Category: Electronic Rights

Data Mining Run Amok

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John Robb:

Google is likely central to the Internet portion of this effort. There’s no doubt in my mind that Google has a fat contract with the Homeland Security Department. They can track your search behavior using cookies. Affiliates using cookies on adwords. Analyze the content of your weblog for dangerous phrases. Anonymity doesn’t help. They have your IP address and therefore can get the records they need to put a name and a credit history next to your Internet behavior (all without a warrant).

A USDA Yin to that Yang.

Canadian Electronic Rights Political Action

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Cory Doctorow:

In this video, shot by AccordionGuy, a geek who lives in her riding (district), Bulte is asked whether she will take the pledge, and she responds with bile, vowing not to allow “Michael Geist and his pro-user zealots, and Electronic Frontier Foundation members” to “intimidate her.” Her entire response is an embarassment to her and her party, and it’s must-see video for anyone going to the polls in Parkdale/High Park.

IRS Sued on Failure to Release Tax Data

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David Cay Johnston:

Records showing how thoroughly the Internal Revenue Service audits big corporations and the rich, and how much it discounts the additional taxes assessed after audits, are being withheld from the public despite a 1976 court order requiring their disclosure, according to a legal motion filed last week in federal court in Seattle.

For decades, the information was given at no charge to a professor at Syracuse University, Susan B. Long, who made it available on the Internet at trac.syr.edu, with tools for people to conduct their own analyses.

Among other findings, Professor Long’s information has shown that in 1999 the poor were more likely than the rich to be audited.

David Burnham, co-director with Professor Long of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which collects raw government data, said the withheld information made it impossible to evaluate the intensity of audits. Mr. Burnham noted that the withheld data included figures that indicated how much auditors say is owed in extra taxes, but that the tax agency lets taxpayers negotiate down.

“It is simply impossible to evaluate the I.R.S. without this data,” Mr. Burnham said, “and they know it.”

Genetic Testing for the Rest of Us – over the Internet

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Katherine Seligman:

DNA Direct offers genetics tests that can reveal a predisposition to a half dozen diseases or conditions, among them breast and ovarian cancer, cystic fibrosis, clotting disorders and infertility. Phelan obtained her chromosomal analysis the same way any client could. She spoke with the company’s genetic counselor and then went for a blood test. The counselor reviewed the findings to help her interpret what they meant. In Phelan’s case, the results provided a surprise — what looked like partial Turner’s syndrome. It was a possible clue to her past struggle with infertility, although she’s never had any other symptoms.

“When I realized this I was thrilled,” she said. “There may have been an underlying genetic factor. … I thought, wow, women could go through this and have this help. It can work backward and help diagnose the past.”

Your Phone Records Are For Sale

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Frank Main:

Some online services might be skirting the law to obtain these phone lists, according to Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has called for legislation to criminalize phone record theft and use.

In some cases, telephone company insiders secretly sell customers’ phone-call lists to online brokers, despite strict telephone company rules against such deals, according to Schumer.

And some online brokers have used deception to get the lists from the phone companies, he said.

Congress Hands Caught in the Cookie Jar

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Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache:

All House members who use cookies either acknowledge it or have privacy policies that are silent on the topic. Of the 23 senators who pledged not to employ cookies but do anyway, 18 are Republicans and five are Democrats.


“It shows their lack of understanding of technology,” said Sonia Arrison, director of technology studies at the Pacific Research Institute, a nonprofit group in San Francisco. “It’s willful ignorance. They’re complete hypocrites. How can they accuse companies of poor data management when they’re not doing it on their own Web sites?”



No rule prohibits the use of Web monitoring techniques by Congress. But such a restriction does apply to executive branch agencies. The Pentagon and others scrambled this week to eliminate so-called Web bugs and cookies after inquiries from CNET News.com.

Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon’s Wishlists

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A MUST Read:
Tom Owad writes about an issue we all need to be aware of:

It used to be you had to get a warrant to monitor a person or a group of people. Today, it is increasingly easy to monitor ideas. And then track them back to people. Most of us don’t have access to the databases, software, or computing power of the NSA, FBI, and other government agencies. But an individual with access to the internet can still develop a fairly sophisticated profile of hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens using free and publicly available resources. Here’s an example.

There are many websites and databases that could be used for this project, but few things tell you as much about a person as the books he chooses to read. Isn’t that why the Patriot Act specifically requires libraries to release information on who’s reading what? For this reason, I chose to focus on the information contained in the popular Amazon wishlists.

Microsoft Takes Down Chinese Blogger

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Rebecca McKinnon:

Microsoft’s MSN Spaces continues to censor its Chinese language blogs, and has become more aggressive and thorough at censorship since I first checked out MSN’s censorship system last summer.  On New Years Eve, MSN Spaces took down the popular blog written by Zhao Jing, aka Michael Anti. Now all you get when you attempt to visit his blog at: http://spaces.msn.com/members/mranti/ is the error message pictured above. (You can see the Google cache of his blog up until Dec.22nd here.)

Note, this blog was TAKEN DOWN by MSN people. Not blocked by the Chinese government.