The New Jersey Law Journal reports on a case in the state involving online privacy.

A federal jury in Newark, N.J., on Tuesday found that restaurant managers who surreptiously monitoring employees’ postings in a MySpace gripe group violated state and federal laws that protect privacy of Web communications.

Two servers at Houston’s in Hackensack, fired for criticizing their bosses in those May 2006 postings, were awarded a total of $3,400 in back pay and $13,600 in punitive damages in the case, Pietrylo v. Hillstone Restaurant Group, 2:06-cv-5754.

The jury found that the restaurant violated the Federal Stored Communications Act and the New Jersey Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act, and that management acted maliciously.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced “her decision to end the National Applications Office (NAO) program, after a five-month review conducted in coordination with the Department’s law enforcement, emergency management and intelligence partners.” She said, “This action will allow us to focus our efforts on more effective information sharing programs that better meet the needs of law enforcement, protect the civil liberties and privacy of all Americans, and make our country more secure.”

Yesterday, the Wlall Street Journal reported that the administration planned to shutter the controversial National Applications Office. There was an uproar last year over the spy-satellite program, which would greatly expand the domestic use of military technology. Recently, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, wrote to Napolitano (pdf), saying, “In our view, the NAO is not an issue of urgency.” The chiefs urged Napolitano to instead focus on the goal of “effective sharing of law enforcement information that protects the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.” They said, “we are thus committed to a national framework of privacy and civil liberty protections. We believe that at this time, it is these efforts that should be the priority versus the establishment of the NAO.”

The city of Bozeman, Montana, had a policy requiring that job applicants hand over their passwords to social networking sites. The recent uproar over the privacy-invasive policy has caused an about-face (pdf) by the city, CNet News reports:

The city of Bozeman, Mont., has rescinded its long-standing policy that job applicants provide user names and passwords to social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. [...]

The city stopped the practice as of midday Friday, until it “conducts a more comprehensive evaluation of the practice,” the release said.

Bozeman, which is about 100 miles north of Yellowstone National Park, found itself in the international spotlight this week when the local media reported that the city government’s background check included evaluating job candidates’ suitability based on their social-networking site postings. The city had been doing so for a few years.

The background check form stated: “Please list any and all current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.”

In April, there were rumors that the Obama administration planned to revise the controversial REAL ID national identification system. (The REAL ID Act of 2005 mandates that state driver’s licenses and ID cards follow federal technical standards and verification procedures issued by the Department of Homeland Security.) Now, the Washington Post reports that the administration will introduce new legislation to repeal and revise the REAL ID program. Twelve states have refused to participate in the REAL ID program; Missouri would be the thirteenth, if Gov. Nixon would sign the bill recently passed by his legislature.

I have not yet seen the proposed legislation and will reserve judgment until I do. But I have written before about my objections (pdf) to the current REAL ID system and changes rumored in April. The Washington Post reports:

The new proposal, called Pass ID, would be cheaper, less rigorous and partly funded by federal grants, according to draft legislation that Napolitano’s Senate allies plan to introduce as early as tomorrow. [...]

As governor of Arizona, Napolitano called Real ID “feel-good” legislation not worth the cost, and she signed a state law last year opting out of the plan. As secretary, she said a substitute would “accomplish some of the same goals.” [...] (more…)

The New York Times reports on new federal proposals to improve cybersecurity. In May, the administration released a cybersecurity review, and Obama discussed cyberdefense, emphasizing the protection of civil liberties.

A plan to create a new Pentagon cybercommand is raising significant privacy and diplomatic concerns, as the Obama administration moves ahead on efforts to protect the nation from cyberattack and to prepare for possible offensive operations against adversaries’ computer networks. (more…)

IDG News Service has an interesting article on social networking and data privacy. There’s been a lot of discussion about this; here are some previous posts. From IDG:

CIOs think about privacy the way some people think about exercise: with a sigh and a sense of impending pain. Outside of regulated industries like health care–where patient privacy is paramount–privacy affects CIOs as a corollary of security when, say, a laptop holding millions of people’s records is lost or hackers siphon off customer data.

CIOs think about privacy the way some people think about exercise: with a sigh and a sense of impending pain. [...]
 
[Peter Milla, former CIO and chief privacy officer at Survey Sampling International (SSI)] says most CIOs either focus on technology, or regard privacy as outside their domain, the province of a chief privacy or chief security officer. He finds both attitudes wrongheaded. CIOs, Milla says, should “want to be ahead of the curve” on privacy. (more…)