Banning Employers from Requesting Employee Social Media User Names/Passwords

Yes, you read that headline correctly, employers are now asking, in increasing numbers, for employee social media (like Facebook) user names and passwords. If that doesn't send chills down the spine of every American who proclaims to believe in a free country, or even the concept of privacy, I don't know what will.

Let's begin with what we already know about increasing intrusiveness from both government and corporate/employer interests: As of two years ago, Facebook reportedly receives up to 100 demands from the government each week for information about its users. AOL reportedly receives 1,000 demands a month. In 2006, a U.S. Attorney demanded book purchase records of 24,000 Amazon.com customers. Sprint recently disclosed that law enforcement made 8 million requests in 2008 alone for its customer’s cell phone GPS data for purposes of locational tracking.

Now let's get to the corporate side of this privacy creep. It was Facebook itself no less - a known enemy of privacy and the world’s biggest social networking site - that came out just a few days ago with a statement claiming it was alarmed by reports that some businesses ask potential employees for passwords in order to view private posts and pictures as part of the job-application process. 

Before I get to California State Senator Leland Yee's bill, proposed this week to ban this practice, let me continue with the initial reaction from two US Senators - New York Senator Charles Schumer and Senator Richard Blumenthal - to this hair raising practice. They have asserted the practice could violate federal anti-hacking statutes and have also, thankfully, asked the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to examine the practice as well. 

As Bloomberg news lays out:

Blumenthal said that by requiring job applicants to provide login credentials, employers could gain access to protected information that would be impermissible for them to consider when making hiring decisions. Those include religious affiliation and sexual orientation, which are protected categories under federal law.

Facebook said on March 23 that accessing such information also could expose businesses to discrimination lawsuits. The company said it might ask policy makers to take action to stop the practice.

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Facebook and other sites are already used by some potential employers seeking additional background on job applicants because of the personal information posted there. As Facebook has given users additional ways to protect that information from public view, reports have surfaced of employers asking job applicants to voluntarily give them access by providing personal login credentials.
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The lawmakers also asked the department to investigate whether the practice violates the Stored Communications Act, which prohibits intentional access to electronic information without authorization or in excess of authorization.

This reminds me a lot of the legislation that we (the Consumer Federation of California) supported last year - and was signed into law by Governor Brown - that banned the practices of employers checking prospective employees credit reports. Before I remind people a little more about why that was such a HUGE victory for both privacy and economic fairness, let me get to Senator Leland Yee's legislation here in California.

His legislation would stop employers from formally requesting or demanding employees or job applicants provide their social media usernames and passwords.

As the Yee rightly states, “It is completely unacceptable for an employer to invade someone’s personal social media accounts. Not only is it entirely unnecessary, it is an invasion of privacy and unrelated to one’s work performance or abilities. These outlets are often for the purpose of individuals to share private information with their closest friends and family. Family photos and non-work social calendars have no bearing on a person’s ability to do their job and therefore employers have no right to demand to review it.”

Rather than formally requesting passwords and usernames, some employers have demanded applicants and employees to sit down with managers to review their social media content or fully print out their social media pages.  

Yee's bill will also prohibit this practice.  

As I argued in defense of AB 22 (Mendoza) regarding so called "requests", and thus an employee's "choice" to say yes or no, when you're trying to get a job, especially in this economy, its not exactly "voluntary" when coerced by an employer that can fire you, or choose not to hire you.

As I pointed out last year, and it appears the same is beginning to happen with these kinds of employer requests, a person's credit rating (which have suffered due to the Great Recession) - also NOT a good indicator of a person's trustworthiness or work ethic - were being increasingly demanded by employers (in fact, a whopping 40% of the time!!). 

Evi­dence also suggested that some supervisors factor credit scores into decisions regarding promotion and evaluation of current workers. Could the same be said for Facebook account content?

In the case of credit ratings, there was also the consideration of the role credit agency fraud played in the housing bubble burst, subse­quent economic crisis and the reduced credit scores suffered by so many Americans. In that context, for an employer to discriminate against someone with a less than stellar credit record is unconscionable. Wall Street excesses and Congress’ weak re­sponse have built plenty of barriers between the jobless and their prospects for future employ­ment. Allowing employers to use credit checks to deny employment only serves as another obstacle to getting Californians back to work.

