Stanford Center for Internet and Society

Daniel Begun of Hot Hardware News reports that "Google will take an even more active role in the debate [over net neutrality] by arming consumers with the tools to determine first-hand if their broadband connections are being monkeyed with by their ISPs."

Author and fellow SLS fellow Laura K. Donohue brought this deliciously ironic picture to my attention. Click here for a close up.

If you happen to be in the DC area this week, Laura is speaking on her new book, "The Cost of Counterterrorism: Power, politics, and liberty," at GW Law School on Wednesday, June 11, and the Women's Foreign Policy Group on Friday, June 13.

In arguing for the ongoing constitutionality of the commercial/noncommercial distinction in billboard regulation in the wake of City of Cincinnati v. Discovery Network, I wrote (in 2005) that billboards “can talk and they can listen.” (103 Mich. L. Rev. 1877, 1877). I was referring to the ability of highway billboards to interact with passing motorists by, for instance, eavesdropping on their radio station. No surprise that my three-year-old statement about billboards now seriously undersells them. According to a recent New York Times article:

"[Advertisers] are equipping billboards with tiny cameras that gather details about passers-by — their gender, approximate age and how long they looked at the billboard. These details are transmitted to a central database. . . .

Was March National Privacy Month and no one told me? (October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month, so don't try to hack anything.) In addition to a March 31, 2008 decision by the D.C. Circuit holding that “actual damages” under the Privacy Act need not necessarily include pecuniary harm (blogged here by Lauren Gelman), the Northern District of California affirmed the standing of a class action plaintiff to sue for negligence over a stolen laptop containing personally identifiable information, based on the mere risk of identify theft. These are both important cases in that they may signal a trend toward greater recognition of the emotional and dignitary interests implicated by the exposure of personal data.

A colleague and I were just discussing a new international working group, chaired by the FBI, which has “band[ed] together to fight cyber crime in a synergistic way.” The group is called the Strategic Alliance Cyber Crime Working Group; it even has a tagline: “Cyber Solidarity: Five Nations, One Mission.”

EPIC fellow Guilherme Roschke writes about the sophisticated Facebook presence of Greater Manchester Police and its ramifications for citizen privacy. He notes that "[l]aw enforcement use of applications will significantly expand the reach of what law enforcement can see, and also provide a more surreptitious viewing ability."

Please find his post here.

Ars Technica reports:

"Texas native Cathryn Elaine Harris has filed a lawsuit against Blockbuster, alleging that the company is actively and knowingly violating the Video Privacy Protection Act by reporting users' activities back to Facebook. The suit seeks to be certified as a class action, and asks that Blockbuster pay out $2,500 per incident in which it disclosed personally identifiable information."

Highlights of Thursday’s FCC hearing at Stanford in no particular order:

1. Finding myself nodding in vigorous agreement with the testimony of the Christian Coalition of America.

The MIT/Stanford VLAB hosted an interesting event this week on the impact of personal genome services on the healthcare industry. Privacy was discussed, but not featured. Here is a thoughtful analysis of the privacy issues around genomic research, generally, from Nature Reviews.