Saturday, January 28, is International Data Privacy Day. Take the time to think about how privacy is important in your life and how you can protect your rights from being infringed upon. Please also take the time to donate to any number of organizations out there trying to protect your privacy rights.

Visit the official site to find events near your area. Here are a few highlights in the United States and internationally:

Alabama

On Friday, Jan. 27, Cumberland School of Law hosts “Is My Phone Spying On Me or Am I Just An Open Book? An Exploration of Privacy and Mobile Technology.” It will be “a discussion on the legal, ethical, and commercial implications of mobile technology on privacy. Featuring privacy professionals from business, law practice, and the academy, this panel will explore the state of privacy law with respect to mobile technology, the tension between privacy and the utility of data collected from mobile technology, and how organizations handle data collected and transmitted using mobile technology.” Time and location: 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. at Cumberland School of Law at Samford University. For more information: http://cumberland.samford.edu/content/my-phone-spying-me

North Carolina

On Friday, Feb. 3, the UNC School of Information and Library Science and the American Library Association will host “Should Librarians Care About Privacy Anymore?” The free panel/webinar “will feature presentations and panel discussion by Barbara Jones, director of the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom, Anne Klinefelter, associate professor of Law and director of the UNC at Chapel Hill Law Library, Christopher (Cal) Lee, SILS associate professor, Zeynep Tufekci, SILS associate professor, and SILS Dean, Gary Marchionini, as moderator.” Time and location: 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at 08 Peabody Hall, UNC Chapel Hill2 and streaming via webinar. For more information: http://sils.unc.edu/events/2012/data-privacy-webinar  Read more »

In an opinion column at the Washington Post, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley discussing how the United States’ expanding security powers can affect individual privacy and liberties:

Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit. [...] Read more »

Yesterday, Privacy Lives joined others in going dark in protest of the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). The groups include major sites such as Google, Wikipedia and the Internet Archive (pdf), as well as arts groups such as the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, Dance/USA, Fractured Atlas and National Alliance for Media Art and Culture, and groups such as Doctors Without Borders, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Online News Association and Global Voices. Civil liberties and privacy groups such as Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation also joined the protest.

Why did such a variety of groups speak out against SOPA and PIPA? Simply put: The bills would allow copyright owners to get court orders to block not just content that infringes on their copyrights but copyright owners could block entire Web sites and the bills would allow the U.S. attorney general to block content or Web sites that the Justice Department determines is engaging in criminal copyright infringement. Court orders under SOPA/PIPA would mean: Internet Service Providers would be required to prevent access to the sites, U.S. search engines would have to remove links to the Web sites from their indexes, and payment service firms (PayPal, credit card companies) would be required to cut off funding for the Web sites. And Web sites would have few ways to effectively appeal these court orders.

Privacy Lives and other protesting groups are not supporting theft of intellectual property or copyright infringement. The problem is that the legislation is so broadly written that, as Public Knowledge explains it: “They sweep in every site that includes links, not just the ‘worst of the worst.’ PIPA applies to ‘information location tools,’ a comically over-broad legal concept that includes things such as a ‘directory, index, reference, pointer, or hypertext link.’ Policing every link on a site is an impossible burden for even the best intentioned site.” And EFF says that: “Broad immunity provisions (combined with a threat of litigation) would encourage service providers to overblock innocent users or even block websites voluntarily. This gives content companies every incentive to create unofficial blacklists of websites, which service providers would be under pressure to block without regard to the First Amendment. [...] SOPA gives the government new powers to go after sites that provide information about tools that might be used to bypass the blacklists — even though these are often the same tools used by democratic activists around the world to bypass Internet censorship mechanisms implemented by authoritarian governments like Iran and China.”

Speak out against SOPA and PIPA. Join in the protest to protect our civil liberties. You can sign up at Public Knowledge or EFF. If you can, donate to these groups so they can continue to fight for your rights.

Tomorrow, Privacy Lives will join others in going dark in protest of the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). Congress is about to censor the Internet, even though the majority of Americans are opposed to these bills. We need to stop these bills to protect our rights to free speech, privacy, and liberty. Learn more at Public Knowledge.

In an opinion column at Digital Trends, Geoff Duncan discusses how he believes 2012 seems to look like “1984,” the George Orwell book about a dystopian future where constant government surveillance is the norm:

A mantra of the Internet age, articulated in 1984 by WELL founder Stewart Brand, is that “information wants to be free.” Back then — the days of 360K floppies and 1200 baud modems — Brand was referring to digital technology making information ever easier to distribute, copy, and remix than their old-school analog counterparts. The oft-forgotten corollary Brand offered at the same time was “Information also wants to be expensive,” because particular items, while perhaps of no interest to one person, can be “immeasurably valuable” to someone else.

As we head into 2012, the conflict Brand articulated between information’s “want” to be both free and expensive is taking on new dimensions. So-called “digital content” like books, music, and television is increasingly falling into the expensive category, thanks to online stores, digital distribution, copyright, and DRM. Meanwhile, information about ourselves — like our location, habits, activities, possessions, transactions, preferences, and personal information — is increasingly becoming “free,” often accessible to advertisers, corporations, and governments without our explicit consent. Or, in many cases, proffered up willingly in exchange for things like coupons.

As we enter 2012, the tension between “free” and “expensive” information is becoming more charged than ever. What could 2012 bring… and will it end up resembling Orwell’s 1984? Here are a few of the threats on the horizon.

The Stop Online Piracy Act and its companion piece, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) are bills currently being crafted by U.S. Congress aiming to expand the capabilities of U.S. law enforcement agencies to combat copyright and intellectual property infringement — piracy. [...] Read more »

Last year, there were a number of bills introduced in Congress concerning privacy and civil liberties, but most have stalled. Some bills introduced last year: Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced the “Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance (GPS) Act of 2011″ (archive pdf; THOMAS status link for H.R. 2168); Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, introduced the Do-Not-Track Online Act of 2011 (pdf) (Do Not Track proposals would allow consumers to restrict the data gathered by Web sites and marketers on the consumers’ online browsing or purchases); Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, introduced the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2011 (archive pdf) (Leahy first introduced this legislation in 2005 and had sponsored the legislation three times since); Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), chairman of the subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) introduced the Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011 (pdf); and, there has been much discussion of revising the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (“ECPA,” also known as Title 18 § 2511 of the United States Code) and several bills have been introduced, which are discussed in this CRS report.

Now, the National Journal reports that privacy will remain a hot topic, even though legislation on the issue has stalled in Congress.

While few expect Congress to pass broad privacy legislation, privacy will still get a lot of attention in 2012, starting with the release in the coming weeks of two highly anticipated federal reports providing guidance on protecting consumer privacy online.

Both the Commerce Department and the Federal Trade Commission are set to release separate final reports with recommendations on how to improve online privacy.

Commerce, which could release its final report the last week of January, will outline the Obama administration’s policy on the issue. Since issuing its draft report in December 2010, the administration has called on Congress to pass legislation that would provide consumers with privacy protections based on the Fair Information Practice Principles embraced by many countries. These include providing consumers with notice about the information being collected about them, choice, access to the information, and security to ensure the data is protected. Read more »