The New York Times reports on the ease with which individuals’ privacy can be eroded online:

Yet people often dole out all kinds of personal information on the Internet that allows such identifying data to be deduced. Services like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are oceans of personal minutiae — birthday greetings sent and received, school and work gossip, photos of family vacations, and movies watched.

Computer scientists and policy experts say that such seemingly innocuous bits of self-revelation can increasingly be collected and reassembled by computers to help create a picture of a person’s identity, sometimes down to the Social Security number.

“Technology has rendered the conventional definition of personally identifiable information obsolete,” said Maneesha Mithal, associate director of the Federal Trade Commission’s privacy division. “You can find out who an individual is without it.” [...] Read more »

The Examiner reports that D.C. is considering banning employers from checking the credit of job applicants, with some exceptions.

District employers would be barred from using a job applicant’s credit history as a factor in determining whether to hire that person under legislation now before the D.C. Council.

D.C. residents, 12 percent of whom are unemployed, “need a job; they don’t need a credit check,” Ward 1 Councilman Jim Graham said Tuesday. A recent Society for Human Resource Management survey found 47 percent of employers perform credit checks on selected job candidates while 13 percent check all candidates — most often applicants for jobs involving access to money.

The District joins at least a dozen states to eye a ban on the practice. [...] Read more »

USA Today reports that more businesses are using technology to track the actions of their employees.

Firms have become sharp-eyed, keenly eared watchdogs as they try to squeeze every penny’s worth of their employees’ salaries and to ensure they have the most professional and lawsuit-proof workplaces.

Managers use technological advances to capture workers’ computer keystrokes, monitor the websites they frequent, even track their whereabouts through GPS-enabled cellphones. Some companies have gone as far as using webcams and minuscule video cameras to secretly record employees’ movements. [...]

Employers no longer have to hire a pricey private investigator to install a complicated video system or computer-use tracking devices. Now, they can easily buy machine-monitoring software and tiny worker-tracking cameras at a local electronics store or through Internet retailers. Read more »

At the US-Mexico border, there has been significant use of surveillance equipment — unmanned aerial vehicles (also known as “drones”), thermal imaging equipment — and there has also been a plan to expand the use of this equipment, to build a “virtual fence.” The New York Times reported on the Secure Border Initiative (also known as “SBINet”) last year, noting, “The first phase of the $6.7 billion project — a network of towers rigged with cameras, sensors and communications equipment — will cover about 23 miles south of Tucson, in the busiest area for illegal crossing. Within five years, officials said Friday, the fence is expected to extend along the entire 2,000-mile border except for some 200 miles in the area of Big Bend National Park in Texas.”

Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has released a statement on funding for the virtual fence project, which shows the program may be in trouble:

Not only do we have an obligation to secure our borders, we have a responsibility to do so in the most cost effective way possible. The system of sensors and cameras along the Southwest border known as SBInet has been plagued with cost overruns and missed deadlines. Effective immediately, the Department of Homeland Security will redeploy $50 million of Recovery Act funding originally allocated for the SBInet Block 1 to other tested, commercially available security technology along the Southwest border, including mobile surveillance, thermal imaging devices, ultra-light detection, backscatter units, mobile radios, cameras and laptops for pursuit vehicles, and remote video surveillance system enhancements. Additionally, we are freezing all SBInet funding beyond SBInet Block 1’s initial deployment to the Tucson and Ajo regions until the assessment I ordered in January is completed.

National Public Radio has a story about the vacant Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Terms for the original board (created in 2004) expired in January 2008, but President Bush delayed the nomination of new board members for many months; none were confirmed by the Senate. President Obama has not yet nominated any members. As a result, the board strengthened by a 2007 law has never begun operations. (For the history of the Board, read a previous post.)

NPR reports, “The board is supposed to ensure that the government protects Americans’ privacy and civil liberties in a range of counterterrorism activities. [...] Former member Lanny Davis says the board was “extremely effective” during its existence, though he believes there were problems with the organization’s structure.”

NPR notes that several legislators, including Senators Patrick Leahy and Susan Collins, have written to President Obama about the vacancies. NPR mentions a letter from more than 30 groups (including Privacy Lives) sent to the White House urging that President Obama nominate individuals to fill the board. The groups explained that it is more critical than ever that the board convene. “As a result of the attempted Christmas Day bombing, your Administration and Congress are considering numerous policy changes that impact the privacy and freedoms of Americans, including expanding watch lists and more intrusive searches at airports. It is crucial that you nominate qualified individuals to serve on the PCLOB, so that it may begin to provide guidance as new policies and procedures are developed.”

Two columns give opposing opinions on privacy. In the Canadian Globe and Mail, Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian says that privacy remains a norm:

What I emphatically submit is that there is little evidence to change our view that privacy remains a social norm. Privacy relates to freedom of choice and control in the sphere of one’s personal information – choices regarding what information you wish to share and, perhaps more important, what you do not want shared with others. What has changed, however, is the means by which personal information is now readily exchanged, at the speed of light. [...]

Let me speak for a moment as a psychologist (in my former life). The human condition requires connection: We are social animals who seek contact with each other. We also seek privacy: moments of solitude, intimacy, quiet, reserve and control – personal control. These interests have co-existed for centuries and must continue to do so, for the human condition requires both. [...] Read more »