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January 26, 2009 - As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama made his position on abortion very clear. During his campaign, he stated that he would sign the Freedom of Choice Act and that he opposed restrictions on Partial Birth Abortions. Now as President, Obama used the 36th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision to reiterate his quite extreme position. Obama made several statements about "ensuring that our daughters have the same rights and opportunities as our sons...." However, his key statement appears to demonstrate an utter misunderstanding of the legal aspects of abortion, was that government "should not intrude on our most private family matters." An Associated Press subheader put it as "the ruling legalizing abortion represented a broader principle that government should not intrude on private family matters." Obama seemingly fails to understand three things about the "right to privacy." First, in that as far as it has been applied to abortion and contraception (Griswold vs. Connecticut); it is not a principle about "family matters." It is a principle purely about individual choice. Under Roe, no one else in the "family" has any say about the abortion decision. If the woman is not married to the father of the baby, he is not "family" anyway. Second, the right to privacy is not absolute. Third and most important, that under Roe, the "right to privacy" is secondary to two considerations about the unborn child: whether or not the unborn child is a "person," or at least "potential life." For these last two, we can turn to Roe itself. The "Right to Privacy" The majority opinion of Roe admits that, "The Constitution does explicitly mention any right of privacy." Majority author Harry Blackmun cites various past court decisions which recognize personal rights that are "fundamental" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty." Since these private rights had been found to have extension to areas such as marriage, procreation, contraception

Washington insiders say that the Obama administration will be more aggressive with actions to protect consumers online. Two consumer advocacy groups, the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, have asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate behavioral targeting practices aimed at mobile phone users. The day the FTC received the request and one week before the Obama administration took office, four marketing and advertising associations announced their intent to create an enhanced set of self-regulatory principles for online behavioral advertising. The American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers, Direct Marketing Association and Interactive Advertising Bureau are said to be reviewing the areas for self-regulation set forth in the FTC's proposed self-regulatory principles issued in December 2007. As marketers, our boundaries for targeting campaigns continue to widen as technology improves. We collect more information than ever before. This, along with the fear of federal regulation, may create a trend for more marketers to take on a dual role as a privacy professional. The International Association for Privacy Professionals (IAPP, https://www.privacyassociation.org/) provides privacy education and certification for privacy professionals.

Last week, a commercial Twitter spamming tool (tweettornado.com) pitching itself as a "fully automated advertising software for Twitter" hit the market, potentially empowering phishers, spammers, malware authors and everyone in between with the ability to generate bogus Twitter accounts and spread their campaigns across the micro-blogging service. TweetTornado allows users to create unlimited Twitter accounts, add unlimited number of followers, which combined with its ability to automatically update all of bogus accounts through proxy servers with an identical message make it the perfect Twitter spam tool. TweetTornado's core functionality relies on a simple flaw in Twitter's new user registration process. Tackling it will not render the tool's functionality useless, but will at least ruin the efficiency model. Sadly, Twitter doesn't require you to have a valid email address when registering a new account, so even though a nonexistent@email.com is used, the user is still registered and is allowed to use Twitter. So starting from the basics of requiring a validation by clicking on a link which will only be possible if a valid email is provided could really make an impact in this case, since it its current form the Twitter registration process can be so massively abused that I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. Once a Twitter spammer has been detected, the associated, and now legitimate email could be banned from further registrations, potentially emptying the inventory of bogus emails, and most importantly making it more time consuming for spammers to abuse Twitter in general. If TweetTornado is indeed the advertising tool of choice for Twitter marketers, I "wonder" why is the originally blurred by the author Twitter account used in the proof (twitter.com/AarensAbritta) currently suspended, the way the rest of the automatically registered ones are? Pretty evident TOS violation, since two updates and 427 followers in two hours clearly indicat

A coalition of privacy groups today urged the Obama Administration to defend California's landmark financial privacy law against the banking industry's legal efforts to overturn it. The US Supreme Court is currently considering taking up the banks' appeal of a 2008 decision by the 9th Circuit Court upholding almost all provisions of the Financial Information Privacy Act of 2003 (SB 1 - Speier). On March 9th, the Supreme Court invited the Obama Administration to voice its opinion on the California privacy law. The case is American Bankers Association v. Brown, Supreme Court Docket Number 08-730. Letters to President Obama and Solicitor General Elena Kagan were signed by The Consumer Federation of California, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, CALPIRG, Consumers Union, Consumer Action, The Older Women's League, The California Alliance for Retired Americans, and Chris Larsen, Propser Marketplace, and founder of Californians for Privacy Now, the organization that spearheaded a 2003 ballot initiative campaign that turned fierce banking industry opposition into acquiescence with SB 1. "This represents a defining moment for privacy rights" the letter states. We ask you to stand with consumers by telling the Supreme Court to reject the banks' appeal in Brown." Privacy advocates support the State of California's position in this legal matter, which is that there is no merit to the appeal filed by the American Bankers Association. At issue is whether federal laws preempt portions of California law that regulate the sharing of private consumer information within a financial institution's family of affiliates.

