Recently, the Port Militarization Resistance in Olympia, Wash., accused John J. Towery, of infiltrating the anti-war organization and spying for the military. PMR made the accusation after receiving documents under an open government request. PMR claims Towery admitted that he is a civilian employee of Fort Lewis Force Protection and became a PMR member under the name “John Jacob.” The Olympian reports that Towery denied to PMR that he was assigned to infiltrate the organization.

Fort Lewis spokesman Joseph Piek confirmed Monday that Towery is a civilian employed at Fort Lewis. “Mr. John Towery performs sensitive work within the installation law enforcement community, and it would not be appropriate for him to discuss his duties with the media,” Piek wrote in an e-mail to The Olympian.

Piek added in the e-mail that Fort Lewis is aware of the claim against Towery, and that Fort Lewis is investigating.

The Fort Lewis spokesman defined the agency to the Olympian, “The Fort Lewis Force Protection Division, under the Directorate of Emergency Services, consists of both military and civilian employees whose focus is on supporting law enforcement and security operations to ensure the safety and security of Fort Lewis, soldiers, family members, the workforce and those personnel accessing the installation.”

It is possible that Towery’s actions violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the military from conducting domestic law enforcement activities, states: Read more »

Last week, I blogged about a proposal to move the city of Los Angeles’s e-mail system, internal data and public records to Google’s paid cloud computing service Google Apps. There has been a lot of controversy, and the World Privacy Forum has written to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (pdf) raising questions about privacy and security components of the proposal.

Now, Computerworld reports that “Matt Glotzbach, director of product management for Google Enterprise, said the angst voiced by consumer groups and others about the Los Angeles project is overstated and based on incomplete information. In fact, he contended that transitioning the applications to Google will strengthen the security of the city’s data and better maintain its privacy.”

In L.A.’s $7.25 million plan (pdf), “the city [would] transition about 30,000 users to Google’s e-mail and office productivity products by the end of December 2009 [...] The migration would make Google, which hosts the servers running the applications, responsible for retaining and protecting sensitive health care and litigation data along with criminal and drug investigation records.” Read more »

The Wall Street Journal reports that there will likely be government scrutiny of the newly announced Microsoft-Yahoo search and advertising deal. There are also privacy questions about the deal, as well. (U.S. lawmakers have called for new rules to protect Web site users’ privacy, and the online behavioral advertising industry has agreed to new, voluntary regulations — that still fall short in privacy protections.)

A few hours after the deal was announced, Sen. Herb Kohl (D., Wis.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Committee, said it warrants “careful scrutiny” since it would combine “industry giants and direct competitors in Internet advertising and search markets.” He promised the deal would be “closely reviewed” by his committee.

A Federal Trade Commission spokesman declined to comment. A Justice Department spokeswoman said the agency is “aware of” the deal but declined to comment further. Read more »

The Wimbledon Guardian reports on yet another UK town, this time Merton Council, using anti-terror laws ”to snoop on residents, for petty offences ranging from breaching smoking bans to fly-tipping, 39 times since 2006.”

The revelation has sparked criticism from civil liberty groups, but the council insists the controversial use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), dubbed the “snoopers charter”, has been sparing, and is being reviewed. [...]

Information released under the Freedom of Information Act, showed covert cameras were used on 26 occasions.

Readers will remember numerous posts about this issue. In September, the Telegraph UK reported what it learned from its freedom of information requests. It showed a disturbing trend of local councils using the 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to track or prosecute minor offenses, such as littering. Among the investigations conducted under powers conferred by the anti-terrorism law: “Easington council put a resident’s garden under camera surveillance after a complaint from neighbours about noise.” Read more »

PC World looks into Web sites’ privacy-policy loopholes and offers some suggestions on how you can strengthen your privacy protections.

“We won’t share your information with third parties.” You’ve no doubt seen that common phrase in Web site privacy policies many times. You might think that the site in question won’t divulge details about your visit to other companies or organizations. But according to a study by privacy researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, sites have a huge amount of wiggle room with that promise.

The in-depth study dug into the privacy policies and tracking practices of the 50 most visited Web sites as listed by Quantcast. The researchers discovered that loopholes such as affiliate sharing and tracking code allowed for much more data sharing than you might expect. [...] Read more »

Conservative Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden David Davis wrote an op-ed in theTimes about privacy and health data, which strongly criticized Google. Among Davis’s comments: “Google is the last company I would trust with data belonging to me. In the words of human rights watchdog Privacy International, Google has ‘a history of ignoring privacy concerns.’”

Google’s Global Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer responded to the criticism in a blog post:

Mr Davis’ argument is based on something of a straw man, given that Google Health, our health records product, is only available in the US, and we have no immediate plans to bring it to other countries. But given that he goes on to attack our Street View product as a “high-handed” intrusion on privacy, assert that we do not respect European privacy law, argue we have entered into “an amoral deal with China,” and attribute our economic success to “legally unfettered use of personal data”, we wanted to set the record straight. [...]

Allegation: Google is “hostile to privacy.” Read more »