Category Archives: American Privacy

Core Values: Why Apple Is Right in Refusing to Hack an iPhone for the FBI [x-post]

[This article was originally posted to the Beacon Broadside blog and is reposted with permission.] On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984.” Those were the closing lines of Apple Computer’s groundbreaking (and screen-shattering) advertisement during the 1984 Super Bowl for its new computer, the Macintosh.…

Preliminary Speaker Line-Up Announced for the Collaborative Age Forum and Exposition

In early April, a new conference is debuting in Atlanta, Georgia. Dubbed the “Collaborative Age Forum and Exposition,” the conference is described as “the world’s first large-scale conference and trade show dedicated to the management science and enabling technologies of collaboration across industries, sectors, and geographies. Collaborative Age offers a wealth of networking opportunities, plus…

VA Music Teacher Will Spend 10 Years Behind Bars for Sexual Assault on Student

How much privacy should your child have? That’s a question that parents and children have been debating for quite some time, but with increasing intensity over the last few decades. As you might expect, parents vary widely in the amount of privacy they allow their children. (And the protestations of my younger son–at age 4(!)–notwithstanding,…

Is a Smarter Home a Less Private Home? [Interview]

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to do another interview with Chicago Tribune business reporter Becky Yerak (@beckyyerak) about the privacy implications of the growing relationship between home insurers and companies that produce “smart” products for homeowners. Her article, “Insurers’ discounts for smart home devices raise privacy concerns,” ran last week in…

Creators of Near-Universally Loathed “Peeple” App Go Back to Drawing Board

At the end of September, Canadian tech entrepreneurs Julia Cordray and Nicole McCullough announced the pending release of “Peeple,” an app designed to enable users to give one- to five-star ratings to the various people in their lives — basically, “Yelp” for humanity. The reaction to the announcement was, to put it mildly, ferociously negative.…

That’s Not Funny! Teen Arrested for Posting School Shooting ‘Joke’ on Snapchat

Joke or threat? That’s the question raised by an Arizona high school student’s ill-advised, reckless, fooolish Snapchat post showing a crowded hallway in the Sierra Linda High School in Phoenix. The male student captioned his photo “Planning the school shooting,” followed by three smiley faces. A 16-year-old student in Northglenn High School in Colorado named…

Allstate Decides the Data in Your Car Is Not Enough [Interview]

Earlier this summer, I was interviewed by by Becky Yerak (@beckyyerak), the Business Reporter for the Chicago Tribune, about a patent issued to Allstate Insurance Company under the innocuous-sounding name “Motor Vehicle Operating Data Collection Analysis.” As I wrote at the time, the patent raises significant privacy issues. If you want to get the most…

Rand Paul Takes History Prize in First GOP Debate

In general, the issues that I cover in this blog are fairly apolitical — there’s not a lot of difference between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to cyberbullying, cyberharrassment, or digital misconduct by educators. But when it comes to privacy and issues of national security, political divisions inevitably creep into the discussion. The first…

John Oliver Makes Pitch for Federal Law Banning “Revenge Porn” [Interview/Background]

It was with special interest that I watched last night’s segment of the John Oliver show, “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” In the middle of last week, I received a call from one of the show’s researchers, and had an interesting discussion about various state and federal laws that might apply to revenge porn,…

New US Patent for Allstate Threatens to Turn Privacy into Road Kill on the Information Highway [Interview]

In late March, Allstate was issued US Patent No. 2014/0080100 A1 with the relatively innocuous title of “Motor Vehicle Operating Data Collection Analysis” (see below). The legalese that is typically used in patent applications obscures some of the potentially invasive aspects of this patent. Here’s the text from the abstract (or summary) of the patent:…