CIPP Information Privacy & Security News

You're watching Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show," when suddenly you see a commercial for the Mustang convertible you've been eyeing - with a special promotion from Ford, which knows you just ended your car lease. A button pops up on the screen. You click it with the remote and are asked whether you want more information about the car. You respond "yes." Days later, an information packet arrives at your home, the address on file with your cable company. This is the future of cable TV advertising: personal and targeted. Cable TV operators are taking a page from online advertising behemoths like Google Inc. to bring these so-called "addressable" ads onto the television. "It hasn't really been done on TV before," said Mike Eason, chief data officer of Canoe Ventures, a group formed by the nation's six largest cable operators to launch targeted and interactive ads on a national platform starting this summer. They're betting they can even one-up online ads because they also offer a full-screen experience - a car commercial plays much better on your TV than on your PC. As such, they hope to charge advertisers more. The stakes are high: Cable companies get only a small portion of the $182 billion North American advertising market. Eason said the cable operators, which sell local ads on networks like Comedy Central, get roughly 10 percent of the commercial time on those channels. With targeting, they are hoping to expand that. But they have to tread carefully. Privacy advocates worry the practice opens the door to unwanted tracking of viewing habits so ads can target consumers' likes or dislikes. They also fear it could lead to discrimination, such as poorer households getting ads for the worst auto-financing deals because they are deemed credit risks. "You've got to tell people you're doing it and you've got to give people a way to say no," said Pam Dixon, executive director of World Privacy Forum in Carlsbad, Calif. "Otherwise, it's just not fair."

Banks and cellphone companies have a long way to go to persuade U.S. consumers to use their cellphones for banking, as many worry about security and extra fees and others are not even aware they can. In a survey of about 500 U.S. consumers, accounting firm KPMG found that only about 9 percent had tried mobile banking. In comparison, about 76 percent "consistently use" online banking services on computers. As many as 95 percent said they were so uncomfortable with conducting financial transactions on their phones that they've never used them to make a purchase on a retailer's Web site. About 48 percent of respondents cited security and privacy worries as their reason for not banking on their cellphones, according to KPMG. While many respondents said they believe mobile banking is important, according to the accounting firm, they do not think it is important enough to pay extra for it. Roughly 19 percent of respondents said they are "somewhat likely" to a use a mobile device for online banking in the next 12 months but only seven percent said are willing to pay a nominal fee for cellphone banking, according to the survey. And even though most of the major U.S. banks offer a mobile banking service, about 68 percent of the survey respondents said their bank does not offer the service. "The fact that the majority of U.S. consumers are not aware that their current banks offer mobile banking is clearly more perception than reality," said Carl Carande, a principal in KPMG LLP's Advisory and Banking and Finance practices. Banks offering mobile services include Citigroup Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

NEW YORK With increasing amounts of personal information liable to float around in cyberspace, consumers are deciding whether their data is safe in the hands of some public- and private-sector entities. A BBC World News America/Harris Poll finds a mixed verdict, with social-networking sites faring especially badly. In polling conducted last month, adults were asked to say how much trust they have in various sectors "to handle your personally identified information (such as credit-card information, contact information and so forth) in a properly confidential and secure manner." The poll's best scores went to "health providers, such as doctors and hospitals," with 20 percent of respondents expressing "a great deal of trust" and 55 percent "some trust" in these. Nineteen percent voiced "not much trust" and 7 percent "no trust at all" in this sector. At the bottom of the rankings were "social-networking sites (like Facebook or MySpace)," with 5 percent expressing a great deal of trust and 18 percent some trust in these. Thirty-one percent said they had not much trust and 46 percent no trust at all in these sites to safeguard personal information. (Whether people should direct their distrust to themselves for posting such information there in the first place is a question the survey didn't address.) Respondents were also wary of "search and portal sites (like Google or Yahoo!)" when it comes to keeping personal information secure: Ten percent voiced a great deal of trust, 39 percent some, 29 percent not much and 22 percent no trust at all. Even the federal government fared (slightly) better, with 13 percent expressing a great deal of trust, 41 percent some, 28 percent not much and 18 percent none. The scores were more positive for "banks and brokerage companies": 15 percent a great deal of trust, 43 percent some, 28 percent not much and 13 percent none. That was roughly on a par with the ratings for "my e-mail provider": 14 percent a great deal, 48 percent some, 27 p

There are some security measures that are extremely intrusive and should only be used when there is good cause to suspect that an individual is a security risk. See-through body scanning machines are capable of projecting an image of a passenger's naked body. Passengers expect privacy underneath their clothing and should not be required to display highly personal details of their bodies such as evidence of mastectomies, colostomy appliances, penile implants, catheter tubes and the size of their breasts or genitals as a pre-requisite to boarding a plane.

When you put out the trash, don't expect a constitutional right to privacy of the contents. The Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled Thursday that police can sift through garbage if it has been set out at the edge of your property for municipal collection because "abandoned" goods do not trigger Charter of Rights and Freedoms protection.

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.

There is no denying that Google is a giant success. But its size has made the "do no evil" mantra all the more difficult for it to follow - and for some of us to believe. Lately, it seems every new release and every new decision draws the ire of someone, be it politicians, privacy campaigners, or even villagers. While the Google brand is certainly in better shape than many tech firms, its constant moves to control more and more of our data and information has some up in arms. Privacy Three recent announcements have drawn the attention of privacy campaigners in the UK - Latitude, Street View, and behavioural advertising. Latitude is Google's mobile tracking system. Sign up for it, add your friends, and you can all see exactly where each other is via your mobile phone signal pinpointed on a Google map. Handy if you're bored and want to know who's out and about, but the location tracking system could be frightening for a host of other reasons, some say. Last month, Liberal Democrats Home Affairs spokesman Tom Brake filed an early day motion (EDM) asking the government to look into Latitude. Brake said: "This system poses an insidious threat to our hard-won liberties. 24-hour surveillance and a Big Brother society are new realities." But the heat was off Latitude after Street View was unveiled in the UK. The photo mapping system features street-level photos of 25 cities, offering a virtual tour of places such as London, Manchester and more. But some people aren't so happy having their homes, cars and selves photographed and mapped - even with face and number plates blurred. The backlash didn't take long to start. Within a day, Privacy International was on the case, asking the Information Commissioner to shut the site down.

The sheer volume of amateur cellphone sex videos on the Internet's porn site - while certainly culturally edifying - illustrates the new truth about sex in the 21st century: don't let anyone record it, or everyone will be enjoying it. But sometimes, the all-seeing and voyeuristic eye of consumer video culture has a happy ending: a businessman who recorded himself having sex with a university student was recently cleared of the charges after the footage was shown in court. Before the footage was presented as evidence, the judge warned both the gallery and the jury: "You are going to see a clip which from what I have been told you may find extremely distasteful." Despite this warning, though, the defense failed to exhibit a scene from Dustin Diamond's sex tape, but instead a rather traditional recording of an enthusiastic coupling. After the tape had finished playing, the judge ruled in the favor of the defendant. "You and Mr Taylor were very familiar with each other and comfortable in each other's presence." There's the possibility, of course, that the judge made the wrong decision: there could have been drugs involved. But score one for the good guys. A lot is made, rightfully, of the eradication of privacy in the digital age, but when it can help a man avoid wrongful imprisonment and the total ruin of his life, there's a bright side. The moral? If you're actively swinging, pony up for a cell phone with a good camera. And PornHub commenters say, the more megapixels, the better.