And to top it all off, credit reports are often inaccurate, and correcting mistaken information is a tedious, time consuming process, and in the meantime, the job applicant is harmed due to errors by credit reporting entities.

That was a great victory for California privacy and basic economic fairness...and so should this latest legislation from Leland Yee and his efforts to end the practice of employers demanding and/or requesting access to employee Facebook pages.

If interested, here's an interview I did on the Rick Smith Show last year regarding AB 22:

Update: Secret Patriot Act Provision and Domestic Spy Drones

There are two articles I want to alert readers to that directly touch upon two topics I've written about at length on this blog in the past: The Patriot Act and domestic spy drones.

It was June of last year that I wrote an op-ed for the California Progress Report entitled "The Patriot Act and the Quiet Death of the US Bill of Rights" (piece was also picked up by Alternet, Common Dreams, and other outlets) in which I touched on concerns being raised by a few Senators regarding a "secret Patriot Act provision". I wrote:

"Of equal concern is what we still don’t know about how the government might be using the Act, highlighted by recent statements made by US Senators regarding what they termed “secret Patriot Act provisions”. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), an outspoken critic of the recent reauthorization, stated, "When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act they will be stunned and they will be angry." As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee Wyden is in a position to know, as he receives classified briefings from the executive branch.

In recent years, three other current and former members of the US Senate - Mark Udall (D-CO), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Russ Feingold (D-WI) - have provided similar warnings. We can't be sure what these senators are referring to, but the evidence suggests, and some assert, that the current administration is using Section 215 of the Patriot Act - a provision that gives the government access to "business records" - as the legal basis for the large-scale collection of cell phone location records.

The fact that in 2009 Sprint disclosed that law enforcement made 8 million requests in 2008 alone for its customer’s cell phone GPS data for purposes of locational tracking should only add to these legitimate privacy concerns."

I bring this up today because two of those Senators are back again, raising those SAME concerns, over that same provision (Section 215), to the Justice Department and the Administration.

The New York times reports: 

For more than two years, a handful of Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee have warned that the government is secretly interpreting its surveillance powers under the Patriot Act in a way that would be alarming if the public — or even others in Congress — knew about it.

On Thursday, two of those senators — Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado — went further. They said a top-secret intelligence operation that is based on that secret legal theory is not as crucial to national security as executive branch officials have maintained.

The senators, who also said that Americans would be “stunned” to know what the government thought the Patriot Act allowed it to do, made their remarks in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. after a Justice Department official last month told a judge that disclosing anything about the program “could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States.”

The Justice Department has argued that disclosing information about its interpretation of the Patriot Act could alert adversaries to how the government collects certain intelligence. It is seeking the dismissal of two Freedom of Information Act lawsuits — by The New York Times and by the American Civil Liberties Union — related to how the Patriot Act has been interpreted.

The senators wrote that it was appropriate to keep specific operations secret. But, they said, the government in a democracy must act within publicly understood law so that voters “can ratify or reject decisions made on their behalf” — even if that “obligation to be transparent with the public” creates other challenges.

“We would also note that in recent months we have grown increasingly skeptical about the actual value of the ‘intelligence collection operation,’ ” they added. “This has come as a surprise to us, as we were initially inclined to take the executive branch’s assertions about the importance of this ‘operation’ at face value.” 

What we have here is a dual interpretation debate over this provision. We know for instance, that it allows a secret national security court to issue an order allowing the F.B.I. to obtain “any tangible things” in connection with a national security investigation - which include what is referred to as the “business records”  like say hotel or credit card records.

But in addition to that kind of collection, what these Senators appear to be contending is that the government has also interpreted - secretly - that this provision allows some other kind of activity to obtain private information about people who have no link to a terrorism or espionage case.

 This is disturbing...to say the least. As I thoroughly documented in my original op-ed, "The Patriot Act was sold as an indispensable weapon in the government’s arsenal to fight and “win” the “War on Terror”. We were assured that the sole purpose of these unprecedented powers granted government were to locate and catch terrorists - not raid the homes of pot dealers and wiretap peace activists. Monitoring political groups and activities deemed “threatening” (i.e. environmentalists, peace activists), expanding the already disastrous and wasteful war on drugs, and spying on journalists isn’t about fighting terrorism, it’s about stifling dissent and consolidating power – at the expense of civil liberties.

