Facebook launched a Tor portal that allows its users to access its site anonymously, said the social media service in a blog post Friday. Tor is an online network that allows its consumers to use the Web without being tracked. Facebook said it’s using the .onion domain for the Tor site, which can only be accessed using the Tor browser. It said it hopes to fully integrate its .onion domain for its mobile app.
Google said in a blog post Thursday that it can glean consumers' information from its products while preserving those consumers’ privacy. The company’s Randomized Aggregatable Privacy-Preserving Ordinal Response (RAPPOR) project “enables learning statistics about the behavior of users’ software while guaranteeing client privacy,” it said. Google is making RAPPOR available as an open-source project so consumers can “test its reporting and analysis mechanisms, and help develop the technology,” it said. Google said it will publish a report on RAPPOR this week at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security.
Younger U.S. consumers have shown more confidence in the security of mobile payments than the baby boom generation, a GfK report said. The generation known as millennials (defined in the report as generations Y and Z, ages 18-34) is twice as likely as older adults to view such payments as faster, easier or more efficient than other types of transactions, GfK said Thursday. At 67 percent, members of Generation Y (ages 24-34) reported being worried about the security of personal information when making mobile payments, the report said. Personal information, technology quality and other factors are likely holding mobile payment from full potential, it said. About 80 percent of mobile payers use their smartphones to make payments, 58 percent use tablets and 38 percent use both methods, it said.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation criticized the government’s use of what it called “sneak and peek” warrants to access citizen’s information. Those warrants allow law enforcement “to conduct a search while delaying notice to the suspect of the search” based on Section 213 of the Patriot Act, an authority the government demanded as part of its efforts to fight terrorism, EFF said in a Sunday blog post. “But the latest government report detailing the numbers of ‘sneak and peek’ warrants reveals that out of a total of over 11,000 sneak and peek requests, only 51 were used for terrorism,” EFF said. “Yet again, terrorism concerns appear to be trampling our civil liberties.” It argued that Section 213 is as important as Section 215, the much-discussed provision of the Patriot Act authorizing the bulk collection of phone records. “The government will continue to argue for more surveillance authorities -- like the need to update the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act -- under the guise of terrorism,” EFF said. “But before we engage in any updates, the public must be convinced such updates are needed and won't be used for non-terrorist purposes that chip away at our civil liberties.”
“Facebook should go further in protecting users and the integrity of its services,” said the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Dave Maass, an investigative researcher, and Nadia Kayyali, an EFF activist, in a Friday blog post (http://bit.ly/1t8TczR). They thanked Facebook for scolding the Drug Enforcement Administration “after learning that a narcotics agent had impersonated a user named Sondra Arquiett on the social network in order to communicate and gather intelligence on suspects.” Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan wrote a letter to DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart, saying the DEA’s action not only violated the site’s “terms of service, but threatened Facebook’s trust-based social ecosystem,” said EFF. “We’re asking Facebook to spell out, in no uncertain language, that the [privacy] terms that apply to regular users apply to government agencies as well, including law enforcement,” it said.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that Redbox’s sharing of customer service data with Stream Global Services, the company to which it outsources that function, doesn’t violate laws against sharing customer video rental information, in an opinion released Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/ZJTgKc). “Redbox’s actions fall within the statutory exception for disclosures in the ordinary course of business,” said the opinion. Redbox has been sued by two customers who argued that providing the customer service data to a second party violated the Video Privacy Protection Act. “Congress enacted the VPPA in 1988, before the advent of automated kiosks,” and couldn’t have anticipated the need for a separate customer service company to service such kiosks, the opinion said.
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board will seek to define privacy at a Nov. 12 event in Washington, it said Wednesday. The public meeting will include discussions “with industry representatives, academics, technologists, government personnel, and members of the advocacy community,” the PCLOB notice said (http://1.usa.gov/1rqFBOZ). “While the Board will address the definition of privacy in the context of government counterterrorism programs, it is also interested in what conceptual interests are involved in the protection of privacy, how the impact of technology has affected privacy, what privacy interests have been identified by government privacy officials, what lessons have been learned in the private sector, and what the best way is for government to address privacy concerns.” Stakeholders can submit comments on the topic, PCLOB said. It will be 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Washington Marriott Georgetown Hotel. The event is expected to include four panels, but panelists haven't been announced.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence updated its surveillance assessment and recent shifts in practices, in an 11-page report (http://1.usa.gov/1t2TKqU) released Friday. It included four principles on collection of surveillance intelligence -- that such activities should be guided by statute or executive order, that they should incorporate privacy and civil liberties concerns, that collection of foreign private commercial and trade information should happen only in the name of security concerns and that such activities should be “tailored as feasible.” There should be limits on the use of data collected in bulk, it said. The report provided details of progress in response to President Barack Obama’s ambitions on surveillance overhaul, as outlined in January. “In the coming months, we will continue to work to complete this review,” ODNI said in an accompanying blog post (http://1.usa.gov/ZD7tZl).
Comcast released data on criminal and national security-related requests for information for the first six months of 2014, in a transparency report Thursday, it said in a blog post (http://bit.ly/ZGDQXo). “This information is designed to enhance the transparency of government surveillance programs as part of the ongoing conversation over how best to ensure that such programs appropriately reflect and balance the privacy interests of individuals,” Comcast said. Since requests for information under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) are under a six-month delay, the report covers July to December 2013, Comcast said. The company “carefully” reviews all such requests to make sure they comply with “applicable law,” Comcast said.
Consumer Watchdog urged Google to extend the European right to be forgotten entitlement to users in the U.S. "There needs to be a balance between the individual's privacy and public's right to know in making a decision to remove a link," Consumer Watchdog Privacy Project Director John Simpson said in a letter to Google executives Eric Schmidt and Larry Page (http://bit.ly/ZYcwor). Simpson credited Google's findings in its latest transparency report and with demonstrating its ability "to strike an appropriate balance between an individual's privacy and the public's right to know." Google is making the entitlement work for its users in Europe, "but that is because you must under the law," he said. The company had no comment.