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…
Later tonight (Wednesday, 23 September 2015), I will be doing an interview on BlogTalkRadio with Cheri Roberts, host of the show “Challenging the Rhetoric.” I will be doing a ten-minute segment with Cheri from approximately 6:40 to 6:50pm Pacific (9:40 to 9:50pm Eastern) to discuss the growing problem of child sexual abuse and the role…
The dubious prosecution of two teenagers in North Carolina for sharing explicit photos with each other in the context of a romantic relationship continues to attract attention from media outlets around the world, most of whom (or at least the article commenters) take advantage of the story to deride the U.S. for its lingering prurience…
While sitting in Chicago O’Hare Airport the other day, I got a call from Joanna Walters, a New York-based reporter for London’s “The Guardian” newspaper. [@JoannaWalters13] (h/t to Dr. Jeff Temple for the referral). She was looking for background information on U.S. laws regarding sexting by children, as part of a story about the criminal…
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…
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,…
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:…
A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed by writer Lauren Le Vine for a piece that she was doing on the history of naked breasts on American television. The resulting article was published by Refinery29 a week ago on April 30, 2015. Le Vine does a good job of reviewing the complicated history of…