How ironic that the very “tool” hailed as our nation’s protector has instead been used to violate the very Constitutional protections we are allegedly defending from “attack” by outside threats. What was promised as a “temporary”, targeted law to keep us safe from terror has morphed into a rewriting of the Bill of Rights.

John Whitehead explains: “The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments–the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments–and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well. The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience were considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.”

I would urge EVERYONE to not just continue to demand this Act be repealed, but also to demand what in fact this secret interpretation is, and for what purposes is it being used.

With that said, let's move on to another disturbing new development in the dismantling of our civil liberties: the now LEGAL use of domestic drones to spy on innocent American citizens. I recently documented this story in a blog post entitled "Domestic Spy Drones Approved by Congress".

I want to update you on this story because a fellow privacy advocate - Ryan Calo - recently penned an op-ed on this topic, making some important additional points to those I have, in particular, citing the precedent set by the historic GPS tracking case (which I have also covered in detail here) United States v. Jones.

In Wired magazine, he writes, "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is suing the FAA to release records of who has asked for permission to use drones. The ACLU recently issued a report on drones and privacy. The D.C.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a petition asking the FAA to consider privacy as the agency opens American skies to unmanned flight.

It is easy to see why these and other groups are concerned: It turns out that there is very little in American privacy law that would prohibit drone surveillance within our borders.

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The prospect of excessive surveillance through technology was recently front and center in United States v. Jones — a case before the Supreme Court involving global position systems. Every one of the nine justices agreed that the police need a warrant before affixing a GPS device to a car and following a suspect for a prolonged period, even where the defendant’s movements take place entirely in public.

And yet for the majority, it was ultimately the act of physically attaching the device to the car that triggered the warrant requirement. Drones can follow a car without the need to attach anything.

Jones is getting a lot of attention. The FBI reportedly turned off thousands of GPS devices in response to the ruling. There is a second case before the Supreme Court right now, however, that has yet to raise red flags in privacy and technology circles.

In Florida v. Jardines, the nation’s highest court will consider whether the police need a warrant before a dog can sniff your house. Dogs can already sniff your bags at the airport or your car at a checkpoint on the theory that no human searches through your belongings unless and until the dog detects contraband — at which point your expectation of privacy is no longer considered reasonable.

The question before the Court in Jardines is whether officers suddenly need a warrant because the container being sniffed happens to be your house.

The conceptual leap from dogs to drones is shorter than you might think. As Burkhard Bilger recently wrote in a New Yorker piece about the NYPD’s K9 unit: “Canine police tend to talk about their dogs as if they were mechanical devices. They describe them as tools or technology.”

Police may not peer into the interior of a house using thermal imaging. But perhaps they could equip a drone with thermal or chemical sensors and let it loose to roam a neighborhood in search of invisible infractions such as indoor marijuana. No human would have to see the data unless or until the drone spotted a violation.

The wrong decision in Jardines makes this and similar surveillance scenarios uncomfortably plausible. Drones are a versatile technology. They have great potential to assist in investigations, scientific research, disaster relief and countless other human pursuits. But the FAA needs to take seriously the legitimate concerns of civil-liberties groups, lest our privacy go to the dogs.

As I wrote in my blog, the "GREAT Jim Hightower frames this attack on privacy the best when he wrote:

"Look, up in the sky! Neither a bird nor Superman, the next must-have toy for assorted police agencies is the unmanned aerial vehicle, better known as drones. Yes, the same miniaturized aircraft that lets the military wage war with a remote-controlled, error-prone death machine is headed to your sky, if the authorities have their way. Already, Homeland Security officials have deployed one to a Texas sheriff's office to demonstrate its crime-fighting efficacy, and federal aviation officials are presently proposing new airspace rules to help eager departments throughout the country get their drones.

But airspace problems are nothing compared to the as-yet-unaddressed Fourth Amendment problems that come with putting cheap, flying-surveillance cameras in the air. As usual, this techno-whiz gadget is being rationalized as nothing more than an enhanced eye on crime. But the drone doesn't just monitor a particular person or criminal activity, it can continuously spy on an entire city, with no warrant to restrict its inevitable invasion of innocent people's privacy. Drones will collect video images of identifiable people. Who will see that information? How will it be used? Will it be retained? By its nature, this is an invasive, all-encompassing spy eye that will tempt authorities to go on fishing expeditions. The biggest question is the one that is not even being asked: Who will watch the watchers?."

