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Is it time for Web publishers and their users to have the privacy talk? At most Web sites, privacy policies are ridiculously long and convoluted scrolls of legalese that only a hearty privacy watchdog would read. For most users it remains a mystery just how publishers collect, use and share the data trails consumers leave behind while traversing a site. But publishers now are partnering more deeply with third party ad networks who plant their own cookies in their users' browsers and hit them again with ads out on their own networks with other publishers. How should a site broach the topic of privacy and ownership of data with its own customers? The industry-funded Future of Privacy Forum is hoping to get at this issue in a new research initiative that explores different ways sites can communicate with users about their online advertising experience and how a use's data trail is recorded and used. The study will try to find ways that publishers can raise user awareness about the use of online behavioral data and be more transparent about how it is harvested and shared.

Behavioral targeting is not bad as a concept but advertisers would have the public opt-in by default without knowing what is being collected and what it is being used for. On the other hand not many in the public seem very concerned about this subject.

The Internet contributes about US$300 billion a year to the U.S. economy, and U.S. lawmakers should be careful about tinkering with the advertising-supported Internet content model in the name of privacy, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) said. An IAB-commissioned study by two Harvard University professors, released Wednesday, found that 1.2 million U.S. residents are directly employed in Internet-related jobs, and another 1.9 million U.S. jobs support those Internet workers. IAB released the study Wednesday, as 30 publishers of small Web sites converged on Washington, D.C., to urge U.S. lawmakers to avoid passing legislation that would harm their ad-supported business models. Chief among those publishers' concern was talk in the U.S. Congress about requiring Web sites to gain opt-in permission from users before tracking their Web habits as a way to deliver personalized advertising to them. Many users wouldn't give the permission, and without offering targeted advertising, many small Web sites could fold, some small publishers said. Small Web publishers and sellers "are the face of small business" in the U.S. in recent years, said Susan Martin, publisher of Ikeafans.com, a home improvement site.

Guess what? That unlocked rant you put on your MySpace profile is open to the public and can be seen by anyone with a computer. Imagine that! Cynthia Moreno learned this the hard way. A judge ruled earlier this month that it was not an invasion of her privacy when a local newspaper published a rant pulled from her MySpace blog. After a visit to her hometown of Coalinga, Calif., college student Moreno penned a 700-word blog entry titled "An Ode to Coalinga" that opened with "the older I get, the more I realize how much I despise Coalinga." Moreno subsequently deleted the blog entry, but Roger Campbell, principal of Coalinga High School, discovered it before the deletion and handed it over to his friend Pamela Pond, editor of the Coalinga Record newspaper. Pond then published the rant in its entirety as a letter to the editor, printing Cynthia's full name. The Moreno family was met with death threats and shots were fired outside their home. Cynthia's father David was forced to close his 20-year-old family business, and the family moved to another town. The family sued the newspaper and the Coalinga-Huron Unified School District for invasion of privacy and infliction of emotional distress. The case against the newspaper was dismissed on free speech grounds, but the case against Campbell and the school district was allowed to proceed. Campbell did not violate Moreno's rights when he handed over her rant to Pond because Moreno's blog entry was published on the Internet and available for anyone to see, according to the Superior Court of Fresno County.

Now that behavioral targeting has become more pervasive (and more effective), it is being talked about not only by publishers and advertisers, but also by privacy advocates -- organizations like the NAI and IAB and, in Washington, the FTC. At issue is if BT players are doing enough to disclosure to consumers how BT works and offering them the opportunity to opt out of being tracked by BT vendors and publishers. There has been much discussion about how to regulate behavioral marketers; but no solution that satisfies everyone. The BT industry so far has contended that website privacy policies are sufficient disclosure since many of them contain links to opts out opportunities like the NAI site. Google and Bluekai have announced 'preference pages' or registries that allow Web users to say what type of BT they are interested in receiving. But, the other, more common option is to put that information in the Privacy Policy of the site. But the problem with that is that no matter where disclosures are placed on the service provider's site, most people won't ever see them. How will a customer visiting Retail SiteX know that Company Y is going to use their browsing behavior to later display relevant ads to them as they surf the Web on Network Z? The average customer won't. The only way a customer will know what forms of BT advertisers are using is if the advertisers themselves tell them. I think that it's time for advertisers to step up in this privacy debate. Thus far the pressure for disclosure has been placed on networks, behavioral marketing providers and publishers. The key players in those industries have done a good job of becoming more transparent (though there is still work ahead of us), while advertisers haven't been asked to do anything. Advertisers are clearly benefiting from behavioral marketing, and its time they disclosed what type of behavioral marketing they participate in, and allow customers to opt-out. How they do this is open for discussion: Tag each