The private correspondence of millions of people who use social networking sites could be tracked and saved on a "big brother" database, under new plans being drawn up by the UK government. Ministers revealed yesterday that they were considering policing messages sent via sites such as MySpace and Facebook, alongside plans to store information about every phone call, e-mail and internet visit made by everyone in the United Kingdom. There was immediate uproar from opposition parties, privacy campaigners and security experts who said the plans were over-the-top and unworkable. There have long been proposals, following an European Union directive in the wake of the July 2005 bombings in London, for emails and internet usage to be tracked in order to guard against future terrorist attacks.

Online advertising firm Phorm is pressing ahead with plans to launch more than a year after it first drew criticism from some privacy advocates. Phorm executives will meet with members of the public on Tuesday, following a similar meeting in 2008. The service has proved controversial for some campaigners who believe it breaks UK data interception laws. The firm received clearance from the Home Office and police closed a file on BT trials of the technology. "We have been supported or endorsed by all of the leading stakeholders," Phorm chief executive Kent Ertugrul told BBC News. "Ofcom, the Information Commissioner's Office, the Home Office, leading privacy advocates like Simon Davies, the advertising industry and publishers have all backed our service," he said. He added: "We are very, very happy with where we are one year on." Trawling websites Phorm's system works by "trawling" websites visited by users whose ISPs have signed up to the service and for whom the technology is switched on, and then matches keywords from the content of the page to an anonymous profile. Users are then targeted with adverts that are more tailored to their interests on partner websites that have signed up to Phorm's technology.

Profile Optimization True Story: I'm at a party a few months ago - not the usual raucous affair that us search and social media types get into but a full on wine and cheese extravaganza. The kind of shindig Republicans go to and then accuse Democrats of loving when they get up in front of a "Joe the Plumber" type crowd. But I digress… After far too much wine the discussion turned to crazy work environments and I naturally brought up the Fortress of Googletude and it's predilection for hallway scooter parking and riding. A fellow party-go-er who I'll call "Natasha" to protect her identity, nodded and said, 'Yes it's true, I've been there too!" This led to a long, room-clearing talk about search and social media, the kind of talk that true geeks engage in while their spouses go off to chat about politics and religion. Somewhere between bottles Natasha said to me "Have you seen Google People Search?" "Google what now?" I replied. She went on to describe an internally searchable database that the Google folks showed her of people sorted by interests and web habits, ready to be rolled out to advertisers at some point in the future. Thank goodness for the red wine clause in their NDA. Well the future arrived today, at least partially, with Google's announcement that behavioral targeting is being rolled out to the AdWords content network. As the Googlelords put it: "With interest-based advertising, you will be able to reach users based on your past interactions with them, such as their visits to your website. We'll also provide interest categories, such as "sports enthusiasts," so you can reach the audience of your choice. Whether your goal is to drive brand awareness or increase responses to your ads, these capabilities can help expand the success of your campaigns." This is a most effective riposte to the OPA's announcement of new, ludicrous banner ad standards - why futz around with annoying crap no-one will clic

Following complaints from Republicans, the White House has shut down a two-week-old e-mail tip line launched to take reports from citizens of "disinformation about health insurance reform." "An ironic development is that the launch of an online program meant to provide facts about health insurance reform has itself become the target of fear-mongering and online rumors that are the tactics of choice for the defenders of the status quo," wrote White House new media director Macon Phillips in announcing the change. "The White House takes online privacy very seriously," he added. The e-mail tip line, flag@whitehouse.gov, was launched Aug. 4 as part of the White House's Health Insurance Reform Reality Check effort, a campaign-style rapid-response effort reminiscent of the war room Obama for America launched in the summer of 2008 to fight online rumors about the then-senator's patriotism and religion. But coming from the head of state, rather than a political candidate, the new effort quickly sparked concern among Republicans about the propriety of government collecting information on private citizens' political speech.