We would do well to - sooner rather than later - to recognize the inherent and fundamental value that privacy provides ANY claimed democracy. Without one there can not be the other..

Stay tuned...

California Legislation to Address Police Tracking/Storing License Plate Info and Driver Locations

California privacy stalwart - State Senator Joe Simitian - is back again with another critically important bill. SB 1330 will address what has become one of the fastest-growing trends in law enforcement  - including private industry: monitoring and compiling license-plate records (license plate recognition technology, or LPR) on both innocent and criminal drivers which that can then be searched by police.

It goes without saying that this locational tracking of potentially every driver on the road is a threat to privacy. To date, the courts have only begun to address whether investigators can secretly attach a GPS monitoring device to cars without a warrant (the Supreme just ruled they can't).

This ruling hasn't however deterred police from across the country - and companies like Vigilant Video - from utilizing these high-tech scanners on the exterior of their cars to take a picture of every passing license plate and automatically compare them to databases of outstanding warrants, stolen cars and wanted bank robbers.

As alluded to, these scanners are employed by a variety of law enforcement agencies, asset recovery companies and financial institutions, among other organizations. While they are admittedly a valuable resource for law enforcement, they are also valuable to private entities wishing to acquire or sell data about people’s movements and habits. 

In fact, we have learned that some private entities utilize “scout cars” whose sole purpose is to acquire LPR data; such entities possess millions of LPR data points, and claim to scan 40 percent of vehicles in the country on an annual basis.

This volume of LPR data can provide a roadmap to an individual’s personal life including his or her movements, activities, medical conditions, friendships, religious practices, vocation, political beliefs, etc. This poses a serious risk to Californians’ constitutional right to privacy, especially since LPR data is acquired without an individual’s knowledge or consent.

Senator Simitian's bill offers a critical safeguard to Californians’ constitutional right to privacy by modeling itself on existing state law governing 1) the use of LPR scanners and data by the California Highway Patrol, and 2) the disclosure of information acquired by transportation agencies through electronic toll collection systems (another bill Senator Simitian recently authored).  Most importantly, the law would limit the time enforcement agencies in California can retain such data captured by these license-plate scanners to 60 days, except when the information is being used in felony investigations.

As reported in California Watch:

Simitian said in an interview that there’s a critical distinction between consumers who voluntarily choose to turn over private information to Internet companies like Facebook and technologies that quietly collect information on drivers.

He helped hammer out the guidelines in place for the highway patrol and said balancing privacy protections enshrined in the state’s constitution with the tools police need to improve public safety is part of the legislative process. “I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive,” Simitian said.

Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital and privacy rights group based in San Francisco, said it’s “a good attempt at beginning to address the issue.” The foundation so far plans to support the legislation, Tien said.

The bill also would prohibit police from turning the data over to entities that are not engaged in law enforcement, such as private companies.

Simitian’s proposal comes after California Watch reported in January that a Livermore-based company called Vigilant Video had amassed more than a half-billion bits of information on drivers from license-plate scanners. The data come both from police who agree to turn it over for nationwide searches and auto-repossession companies that help banks track down debtors who are delinquent on their car payments.

A company sales manager previously told California Watch that about 1,200 new law enforcement users are signed up every month to search the database, known as the National Vehicle Location Service. While using the devices to nab wanted suspects in real time has a clear value for police, storing historical data from the units is equally alluring to police who are aware of its powerful intelligence value.

Simitian’s bill also would restrict companies like Vigilant, limiting the amount of time data can be held to 60 days, barring them from selling it or giving the data to anyone who is not a law enforcement officer, and making data available to police only when a search warrant has established probable cause. Vigilant says only approved law enforcement officials can sign up to search the National Vehicle Location Service. 

Senator Simitian's legislation will be AGGRESSIVELY supported by a broad coalition of privacy and consumer advocates as it strikes a balance between law enforcement’s legitimate use of LPR scanners for public safety purposes, and Californians’ right to privacy.