"Although physicians support the use of electronic health records, concerns about potential privacy breaches remain an issue, according to two research articles published in the January 2010 issue of the Journal of the American Informatics Association (JAMIA), in its premiere issue as one of 30 specialty titles published by the BMJ (British Medical Journal) Group, UK. "

Chris Nolter Department store proprietor John Wanamaker is famously said to have quipped, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half." The founder of Wanamaker's department store is known as the "father of modern advertising." His innovations, in late 19th-century and early 20th-century Philadelphia and New York, included publishing reliable prices in advertisements, copyrighting pitches, offering money-back guarantees and hiring a full-time writer to produce ad copy. A century later, advertising professionals have gotten more sophisticated and adapted to radio, television, outdoor and digital media. Wanamaker's observation about the value and effectiveness remains profound for merchants and manufacturers, as well as for media outlets that have seen broadcasting or print-advertising dollars reduced to digital pennies. The Internet has made the amount of space that can be filled with advertising virtually infinite, while the recession has all but emptied the advertising coffers of automakers, financial services firms and real estate companies. While digital media has disrupted the traditional ad business, it also presents the tantalizing promise to answer Wanamaker's question. Prior generations of digital advertising gave us spam and banner ads that tempted us with animated mortgage holders wildly dancing on the roof of their home or prizes for whacking a mole. The new proposition is that digital ads will allow advertisers to target audiences and track their returns on investment, and provide users with advertising and content that is more relevant. More than 400 advertising networks have come into existence to sell ad space on the expanding inventory of Web sites and pages. These networks connect advertisers with online publishers, often shopping ad space that a Web site's own sales staff cannot fill. Many of the networks cater to niches, such as food, wine, cars or sports. Increasingly, they are selling access to a

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Electronic medical recordkeeping may not cut the overall cost of care, but by eliminating redundant procedures and reducing errors, quality may be improved. When physician Andrew Wiesenthal needs to work out a problem, he runs around Lake Merritt, across the street from his Oakland (Calif.) office at Kaiser Permanente. As one of the main drivers behind Kaiser's decades-long, multibillion-dollar effort to overhaul the way patient health records are kept, Wiesenthal has had a lot of laps to run. Doctors and other medical professionals across the country will be working through similar challenges in the coming years. President Barack Obama plans to spend $17.2 billion to induce care providers to maintain patient records electronically, scrapping the current paper-based system. The Obama Administration wants electronic health records for every American by 2014. Obama's predecessor also made a big push for electronic recordkeeping, and many doctors and hospital administrators see upgrading recordkeeping as a good way to improve care. Yet, fewer than 2% of acute care hospitals have a comprehensive electronic health record system in place, with another 8% to 12% using a basic system, according to a study published by The New England Journal of Medicine in March. Adoption isn't much better among physicians. Only 4% have a comprehensive system in place, with another 13% using basic systems, according to a study published in the journal in July. Kaiser Permanente is one of the few exceptions. Today, all of its medical clinics and two-thirds of its hospitals operate in a paperless environment and the rest are scheduled to be completely digitized by next year. Across the system, about 14,000 physicians access electronic medical records for 8.7 million patients in nine states and the District of Columbia.

