I hope you enjoy the holidays. Privacy Lives will resume normal publication of in-depth coverage of privacy and civil liberty issues on January 5, 2009.

In May, Deutsche Telekom admitted it had secretly combed through its own millions of call records to review the calls made by some of its executives in order to ferret out which employees leaked information to the media. There was a huge uproar, and German officials began an investigation. My previous posts are here and here.

The Associated Press reports there has been an arrest in this case.

German prosecutors on Wednesday said one person has been arrested in a scandal at Deutsche Telekom AG that involved monitoring managers’ call records to track possible leaks.

Fred Apostel, a spokesman for the prosecutors’ office in Bonn, said the suspect was arrested last Thursday and will remain in detention pending completion of the investigation. He declined to identify the suspect or offer any further details.

A spokesman at Bonn-based Telekom also refused to comment.

Media reports have identified the suspect as Klaus T., a former head of Telekom’s division for internal investigations. According to the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, he is suspected of fraud for embezzlement and authorizing payments for business that violates company policy.

I am on the planning committee for CFP 2009 and urge you to submit proposals for presentations and workshops. CFP is a great conference filled with discussions about interesting and important issues. Previous speakers have included: 

• author and National Security Agency expert James Bamford,
• politician and privacy advocate Bob Barr,
• Chief Security Officer for Sun Microsystems and cryptography expert Whitfield Diffie,
• Senior Adviser at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, Copenhagen, Rikke Frank Jørgensen,
• then-Chief Privacy Officer of the Department of Homeland Security Nuala O’Connor Kelly,
• professor and constitutional law scholar Lawrence Lessig,
• then-Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission Timothy Muris,
• then-Privacy Commissioner of Canada George Radwanski. 
• then-Privacy Officer at the US Terrorist Screening Center Lyn Rahilly,
• security expert Bruce Schneier,
• law professor and author Daniel Solove,
• science-fiction author Bruce Sterling,
• Privacy Commissioner of Canada Jennifer Stoddart,
• mathematician and technologist Vernor Vinge.

The deadline is January 9, 2009 and the conference will be held in Washington, DC from June 1 to June 4, 2009. Find out how to submit a proposal here.

The United Kingdom has an estimated 4.2 million cameras (one for every 14 people) and has spent about 500 million pounds on its massive camera surveillance system. Closed circuit television systems (CCTV) have often been sold to the public as systems that help prevent crime. However, numerous studies (some conducted by US and UK law enforcement agencies) have shown that CCTV systems have little effect on crime rates. In fact, studies found it is far more effective to spend limited law enforcement resources on adding more police officers to a community and improving street lighting in high crime areas than spending large amounts of money to install expensive technology.

The costs of camera surveillance systems, in terms of civil liberties, are evident. However, there is also a financial cost. I have often spoken about the fact that CCTV systems are neither effective nor cost-effective. The millions spent on camera surveillance is not spent in a vacuum. Any money spent to install, monitor and conduct upkeep on surveillance systems is money not spent on more proven crime-prevention techniques, such as increasing the number of officers on street patrol.

The UK Mail reports that, with the global economy in crisis, local councils are finally looking at the crime-prevention and cost numbers and recognizing that CCTV systems are not cost-effective. Read more »

MediaPost has an interview with Matthew Wise, CEO of Q Interactive, former senior vice president of account services at Draft, and a member of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. “Rather than start the debate over whether data is or should be collected, Wise argues here that the argument really should surround data’s proper use.”

Mr. Wise is against consumers protecting their privacy by deleting cookies or using the “private browsing” settings on Web browsers. He urges the public to assume that data will always be collected on consumers and that they shouldn’t opt-out of this profiling.

“I hope we will come with a default that the sharing of information is in the best interests of consumers. The debate should be around the right uses of that data and giving consumers the opportunity to block and surf anonymously. But if we have to get consumers every day to say I truly want the information gathered to make things more efficient, no one is going to click on that option. It has to be the other way around,” Wise said.

I strongly disagree and believe that individuals do not give up their privacy rights merely by opening a Web browser and visiting a Web site. Read my previous posts on datamining to create targeted advertising and privacy in Web browsers.

The New York Times has an interesting story on search engines and privacy.

Google has released its map of the national brain and appetites for 2008, and it turns out that many, many people across America have been asking the Internet “what is love?” and “how to kiss.”

And to tighten the focus, Google has also provided a list of search queries made by people sitting at computers in New York City. [...]

On the surface, these kinds of lists are supposed to reveal what Google calls the zeitgeist of 2008, though it’s not much of a surprise that people were interested in Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. But they also provide hints of the level of personal details that people are now turning over to search engines and related businesses without much awareness. Read more »