5 Ways To Protect Online Privacy

Due to serious time constraints I'm going to refrain from much personal pontificating today and go straight to a great piece by Alternet's David Rosen entitled "Your Are Being Tracked Online: Here Are 5 Ways to Protect Your Privacy". Suffice to say, he lays out a number of the issues I've been covering on this blog, including ways that you can protect your own privacy, but more importantly, as I often argue, what kinds of rules and protections are needed to make this task easier - and give people more power over their data and what's done with it.

I think his general analysis of the President's Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights is on point too...namely, that while conceptually its got a lot of good stuff, there's not a lot of reason to be optimistic that it will end up being very strong, due to deference to the Congress and/or appeasement of big business interests when the time comes to fight for what's most important.

He also delves into the detrimental effects to privacy of media consolidation as well as the shift from paper based media to digitally based....which forces these companies to find new ways (like behavioral tracking) to raise revenue to stay afloat.

With that said, here's a few of the most important passages of his piece in case you don't have the time to read the whole thing:

Overlooked by the media, the Federal Trade Commission issued a warning earlier in February over apparent violations of children’s privacy rights involving the operating systems of the Apple iPhone and iPad as well as Google’s Android and their respective apps developers. Its report, "Mobile Apps for Kids," examined 8,000 mobile apps designed for children and found that parents couldn’t safeguard the personal information the app maker collected.

To illustrate how pernicious this practice is, one iPhone app, Path, offered by a Singapore developer, downloaded an iPhone users' entire address book without alerting them. Prodded by a letter from Congressmen Henry Waxman (D-CA) and G.K. Butterfield (D-NC), Apple’s CEO Tim Cook said the company will ensure that app developers get permission before downloading a user's address book.

The battle over your personal data is principally about ad spending. The mass media is witnessing a shift from “broadcast” media like newspapers, radio and TV to “targeted” media like website ads, search capabilities and social networks. The consequences for newspapers and magazines are clear; TV is fighting to hold onto every ad dollar with a new “social TV” initiative. And your personal information is what enables targeted advertising.
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Two industries, advertising and data brokers, principally drive the colonization of digital personal information. Traditional online usage practices such as monitoring of sites visited, ad click-throughs and email keywords are the bread and butter of information capture.

At a Senate hearing in September 2007 reviewing Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick, Sen. Herb Kohl warned, "The antitrust laws were written more than a century ago out of a concern with the effects of undue concentrations of economic power for our society as a whole, and not just merely their effects on consumers’ pocketbooks. No one concerned with antitrust policy should stand idly by if industry consolidation jeopardizes the vital privacy interests of our ciitzens so essential to our democracy."

The merger of these two ad-serving businesses set the stage of greater integration of personal information gathering and the online ad industry.

According to Forrester Research, total online advertising will more than double over the next five years, jumping from the 2011 estimate of $34.5 billion to $76.6 billion by 2016. Giving some texture to these numbers, eMarketing estimates that the top five online services control more than 70 percent of all monies spent. These five (and their relative market share) are: Google (43.5%), Yahoo! (11.9%), Facebook (7.7%), Microsoft (5.4%) and AOL (2.8%)

Facebook collects two types of information: (i) personal details provided by a user and (ii) usage data collected automatically as the user spends time at the site clicking around. When joining Facebook, a user discloses such information as name, email address, telephone number, address, gender and schools attended. In addition, it records a user’s online usage patterns, including the browser they use, the user's IP address and how long they spend logged into the site.

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More pernicious, your personal Social Security number, phone numbers, credit card numbers, medical prescriptions, shopping habits, political affiliations and sexual orientation are now fodder for both corporate and government exploitation.

Both the ad agencies and data brokers have information capture down to a bad science. They track your every keystroke, your every order and bill payment, words and phrases in your emails and your every mobile movement.

And your personal information is pretty cheap as the following examples illustrate: address - $0.50; phone number - $0.25; unpublished phone number - $17.50; cell phone number - $10; Social Security number - $8; drivers license - $3; marriage/divorce - $7.95; education background - $12; employment history - $13; credit history - $9; bankruptcy information - $26.50; shareholder information - $1.50; lawsuit history – $2.95; felony record - $16; sex offender status - $13; and voter registration - $0.25. [Source: www.turbulence.org]

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1. Privacy needs to be made a right.

“Privacy” is an implied – as distinguished from an explicit – right guaranteed by the Constitution. For all the rights suggested in the White House’s white paper, no new real right to privacy is proposed.

