At the US-Mexico border, there has been significant use of surveillance equipment — unmanned aerial vehicles (also known as “drones”), thermal imaging equipment — and there has also been a plan to expand the use of this equipment, to build a “virtual fence.” The New York Times reported on the Secure Border Initiative (also known as “SBINet”) last year, noting, “The first phase of the $6.7 billion project — a network of towers rigged with cameras, sensors and communications equipment — will cover about 23 miles south of Tucson, in the busiest area for illegal crossing. Within five years, officials said Friday, the fence is expected to extend along the entire 2,000-mile border except for some 200 miles in the area of Big Bend National Park in Texas.”

Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has released a statement on funding for the virtual fence project, which shows the program may be in trouble:

Not only do we have an obligation to secure our borders, we have a responsibility to do so in the most cost effective way possible. The system of sensors and cameras along the Southwest border known as SBInet has been plagued with cost overruns and missed deadlines. Effective immediately, the Department of Homeland Security will redeploy $50 million of Recovery Act funding originally allocated for the SBInet Block 1 to other tested, commercially available security technology along the Southwest border, including mobile surveillance, thermal imaging devices, ultra-light detection, backscatter units, mobile radios, cameras and laptops for pursuit vehicles, and remote video surveillance system enhancements. Additionally, we are freezing all SBInet funding beyond SBInet Block 1’s initial deployment to the Tucson and Ajo regions until the assessment I ordered in January is completed.

Two columns give opposing opinions on privacy. In the Canadian Globe and Mail, Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian says that privacy remains a norm:

What I emphatically submit is that there is little evidence to change our view that privacy remains a social norm. Privacy relates to freedom of choice and control in the sphere of one’s personal information – choices regarding what information you wish to share and, perhaps more important, what you do not want shared with others. What has changed, however, is the means by which personal information is now readily exchanged, at the speed of light. [...]

Let me speak for a moment as a psychologist (in my former life). The human condition requires connection: We are social animals who seek contact with each other. We also seek privacy: moments of solitude, intimacy, quiet, reserve and control – personal control. These interests have co-existed for centuries and must continue to do so, for the human condition requires both. [...] Read more »

The Wall Street Journal reports on a plan by consumer-research firm Nielsen and digital-marketing Firm eXelat to merge online and offline data in order to create more detailed profiles of consumers for targeted behavioral advertising. (Last month, the Financial Times reported on a new deal in the United Kingdom between Yahoo search engine and Nectar, a loyalty-card company, that would link online ads to individuals’ offline purchases, raising privacy questions.)

EXelate Media, a start-up that collects and sells Web data on consumers, is set to announce an alliance Monday with Nielsen, the big consumer-research firm. The two firms say that under the deal, eXelate will tie its data on more than 150 million Internet users to Nielsen’s database, which includes information on 115 million American households, to provide more-detailed profiles of consumers.

“We can build [consumer] profiles from any building blocks,” says Meir Zohar, chief executive of eXelate, which has offices in New York and Israel. “Age, gender, purchase intent, interests, parents, bargain shoppers—you can assemble anything.” Read more »

The Wall Street Journal has another story about how publishing personal info online at social-networking sites, such as Twitter or Facebook, can affect your employment or career at a small company.

These days, bad employee behavior is no longer confined to cubicle walls. Some workers are now sharing disparaging opinions and even proprietary information about their employers on social media – Web forums that in many cases can accessed by anyone, including a company’s clients, investors and competitors. Business experts say that kind of exposure could be particularly troublesome for small enterprises, though there are ways owners can cope and even turn the tables to their advantage.

“It’s much easier for a large company to distance themselves from the actions of one employee than it is for a small firm,” says Robby Slaughter, owner of Slaughter Development LLC, an Indianapolis consulting firm that specializes in workplace productivity. Read more »

The Federal Trade Commission will hold the last of its three roundtables on privacy on March 17 in Washington, D.C. The agency has released its agenda. Panels include:

Panel 1: Internet Architecture and Privacy
Moderators: Loretta Garrison and Naomi Lefkovitz, Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, FTC
Panelists:
John Henry Clippinger, Co-Director, The Law Lab, Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Jules Cohen, Director, Trustworthy Computing Group, Microsoft
Peter Eckersley, Staff Technologist, Electronic Freedom Foundation
Lucy Lynch, Director, Trust and Identity Initiatives, Internet Society
Ari Schwartz, Vice President & Chief Operating Officer, Center for Democracy and Technology
Edward W. Felten, Director, Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University
Drummond Reed, Executive Director, Information Card Foundation

Panel 2: Health Information
Moderators: Loretta Garrison and Manas Mohapatra, Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, FTC
Panelists:
Linda Avey, Founder & President, Brainstorm Research Foundation
Stanley W. Crosley, Co-Director, Indiana University Center for Strategic Health Information Provisioning
Kimberly S. Gray, Chief Privacy Officer, Americas Regions, IMS Health
Deven McGraw, Director, Health Privacy Project, Center for Democracy and Technology
Marc M. Boutin, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer, National Health Council
Jodi Daniel, Director, Office of Policy and Planning, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, Department of Health and Human Services
James Heywood, Co-founder & Chairman, PatientsLikeMe
Deborah Peel, Founder, Patient Privacy Rights

Panel 3: Addressing Sensitive Information
Moderators: Catherine Harrington-McBride and Michelle Rosenthal, Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, FTC Read more »

The Associated Press reports on a new security breach affecting the privacy of Swiss bank account holders.

Information on 24,000 HSBC customers with Swiss accounts has been stolen, the British bank said Thursday, potentially exposing large numbers of international clients to prosecution by tax authorities in their home countries.

A former IT employee of Swiss subsidiary HSBC Private Bank (Suisse) identified by French authorities as Herve Falciani, stole the information between late 2006 and early 2007, the bank said. The accounts, held by individuals worldwide, were all opened before October 2006 and some 9,000 have since been closed. [..]

In recent cases of data theft from banks in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, the information was offered to foreign governments seeking to track down nationals who avoided paying their taxes by hiding money in Swiss accounts.