Google will unveil new privacy measures today that will give consumers more control over behavioral targeting. Now, when Google serves banner ads on outside publishers' sites, the ads will include links that provide more information explaining why they were served. Clicking through will lead to details about the company's behavioral advertising program, which categorizes consumers as interested in particular types of goods or services based on the sites they visited. The program is only in beta for now, but once Google signs up publishers, consumers will be able to view the categories they have been placed in--such as "interested in travel"--and also tell Google to remove them from whatever buckets they wish. Consumers also will be able to opt out of the program permanently via a browser plug-in. Or, if people want to receive ads for certain types of products, they can edit their profiles to reflect that--in effect, opting in to particular types of ads. Google's new measures come at a time when online behavioral targeting is facing increased scrutiny. Last month, two Federal Trade Commissioners warned that the online advertising industry could face new laws if it didn't take steps to self-regulate on privacy issues. Recently, Google rival Yahoo announced enhancements to its privacy policies. Among other changes, Yahoo said it would allow consumers to opt out of behavioral targeting on its own site. Google's move drew praise from the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Mike Zaneis, vice president for public policy. "It's really a consumer empowerment tool, which is great," he said. "It's one more example of how industry is competing on the privacy issue, to the benefit of consumers--and also to the benefit of businesses."

We've all heard the argument before: "Why should you worry about the government looking into your personal records if you have nothing to hide?" Daniel J. Solove, an associate professor of law at The George Washington University Law School, analyzes that argument in a recently published paper titled "I've Got Nothing to Hide and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy." Solove argues that "the question assumes faulty assumptions about privacy and its value." Those who make the "nothing to hide" argument fail to understand the chilling effect that surveillance has on public discourse, the fact that small bits of private data (which an individual may not object to being uncovered) when put together form a larger and more intimate profile (which an individual may object to), and the mistake of having one's profile mistakenly associated with a group that is labeled as threatening. Here's an excerpt from the paper, which was published in the latest issue of the San Diego Law Review: [T]he problem with the "nothing to hide" argument is that it focuses on just one or two particular kinds of privacy problems - the disclosure of personal information or surveillance - and not others. It assumes a particular view about what privacy entails, and it sets the terms for debate in a manner that is often unproductive. It is important to distinguish here between two ways of justifying a program such as the NSA surveillance and data mining program. First is to not recognize a problem. This is how the "nothing to hide" argument works. It denies even the existence of a problem. The second manner of justifying such a program is to acknowledge the problems but contend that the benefits of the NSA program outweigh the privacy harms. The first justification influences the second, for the low value given to privacy is based upon a narrow view of the problem. The key misunderstanding is that the "nothing to hide" argument views privacy in a particular way - as a

"Part one of a two-part series: Facebook, the global phenomenon in Web-based social media, rolled out a massive overhaul of its privacy protection policies and technology this week-and in so doing may have drawn up a playbook for healthcare as well, industry experts say. The privacy upgrade gives its 350 million worldwide users increased control over who has access to some of, but not all, the information on their personal pages. These new, so-called "granular" controls-specifically those embedded in the site's "publisher" function, which enables a user to post new material to his or her Facebook pages-reach down to the level of discrete data elements. The new controls, for example, allow a user to restrict who gets to see each newly posted photo or typed comment"

"Faced with increasing pressure from Washington, the Interactive Advertising Bureau launched a public service campaign on Thursday aimed at educating consumers about behavioral targeting. The online campaign, created pro bono by WPP's Schematic, features rich media banner ads with copy like "Advertising is creepy" and "Hey, this banner can tell where you live. Mind if we come over and sell you stuff?" More than one dozen publishers -- including Microsoft, Google's YouTube, and AOL -- have committed to donate a combined 500 million impressions for the initiative. The campaign comes as policymakers are questioning whether data collection by marketers violates consumers' privacy. Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) has said he plans to introduce a bill that could require Web companies to notify users about online ad targeting, and in some circumstances, obtain their explicit consent. In addition, the Federal Trade Commission has criticized the industry for using dense privacy policies to inform people about behavioral targeting, or tracking people online and sending them ads based on sites visited. In a meeting with reporters Thursday morning, IAB President and CEO Randall Rothenberg said one goal of the campaign is to address regulators' concerns that consumers don't understand behavioral advertising. "