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2. Regulation should replace voluntary compliance.

The White House program is based on the various interested parties, particularly online advertising companies, adopting a voluntary compliance commitment to safeguard people’s online privacy. But will self-regulation work?

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3. Data vendors should be held accountable.

The White House document calls for data brokers to permit consumer reasonable access to the data they collect. It encourages the collectors to provide a mechanism for review, revision and limits to its use.

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4. Bar federal agencies from buying private data.

The white paper fails to address the federal government’s growing reliance on information gathered by private data collectors, whether the information is accurate or not.

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5. There’s a need for a global personal privacy standard.

The U.S. and Europe are moving in two opposing directions with regard to data privacy rules. The White House plan emphasizes mutual recognition of privacy approaches, an international role for codes of conduct and enforcement cooperation to safeguard personal privacy. Yet, the U.S. model is in keeping with its long tradition of putting the interest of business before its citizens; the Europeans are developing an online privacy program that places the interests of citizens first.

Click here to read the article in its entirety.

Blogger Exposes Hole in Body Scanner Technology

I've written about this issue extensively on this blog, in fact, you can check out an op-ed I penned over a year ago entitled "A Hobson's Holiday Travel Choice: Digital Strip Search or Get Groped?" if you want to get a real good feel of what I think about these airport body scanning machines.

For today's purposes, I'm just going to take you straight to a video posted by a blogger demonstrating yet another hole in the "security" these machines provide.

Before I post the video, here's a clip from the post: A blogger on Tuesday published a video showing how he had snuck a small metal case through the Transportation and Security Administration's (TSA) "billion dollar fleet" of so-called nude body scanners.

Engineer Jonathan Corbett, who runs the blog TSA Out of Our Pants, explained that the problem lies in how the scanner uses dark colors to highlight potential threats like weapons or explosives.

"Again that’s light figure, black background, and BLACK threat items," he explained. "Yes that’s right, if you have a metallic object on your side, it will be the same color as the background and therefore completely invisible to both visual and automated inspection."

"To put it to the test, I bought a sewing kit from the dollar store, broke out my 8th grade home ec skills, and sewed a pocket directly on the side of a shirt. Then I took a random metallic object, in this case a heavy metal carrying case that would easily alarm any of the 'old' metal detectors, and walked through a backscatter x-ray at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport."

Again at Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport, Corbett successfully carried his small, empty metal case through the scanners.

"While I carried the metal case empty, by one with mal-intent, it could easily have been filled with razor blades, explosives, or one of Charlie Sheen’s infamous 7 gram rocks of cocaine," he warned. "With a bigger pocket, perhaps sewn on the inside of the shirt, even a firearm could get through."

New Google Privacy Policy and "Do Not Track"

Being that its been such a disastrous few weeks for Google in the privacy violation department I thought I'd go back to the topic of its new privacy rules as well as get into some of the important technicalities associated with Do Not Track protections in light of the President's proposed Privacy Bill of Rights.

First, let's go to reigning anti-privacy global champion Google, who is changing its privacy policies this week, placing 60 of its 70 existing product privacy policies under one blanket policy and breaking down the identity barriers between (to accommodate its new Google+ social network software) them as well. In other words, Google will combine data from all its services, so when users are signed in, Google may combine identity information users provided from one service with information from other services. The goal is to treat each user as one individual across all Google products, such as Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube and other Web services. You can read more about this policy in a recent post of mine.

Then we find out that Google has been bypassing the privacy settings in Apple's Safari browser. This is of particular concern and importance because that system, and those users, are specifically INTENDING that such monitoring be BLOCKED.

So that was the "Google" backdrop for a few other related stories. First, the President proposed a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights that has some potential, though numerous pitfalls (I'll get to that later). And second, while Google has agreed to offer a kind of "Do Not Track" mechanism on Chrome, this didn't stop The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) from attempting to make Google obtain its users permission BEFORE sharing their private information as a result of its new privacy policy.

