In November, Privacy Lives joined 28 groups (including the Center for Democracy & Technology, Center for National Security Studies, and Special Libraries Association) in sending a letter (pdf) to the White House urging that the administration make the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board selection process “a priority and ensure that nominations to the Board are made to the Senate before the end of the first session of the 111th Congress, so that a Board can be seated early next year.” Several months later, the Board remains vacant and no nominations have been made. (For the history of the Board, read a previous post.)

Now, Privacy Lives joins more than 30 groups (including the ACLU, American Library Association, Defending Dissent Foundation and September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows) in again urging (pdf) President Obama nominate individuals to fill the board. The groups explained that it is more critical than ever that the board convene. “As a result of the attempted Christmas Day bombing, your Administration and Congress are considering numerous policy changes that impact the privacy and freedoms of Americans, including expanding watch lists and more intrusive searches at airports. It is crucial that you nominate qualified individuals to serve on the PCLOB, so that it may begin to provide guidance as new policies and procedures are developed.” Read more »

Security expert Bruce Schneier has an opinion column at CNN about surveillance cameras:

Pervasive security cameras don’t substantially reduce crime. This fact has been demonstrated repeatedly: in San Francisco, California, public housing; in a New York apartment complex; in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; in Washington; in study after study in both the U.S. and the U.K. Nor are they instrumental in solving many crimes after the fact.

There are exceptions, of course, and proponents of cameras can always cherry-pick examples to bolster their argument. These success stories are what convince us; our brains are wired to respond more strongly to anecdotes than to data. But the data are clear: CCTV cameras have minimal value in the fight against crime. Read more »

The Associated Press reports on the ongoing negotiations in the U.S. Senate over reauthorization of provision of the USA PATRIOT Act:

Senate Democrats have retreated from adding new privacy protections to the nation’s primary counterterrorism law, as Republicans refused to lend support and portrayed the majority as willing to harm terror investigations.

Lacking the necessary 60-vote supermajority, Democratic leaders settled on a one-year extension of expiring surveillance and seizure provisions of the USA Patriot Act.

They tossed aside curbs – and greater scrutiny – on government authority agreed to by the Senate Judiciary Committee in October after spirited debate. Read more »

Lauren Gelman, former Executive Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, published an article a few months ago concerning privacy rights. “Privacy, Free Speech, and ‘Blurry-Edged’ Social Networks” notes:

Every day users upload personally identifiable pictures, movies, data, and stories to the web. A complex and often relatively complete “digital dossier” of some individuals can be assembled from their up- loads. These are not dossiers compiled by covert spies skulking in dark corners with penlight cameras, nor by government agents scouring the data files held by big data aggregators. Rather, these dossiers are the result of sometimes extraordinary personal accounts of life’s ups and downs told in the first person. Although some people would not share these stories with individuals they had not known, many individuals do post detailed accounts of their lives on a medium that is accessible to millions. [...]

Some content on the Internet is not written for me, yet I can still access it. Which begs the question: why do people post content on a medium available to the whole world when that content is not intended for the whole world? Read more »

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has released new survey, “The Future of the Internet,” which touches on privacy issues. The group interviewed about 900 respondents about the Internet of 2020. Included in the report was a discussion about the future of anonymous online activity.

Respondents were asked to explain their choice and “share your view about the future of anonymous activity online by the year 2020.” What follows is a selection of the hundreds of written elaborations and some of the recurring themes in those answers:

The pressures for authentication of internet users are growing and many are legitimate. New methods to accomplish that are being explored but it is not yet clear which ones will prevail in the marketplace. [...]

“We’re moving into an increasingly authenticated and permission-based world. We’ll be known to others as a condition of doing what we want to do. That may not be all bad news – we’ll get loyalty points, after all – but we’ll have to ensure that traditionally anonymous political speech and criticism is somehow protected. When it comes to commerce, anonymity is over.” — Susan Crawford, former member of President Obama’s National Economic Council, now on the law faculty at the University of Michigan

“Anonymity online will gradually become a lot like anonymity in the real world. When we encounter it, we’ll take a firm grip on our wallet and leave the neighborhood as soon as possible — unless we’re doing something we’re ashamed of.” – Stewart Baker, internet legal specialist at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson [...] Read more »

The Chicago Tribune reports on the privacy and anonymity (or lack of) afforded online commenters:

Write something threatening or defamatory and the mask of anonymity can be removed. It’s technologically simple to track the source of a comment; the more difficult question is when it should be done.

Policies vary as much as the Web sites that create them, and when site operators do reveal the identity of anonymous commenters, they balance values such as free speech, public safety and the ability to foster an online community.

“If people … are afraid that some editor is going to look behind the administrative interface, then (they) won’t come and talk on the site, and they certainly won’t be as willing to talk about controversial topics,” said David Ardia, director of Harvard Law School’s Citizen Media Law Project. Read more »