"A German computer scientist has published details of the secret code used to protect the conversations of more than 4bn mobile phone users. Karsten Nohl, working with other experts, has spent the past five months cracking the algorithm used to encrypt calls using GSM technology. GSM is the most popular standard for mobile networks around the world. The work could allow anyone - including criminals - to eavesdrop on private phone conversations. Mr Nohl told the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin that the work showed that GSM security was "inadequate". "

"If you're concerned about Google retaining your personal data, then you must be doing something you shouldn't be doing. At least that's the word from Google CEO Eric Schmidt. "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," Schmidt tells CNBC, sparking howls of incredulity from the likes of Gawker. But the bigger news may be that Schmidt has actually admitted there are cases where the search giant is forced to release your personal data. "If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines - including Google - do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities." There's also the possibility of subpoenas. And hacks. But if any of this bothers you, you should be ashamed of yourself. According to Eric Schmidt. Gawker highlights the irony of Schmidt's typically haughty proclamations. After all, this is the man who banned CNet for a year after the news site published information about him it had gleaned from, yes, Google. But the larger point here is that Schmidt isn't even addressing the issue at hand. Per usual. When the privacy question appears, Google likes to talk about the people asking the questions. But the problem lies elsewhere: with the millions upon millions blissfully unaware of the questions. If you're concerned about your online privacy, you can always put the kibosh on Google's tracking cookies. You can avoid signing in to Google accounts. And, yes, you can avoid using Google for anything Eric Schmidt thinks you shouldn't be doing. But most web users don't even realize Google is hoarding their data. CNBC asks Schmidt: "People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they be?" But he answers by scoffing at those who don't trust Google at all. Not that you'd expect anythin

Marcia Angell MD is a well-known, respected physician, long-time editor of NEJM. So it was a bit of a shock today when Amy Romano, blogger for Lamaze International, sent me this quote: "It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine".

Interesting quote by former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine

Clayton Christensen first identified the concept of the disruptive innovation in the Innovator's Dilemma. The basic idea is this: a new technology slowly undermines an existing, dominant technology, by starting out cheaper and "worse," then slowly improving until it is a full replacement for the dominant one, but with newer, more flexible capabilities, and usually a lower cost basis. Classic examples of disruptive technologies include the PC (which disrupted mainframes and minicomputers) and desktop publishing (which disrupted the print industry).

A year ago, we talked about reaching for Terabit Ethernet, the next power-of-10 increase in speed over the state of the art today. Now, researchers have demonstrated one way to do that. In a paper published in the Feb. 16 edition of Optics Express, the researchers detail their approach for de-multiplexing signals at high speeds, claiming that they were able to achieve 640Gbps over fiber-optic lines with no errors. The material they used in the chip is chalcogenide, and Australian researchers were talking about the high-speed networking possibilities of the material last summer. Calling it "just a piece of scratched glass," they said it could potentially be cheap to produce.

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By now, many employees are uncomfortably aware that their every keystroke at work, from email on office computers to text messages on company phones, can be monitored legally by their employers. What employees typically don't expect is for the company to spy on them while on password-protected sites using nonwork computers. But even that privacy could be in jeopardy. A case brewing in federal court in New Jersey pits bosses against two employees who were complaining about their workplace on an invite-only discussion group on MySpace.com, a social-networking site owned by News Corp., publisher of The Wall Street Journal. The case tests whether a supervisor who managed to log into the forum -- and then fired employees who badmouthed supervisors and customers there -- had the right to do so. The case has some legal and privacy experts concerned that companies are intruding into areas that their employees had considered off limits. "The question is whether employees have a right to privacy in their non-work-created communications with each other. And I would think the answer is that they do," said Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment expert and partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP in New York. The legal landscape is murky. For the most part, employers don't need a reason to fire nonunion workers. But state laws in California, New York and Connecticut protect employees who engage in lawful, off-duty activities from being fired or disciplined, according to a report prepared by attorneys at the firm Proskauer Rose LLP. While private conversations might be covered under those laws, none of the statutes specifically addresses social networking or blogging. Thus, privacy advocates expect to see more of these legal challenges. In February, three police officers in Harrison, N.Y., were suspended after they allegedly made lewd remarks about the town mayor on a Facebook account. The officers mistakenly thought the remarks were protected with a password, but city officials view