Unfortunately, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the court had no authority to force the FTC to keep Google in check. As detailed by Courthouse News, this isn't Google's first brush with the law: In June 2011, a federal judge approved an $8.5 million class action settlement brought by 31 million Gmail users who sued Google for exposing their personal information through its recently discontinued email feature, Google Buzz. In their lawsuit, users called the feature, which automatically shared their information with their email contacts, an "indiscriminate bludgeon" that could reveal the names of doctors' patients or lawyers' clients, or even the contacts of a gay person "who was struggling to come out of the closet and had contacted a gay support group."

The judge also made it clear that her ruling should not be taken as an endorsement of Google's privacy policies or her opinion on whether they violate the consent order.

So what does Google's new policy mean to you and what are some ways to better protect your privacy?

CNN.com suggests - in an article entitled "How to prepare for Google's privacy changes"- the following:

Don't sign in

This is the easiest and most effective tip.Many of Google's services -- most notably search, YouTube and Maps -- don't require you to sign in to use them. If you're not logged in, via Gmail or Google+, for example, Google doesn't know who you are and can't add data to your profile.

But to take a little more direct action ...

Removing your Google search history

Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation has compiled a step-by-step guide to deleting and disabling your Web History, which includes the searches you've done and sites you've visited.

It's pretty quick and easy:

-- Sign in to your Google account

-- Go to www.google.com/history

-- Click "Remove all Web History"

-- Click "OK"

As the EFF notes, deleting your history will not prevent Google from using the information internally. But it will limit the amount of time that it's fully accessible. After 18 months, the data will become anonymous again and won't be used as part of your profile.

Six tips to protect your search privacy (from the EFF)

Clearing your YouTube history

Similarly, users may want to remove their history on YouTube. That's also pretty quick and easy.

-- Sign in on Google's main page

-- Click on "YouTube" in the toolbar at the top of the page

-- On the right of the page, click your user name and select "Video Manager"

-- Click "History" on the left of the page and then "Clear Viewing History"

-- Refresh the page and then click "Pause Viewing History"

-- You can clear your searches on YouTube by going back and choosing "Clear Search History" and doing the same steps.

Click here to read more.

Interestingly, just as the White House pushes a privacy bill of rights its new online privacy legislation for Congress to consider, Google (in the wake of its privacy invasions) decided to get behind "Do Not Track," for Google Chrome. As Computerworld defines it, and how such a mechanism is eventually defined and operated is critical to its usefulness, "Do Not Track" is a "technology that relies on information in the HTTP header, part of the requests and responses sent and received by a browser as it communicates with a website, to signal that the user does not want to be tracked by online advertisers and sites.

In the browsers that now support the Do Not Track header, a user tells sites he or she does not want to be tracked by setting a single option. In Mozilla's Firefox, for instance, that's done through the Options (on Windows) or Preferences (Mac) pane by checking a box marked, "Tell web sites I do not want to be tracked."." That of course...just how well it does that and how is the million dollar question."

So what did Google just agree to by adding its support for Do Not Track to its Chrome browser? Computerworld has more:

So, when I tell my browser to send the Do Not Track request, no one will monitor my movements? 

Hold on there, pardner. Thursday's commitment by Google to support Do Not Track in Chrome may have been a clear win for the specific way that request is communicated, but there's no such clarity on what websites do -- or don't do -- when they receive that signal.

"On the technology side, this is an unambiguous win, but on the policy side there is still a lot of work to be done," Mayer said yesterday. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an online privacy advocacy organization, said much the same. "While today was a great advancement on the Do Not Track technology, it did not meaningfully move the ball forward on the Do Not Track policy," said Rainey Reitman, the EFF's activism director, in a Thursday blog.

What have sites agreed to do with Do Not Track?  

They'll stop using cookies to craft targeted ads, the kind pointed at you based on your past surfing and other online behavior. 

But the companies that lined up Thursday to support Do Not Track -- the ad networks, websites and corporations who belong to the latest online ad industry trade group, the Digital Advertising Association (DAA) -- haven't promised to actually stop tracking users' Web movements. Instead, they've pledged to not use tracking data to serve targeted ads -- which the DAA calls "behavioral advertising" -- or use that tracking information "for the purpose of any adverse determination concerning employment, credit, health treatment or insurance eligibility, as well as specific protections for sensitive data concerning children." (IDG, the parent company of Computerworld, is a member of DAA, according to the association's list of participating companies and ad networks. Other media firms that will hew to the DAA's behavioral ad guidelines around Do No Track include Conde Nast, ESPN, Forbes and Time.)

