft needed to create tools to create easier access to supposedly secure windows software… hackers have been getting your personal information easily since Windows 3.1.
• The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) has released a statement indicated what any IA reader should already know: Facebook is a “minefield of privacy invasion”. Just say no to Facebook folks. Get off the crack.
• In one of those “lets ask the internet” moments, we were wondering just how many satellites there are in space? The answer is harder than you’d think to figure out. According to Nasa, there are roughly 5000 satellites in orbit, give or take a multiple payload or two and several hundred are currently active. Thats a lot of cameras looking down on us!
• The US Congress is (finally) looking into ISP user tracking. Hopefully this investigation will lead to some decent privacy legislation on this front.
• MySpace has opened up its API to allow 3rd party data sharing. Sounds like a terrible thing for your privacy on MySpace.
• Last up, the FISA Compromise Bill (as its being called) has been signed into law giving US Telco’s total immunity to being prosecuted for helping the government to spy on their customers, which is a huge disappointment and clearly shows the power of business on government decisions in the states. Another bad sign, Hilary Clinton voted against this bill. Obama voted for this bill.

• Michael Geist (law prof from University of Ottawa) has created a site called ioptout which supposedly allows you opt out of e-mail and phone spam. Does it work? I’m not sure yet. Certainly it will only apply to advertisers from Canada… but certainly a good idea and worth signing up for!
• Why do we have to sign-up for a non-government created list? Because Bell got the contract for the Canadian Do-Not-Call list and hasn’t done anything useful to implement it yet. Isn’t it just a database? I could set it up for them in about 10 minutes!
• Speaking of spam, the canadian Red Dot Campaign aims to reduce your junk snail mail. Get a sticker, put it on your mailbox and voila you shouldn’t get any more anonymous junk mail. Saves a few trees too!
• Bubble and Laser printers all print secret watermarks onto the paper they print which allows print outs to be traced back to their owners (well in theory, in practice this is probably close to impossible). Recent finds have concluded that these secret watermarks probably break EU privacy laws (and really they should break everyone’s privacy laws!).
• A new program called BTGuard routes your P2P traffic through Canada to protect your privacy. This service probably slows down your BT traffic and Canada’s laws are only slightly better than US laws but pretty interesting none-the-less.
• I’ve often been a bit freaked out typing in my password in an internet cafe while traveling. Its sooo easy to have a completely hidden keyboard scanner recording all input and who knows what the security of that machine is (usually not very good I’d guess). Here is a nice little article on 5 tips for internet security while traveling. I’ve got another tip, change your password when you get back to your home computer… couldn’t hurt.

• I don’t want to go on a rant about how evil Facebook is… but I will point out that Facebook’s Beacon just the tip of the privacy iceberg.
• The US Feds have access to cellphone tracking on request. No privacy for you.
• Speaking of the Police State to the south, every single entrant into the US is now tracked through a terrorist risk profile.
• Bruce Schneier (a very smart guy and security expert) answers questions about security, privacy and the future of technology.
• We get several automated telemarketing calls a day… which begs the question: what the hell is going on with the Canadian Do-Not-Call list? Not much it seems, despite the fact its been in law for at least a year now.
• Dick Cheney obviously promised the US Teleco’s that they would get immunity for helping him spy on the American population, now he wants telecom immunity laws badly.

• Shinanigoat passed along this story of motorists being forced to give blood at roadside stops all over the US. Its not a Police State… really!
• Speaking of the US Police State, AT&T responds to Congress’ request for more information about wiretapping: “Unfortunately, under current circumstances, we are unable to respond with specificity to your inquiries,” wrote AT&T in a statement to the House Committee. “That is because, on many issues that appear to be of central concern to you, responsive information, if any, is within the control of the executive branch… Moreover, the United States, through sworn declaration from the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), has formally invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent AT&T from either confirming or denying facts about alleged intelligence operations and activities that are central to your inquiries.”
• The US’s all-seeing satellites could be focused on the US itself. Love this DHS quote “”the NAO will rely on existing, longstanding practice and procedures established by the Intelligence Community to ensure the appropriate protection of privacy and civil liberties”. Ironic that there is huge-and-cry now that the satellites that are spying on the rest of the world are now potentially being used to spy on the US itself.
• The Democrats version of the spying bill is really no better than the Republicans existing practices. How can this possibly be good for our rights? This kind of thing makes me scared of what a Democratically lead governemnet will do in the US.
• Speaking of wiretapping, it has been revealed that Comcast charges to the US Government $1000 per wiretap. How much is your feeling of safety worth?
• TorrentFreak has a nice little review of your choices for Anonymous internet traffic. The conclusion is that you don’t have a lot of choice.
• Hushmail (the free, supposedly completely private e-mail provider, that I’ve used on numerous occassions) has been secretly passing PGP Keys to the US Government. So much for your privacy.

A US Federal Judge has found two sections of the FISA act of the US Patriot Act are unconstitutional under the 4th amendment (no unlawful search or seisure):

“Now, for the first time in our Nation’s history, the government can conduct surveillance to gather evidence for use in a criminal case without a traditional warrant, as long as it presents a non-reviewable assertion that it also has a significant interest in the targeted person for foreign intelligence purposes,” wrote Judge Aiken in her opinion.

I don’t know enough about the the US law system to know what this means but I assume it means that unless there is an appeal that these sections can no longer be used by law officials. This is also the first (of hopefully many) chinks in the armour of Bush’s domestic wiretapping program.

• Speaking of wiretapping, the EFF has sued the US government to get access to documents from the major US Telcos lobbying attempts. Apparently the Telcos have been lobbying hard to get criminal immunity for their help in the wiretapping fiasco.
• The House (now controlled by democrats but -still- obviously completely fucked up) has approved an extension to the foriegn wiretapping bill.
• Chicago is planning to install the ultimate in Orwellian video indexing tools. Called Virtual Shield and installed and run by IBM the system will: “capture, monitor, and “fully index” video from the Windy City’s surveillance cameras”. People have already been arrested in Chicago using the existing video surveillance tools for (the oooh so dangerous crime of) drinking in public and other obvious visual crimes.
• A recent study has found that over 159 million people have been affected by corporate data loss in the last three years. Thats a lot of people and a lot of data! When will laws be put in place to punish the corporations loosing the data!!!
• In a case of “wow that needs to be a law?”, California is the first state to outlaw forced RFID implantation.
• Google has proposed a new set of international privacy standards (yes Google!). But already cries of no-nearly-enough are coming from privacy groups like EPIC who think the proposal basically sucks. At least this is a step in the right direction though. Weird though that Google is proposing this since their whole business runs on keeping your private information.