Disclosure: I have worked with and agree with the advocacy groups that are protesting such tracking plans as Charter’s.

Various news sources are reporting that Charter has dropped these plans, in part because of the public outcry. However, two other U.S. companies are mulling the same kind of customer tracking. In the last month, there has been considerable debate and controversy over Charter Communications and NebuAd’s plans to use deep packet inspection to build profiles on individual users in order to better target advertising toward those individuals. (Whenever you send an e-mail or visit a Web site, your data is broken up to packets of information and directed toward the destination requested. Deep packet inspection allows the Internet Service Provider to read the contents of an e-mail or figure out what Web site a customer is visiting.) The Washington Post reports:

The company had been planning to harvest the stream of data from each Internet customer for clues to their interests and then make money from advertisers who would use the information to target online pitches.

The data-collection effort would have protected personal information, Charter officials said in describing the plan, but critics likened the practice to wiretapping.

Read more »

“The Department of Homeland Security Privacy Office will host a public workshop, Implementing Privacy Protections in Government Data Mining.

The two-day workshop will be held on July 24, 2008, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and on July 25th, 2008, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Written comments should be received on or before July 17, 2008. [...]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Privacy Office is holding a public workshop to bring together leading academic, policy, and technology experts to explore methods of validating the accuracy and effectiveness of data mining models and rules, and the role of anonymization tools and automated audit controls in protecting privacy. The purpose of the workshop is to inform the Privacy Office as it prepares its 2008 report to Congress on DHS data mining activities. The workshop will consist of a series of presentations and panel discussions that include the broad range of stakeholder perspectives. Workshop attendees will have an opportunity to ask questions after each panel.”

Date: July 24-25, 2008 [Written comments should be received on or before July 17, 2008.]
Location: International Ballroom East, Hilton Washington; 1919 Connecticut Avenue, NW; Washington, DC
For more information: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/E8-14394.htm

Natural News reports that a Rhode Island school district will begin testing a program to monitor students by implanting radio frequency identification (RFID) tags into their schoolbags. RFID technology transmits data wirelessly and is usually used to track packages in warehouses or pets.

Each chip would be programmed with a student identification number, and would be read by an external device installed in one of two school buses. The buses would also be fitted with global positioning system (GPS) devices.

Parents or school officials could log onto a school web site to see whether and when specific children had entered or exited which bus, and to look up the bus’s current location as provided by the GPS device.

This isn’t the first time that schools have tried using RFID to track students as stores track inventory or farmers track cattle. Read more »

MarketWire spotlights a new report, 2008 U.S. Study on Email Marketing Practices and Privacy, from the Ponemon Institute and Strongmail (an e-mail marketing company). The study “found significant gaps in perceptions between marketers and privacy professionals in terms of how email marketing practices affect consumers’ privacy rights and risks to personal information.” The Ponemon Institute surveyed companies and spoke to about 500 people in data protection roles and more than 700 people with marketing duties.

According to the study, more than one-third of marketers do not limit the data they distribute to third parties, whereas 75% of privacy professionals believe that their organizations limit the data it shares. In fact, marketers report a willingness to share such personal information as credit card number (45%), debit card number (39%), Social Security number (29%), and bank account/routing number (17%). Read more »

Via Schneier on Security, check out this Dilbert cartoon on surveillance in the workplace.

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting story on identity thieves stealing the equity of homes. 

In an up-and-coming scam noted by the FBI, a swindler establishes a line of credit in his name based on the equity in a property, then drains the house dry. In another ploy, the con man steals the house by changing the title over to his name and selling it out from under the owner.

Rightful owners really won’t lose their houses. But the burden is on them to prove that they are indeed the real owners and that someone swiped their identities to carry out false transactions. And that could cost many hours and thousands of dollars. Read more »