The Daily Yomiuri reports on an agreement among Japanese mobile phone providers and the government that seeks to combat "remittance fraud," but the deal also involves customers’ personal data being released to the police. (There are several types of remittance fraud. The Daily Yomiuri explains, "In one particularly common style of remittance fraud, a con man concludes several dozen contracts under one name using a forged driver’s license. He and his accomplices then concoct stories and begin calling people to try to persuade them to send money.")

As part of the new agreement, people applying for mobile phone contracts will have their identification confirmed by the police. "If a customer refuses to submit to the policy inquiry, firms will decline a contract, and will contact police if they become suspicious about a customer," reports the Daily Yomiuri .

Some individuals do use mobile phones for criminal activity. However, there are many legal reasons an individual would want a mobile phone that couldn’t be traced back to her. Such individuals could be whistleblowers or investigative reporters.

“Released in May 2008, The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom analyzes what co-authors Robert Levy of the Cato Institute and William Mellor of the Institute for Justice view as the worst U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the modern era. The authors include cases on a wide range of topics including interstate commerce, affirmative action, economic rights, and campaign finance. The book has contributed to an energetic, wide-reaching debate about the Supreme Court, generating an extensive range of opinions among legal professionals, concerned non-lawyers, and Court followers about the impact of the cases discussed and the role of the Court. The American Constitution Society and The Cato Institute are pleased to provide a public platform for this important debate. Leading practitioners and academics from different perspectives will discuss the book and debate whether the cases selected by the author are in fact the twelve worst cases in recent times. Please join us for what promises to be a dynamic event made even more significant by the historic Court decisions that have been handed down since the book’s publication two months ago.

The debate will feature:

David Barron, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Doug Kendall, Founder and President, Constitutional Accountability Center
William Mellor, Co-Author of “The Dirty Dozen”; President and General Counsel, Institute for Justice
Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies and Editor-in-Chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review, Cato Institute
Moderator, Amanda Frost, Assistant Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law”

Date: July 31, 2008 at noon
Location: Cato Institute; 1000 Massachusetts Ave, NW; Washington, DC
For more information: http://www.acslaw.org/node/6807

The Finnish government violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (pdf) for “domestic authorities’ failure to protect, at the relevant time, the applicant’s patient records against unauthorised access,” according to a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights.

In I v. Finland, No. 20511/03, the Finnish citizen had worked for several years as a contract nurse at an eye diseases clinic at a hospital. During that time, she learned she was HIV-positive and began seeking treatment at another clinic within the same hospital. She suspected her colleagues had learned of her treatment and sought data on who had accessed her medical records and when.

“At that time hospital staff had free access to the patient register which contained information on patients’ diagnoses and treating doctors,” the Court said. However, the system did not retain enough data on who accessed patients’ records so that the hospital could not compile a complete list of individuals who accessed her record and when. (more…)

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) holds a briefing with David Wennergren, deputy chief information officer for networks and information integration at the Defense Department, on a “Defense Department and Federal Chief Information Officers Council perspective on cybersecurity issues.”

Date: July 28, 2008 at 9 am
Location: CSIS, 1800 K Street NW, B-1 Conference Level; Washington, D.C.
For more information: http://tinyurl.com/5kupsu

Found via Concurring Opinions.

The Associated Press has an interesting story on the perils of using Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites. The Times UK ran a similar story earlier this year. I previously blogged about problems with those sites’ designs and their data collection and distribution practices. Now, the Associated Press is reporting on use of social networking sites in criminal trials.

Online hangouts like Facebook and MySpace have offered crime-solving help to detectives and become a resource for employers vetting job applicants. Now the sites are proving fruitful for prosecutors, who have used damaging Internet photos of defendants to cast doubt on their character during sentencing hearings and argue for harsher punishment.

“Social networking sites are just another way that people say things or do things that come back and haunt them,” said Phil Malone, director of the cyberlaw clinic at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. “The things that people say online or leave online are pretty permanent.”

The pictures, when shown at sentencing, not only embarrass defendants but can make it harder for them to convince a judge that they’re remorseful or that their drunken behavior was an aberration. (Of course, the sites are also valuable for defense lawyers looking to dig up dirt to undercut the credibility of a star prosecution witness.) (more…)

Wired News’ Threat Level blog reports that “Internet service provider Embarq eavesdropped on the web surfing habits of 26,000 customers in Kansas without notifying them personally, as part of its test of new, controversial advertising technology that profiles users.” The secret surveillance uses deep packet inspection technology, which allows and Internet Service Provider to read the contents of an e-mail or figure out what Web site a customer is visiting in order to display more targeted ads. There are numerous privacy, civil liberty, and legality questions (pdf) about this sort of surreptitious tracking of Internet users.

Ryan Singel reports:

Embarq, an offshoot from Sprint, tested the service in Gardner, Kansas, saying it was their smallest facility. The secret test ended earlier this year, though no dates were given for when it started or stopped. The letter also disclosed that 15 people from the region opted out, even though the company didn’t notify the affected subscribers that the technology was being tested — it just added a paragraph to its privacy policy. (more…)