The Homeland Security Department's privacy office will hold a conference to explore the use of social media as if affects security and privacy. The "Government 2.0: Privacy and Best Practices" conference will be held June 22 to June 23 in Washington and is open to the public. The workshop is meant to help agencies use Web 2.0 technologies in ways to protect privacy and security, and to explore the best practices for implementing President Barack Obama's memo on open government that was released in January, according to a notice published in the federal register April 17. Panelists will discuss topics such as transparency and participation in government, privacy and legal concerns brought by the government's use of social media, and how the government can best use the technologies while protecting privacy rights during the conference, DHS officials said. DHS is asking for comments by June 1 on topics such as: * How the government is using social media. * The risks, benefits and operational concerns that come from government use of the technologies. * Privacy, security and legal issues raised by the government's use of social media. * Recommendations on best practices for government use of the technologies.

Purdue University last month reported its seventh data breach in the past four years. But Purdue is hardly alone. According to my records, over 300 publicized privacy incidents have occurred at U.S. institutions of higher learning since 2001, with at least 53 colleges and universities experiencing multiple breaches (see table at end of article). The regular stream of university data-breach reports has prompted Adam Dodge, assistant director for information security at Eastern Illinois University, to devote a blog - Educational Security Incidents - to the topic. When I last covered the issue four years ago (see "Security breaches challenge academia's 'open society' "), universities were the leading sector for publicized breaches. The same is true today. What's going on? Why haven't things changed? John Correlli of Los Angeles-based JMC Privacy Consulting Group has some answers. Correlli recently published a detailed analysis of the topic, "Breaches in the Academia Sector." Correlli identifies the top three root causes of university breaches: unauthorized access, usually inside jobs; accidental online exposures; and stolen laptops. "Privacy governance in academia is far too frequently thrown into the laps of the IT folks, who are then told, implicitly or explicitly, that privacy isn't a priority until it's a problem," Correlli told me.

Last week, President Barack Obama convened a health-care summit in Washington to identify programs that would improve quality and restrain burgeoning costs. He stated that all his policies would be based on rigorous scientific evidence of benefit. The flagship proposal presented by the president at this gathering was the national adoption of electronic medical records -- a computer-based system that would contain every patient's clinical history, laboratory results, and treatments. This, he said, would save some $80 billion a year, safeguard against medical errors, reduce malpractice lawsuits, and greatly facilitate both preventive care and ongoing therapy of the chronically ill. Following his announcement, we spoke with fellow physicians at the Harvard teaching hospitals, where electronic medical records have been in use for years. All of us were dumbfounded, wondering how such dramatic claims of cost-saving and quality improvement could be true. The basis for the president's proposal is a theoretical study published in 2005 by the RAND Corporation, funded by companies including Hewlett-Packard and Xerox that stand to financially benefit from such an electronic system. And, as the RAND policy analysts readily admit in their report, there was no compelling evidence at the time to support their theoretical claims. Moreover, in the four years since the report, considerable data have been obtained that undermine their claims. The RAND study and the Obama proposal it spawned appear to be an elegant exercise in wishful thinking. To be sure, there are real benefits from electronic medical records. Physicians and nurses can readily access all the information on their patients from a single site. Particularly helpful are alerts in the system that warn of potential dangers in the prescribing of a certain drug for a patient on other therapies that could result in toxicity. But do these benefits translate into $80 billion annually in cost-savings? The cost-savings from avoi