On a side table in his Washington offices, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz keeps a framed image of Arnold Schwarzenegger from the 1984 film The Terminator. It was given to Leibowitz a couple of years ago by one of the FTC's regional offices, an homage to his crackdown on spyware that surreptitiously gathers information on Web users' surfing habits. Now, Leibowitz wants to terminate-or at least rein in-a different practice he finds no less harmful to consumers: delivering ads to individuals based on the Web pages they visit and searches they carry out. Appointed by President Barack Obama in February to run the country's top consumer watchdog, Leibowitz has made so-called behavioral targeting a top priority. How far he goes in regulating the practice could have big implications for a host of companies that depend on Web advertising and engage in some form of targeting. These include Google (GOOG), Facebook, and Microsoft (MSFT), which on July 29 announced a plan to partner with Yahoo! (YHOO) in the area of Internet search. It would also affect the way legions of companies and advertisers craft marketing campaigns. Behavioral targeting has become more prevalent as it gets easier and cheaper to use software to track online behavior and then use the data to pitch Web users related goods and services. These ads are more likely to induce a customer to make a purchase or otherwise respond to a pitch, researchers say.

"Madison Avenue has joined forces with Internet companies in a last-ditch attempt to stop privacy regulations over the $29 billion online-ad industry. The industry is finalizing an ad campaign to educate consumers about how digital advertising works, creating an icon that would appear on Web pages or ads alerting consumers if their activity is being tracked and deploying new technologies to police the Web for illegal activities. At issue is the practice of tracking consumers' Web activities - from the searches they make to the sites they visit and the products they buy - for the purpose of targeting ads. The efforts follow calls from the FTC earlier this year for Web advertisers and Internet companies to do a better job explaining how they track and use information about consumers' Web activities and creating a simple way consumers can opt out of being tracked. Meanwhile, scrutiny in Washington continues to build. Lawmakers and regulators have broadened their scope beyond the Internet and are starting to examine privacy practices for a wider swath of media and technologies, from mobile phones and newfangled interactive TV commercials to telephone pitches and the advertisements consumers receive in their mailboxes."

"Malicious hackers are using fake alerts around H1N1 (Swine Flu) vaccines to trick end users into installing malware on Windows computers, according to warnings issued by computer security firms. The latest malware campaign begins with e-mail messages offering information regarding the H1N1 vaccination. The e-mail messages contain a link to a bogus Centers for Disease Control and Prevention site with prompts to create a user profile. During this process, a malware file gets planted on the user's machine."

First quarter federal reports show Google lobbied on the electronic medical records provisions of the federal economic stimulus act, contradicting the Internet giant's earlier claims that Consumer Watchdog's report of its effort was "100 percent false." Google's report shows a total expenditure of $880,000 on lobbying during the period including on "online health-related initiatives; issues relating to online personal health records, including in connection with H.R. 1: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009." Google also contracted with an outside firm, the Podesta Group, which independently reported lobbying for Google on "health information technology" and "online privacy." King and Spalding LLP also independently reported lobbying for Google on "online health-related initiatives, including health information technology provisions in H.R. 1, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act." After the nonprofit, nonpartisan Consumer Watchdog reported the "rumored" lobbying in January, Google contacted a charitable foundation about withdrawing Consumer Watchdog's funding. In a letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt released today, Consumer Watchdog said the company owes the group an apology. Read Consumer Watchdog's letter here: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/resources/LtrSchmidt042209.pdf. "It is now clear from public records that Google was lobbying Congress relating to online personal health records in connection with the economic stimulus act... What else could Google have been seeking except to be excluded from the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) provisions on privacy and forbidding sale of records? Please tell us," wrote Jamie Court, Consumer Watchdog president and John M. Simpson, consumer advocate. "There is a simple way to resolve this," the letter said. "Publicly release all the substance of Google's lobbying efforts on H.R. 1. Google knows the drill: organize the information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Perhaps Mark Z is surprised that people actually read terms of service. Arrogant twit. He's a multi-millionaire who cares about the little people (stage direction: Mark Z looks sincerely into web cam as he wipes away tear with hundred dollar bill). Perhaps the Tweens don't understand what social networking sites really sell; looks like some grown ups started asking where all their personal information is going and when it might inconveniently show up in some ad campaign.

A couple of weeks ago, we revised our terms of use hoping to clarify some parts for our users. Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of questions and comments about the changes and what they mean for people and their information. Based on this feedback, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. Many of us at Facebook spent most of today discussing how best to move forward. One approach would have been to quickly amend the new terms with new language to clarify our positions further. Another approach was simply to revert to our old terms while we begin working on our next version. As we thought through this, we reached out to respected organizations to get their input. Going forward, we've decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don't plan to leave it there for long. More than 175 million people use Facebook. If it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world. Our terms aren't just a document that protect our rights; it's the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world. Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service. Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we'll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms. You have my commitment that we'll do all of these things, but in order to do them right it will take a little bit of time. We expect to complete this in the next few we