What? So Do Not Track doesn't mean just that? 

Right, which is why privacy groups are pushing for a stricter interpretation. The EFF, for one, is leery of the advertising industry's sincerity.

"Historically, the DAA has eschewed providing users with powerful mechanisms for choices when it comes to online tracking," said EFF's Reitman. "The self-regulatory standards for behavioral advertising have offered consumers a way to opt out of viewing behaviorally targeted ads without actually stopping the online tracking, which is the root of the privacy concern."

Reitman worried that the DAA would mess with the simplicity of Do Not Track, and try to turn it into "slippery legalese that doesn't promise to do much of anything about tracking."

Anything else about the Do Not Track promises made by the advertising industry I should know? 

Yep, one interesting aspect: The DAA said it would not honor the setting if "any entity or software or technology provider other than the user exercises such a choice." EFF's Reitman interpreted that as a pre-emptive strike against browser makers that may want to turn on Do Not Track by default. (None do at this point.... It's off in Firefox, IE9 and Safari until the user manually changes the setting.)

Click here for more.

With that, let me take you to the New York Times article that delves deeply into the Do Not Track concept and where the battle lines will likely be drawn: separating those that want privacy, and more control over their own data, versus those that want to profit off violating that privacy, and selling that data.

The issue of digital privacy, especially how users’ data is collected online and then employed to show those users ads tailored to them, has been hotly debated for years. The announcements represent the attempt to satisfy consumer privacy concerns while not stifling the growth of online advertising, which is seen as the savior of media and publishing companies as well as the advertising industry. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, digital advertising revenues in the United States were $7.88 billion for the third quarter of 2011, a 22 percent increase over the same period in 2010. 

The industry’s compromise on a “Do Not Track” mechanism is one result of continuing negotiations among members of the Federal Trade Commission, which first called for such a mechanism in its initial privacy report; the Commerce Department; the White House; the Digital Advertising Alliance; and consumer privacy advocates. 

Until now, methods for opting out of custom advertising varied depending on the privacy settings of a user’s browser or whether a user clicked on the blue triangle icons in the corners of some digital ads. Under the new system, browser vendors will build an option into their browser settings that, when selected, will send a signal to companies collecting data that the user does not want to be tracked. 

The agreement covers all the advertising alliance’s members, including Google, Yahoo, AOL, Time Warner and NBCUniversal. 

Privacy advocates complain that the mechanism does not go nearly far enough in part because it affects only certain marketers. Many publishers and search engines, like Google, Amazon or The New York Times, are considered “first-party sites,” which means that the consumer goes to these Web pages directly. First-party sites can still collect data on visitors and serve them ads based on what is collected. 

...

Some consumer privacy advocates, while offering measured praise for the new privacy option, saw the move as an attempt to thwart a more restrictive stance on data collection. Jeffrey Chester, the head of the Center for Digital Democracy, which is pushing for more restrictions on data collection, called the move a win for the advertising lobby. 

In a statement, Mr. Chester said: “We cannot accept any ‘deal’ that doesn’t really protect consumers, and merely allows the data-profiling status quo to remain. Instead of negotiations, C.D.D. would have preferred the White House to introduce new legislation that clearly protected consumers online.” 

But advertisers have plenty to fear if consumers use Do Not Track in large numbers. “If there’s a high rate of opt-out, it’s an issue,” said George Pappachen, the chief privacy officer of the Kantar Group, the research and consultant unit of WPP. “Our position is data should flow,” Mr. Pappachen said, adding that data helps drive innovation and newer commercial models.

...

And there are still unresolved technical issues regarding Do Not Track, including what defines tracking and how that would apply to first-party and third-party Web sites. Over the last few months the World Wide Web Consortium, an international group that sets voluntary technical standards for the Web, has been working with representatives from companies like Microsoft, Google and Nielsen, along with academics, privacy advocates, legislators and digital advertising groups, to define the technical standard of Do Not Track. 

The consortium is also considering whether sites like Facebook, whose “like” button is used across multiple Web sites, would be considered first-party or third-party sites.“I do think you will see a lot of contention going forward about what Do Not Track means,” said Thomas Roessler, the technology and society domain leader at the consortium. 

Whether any companies should be allowed to collect data and follow users online, regardless of who they are, remains “the million-dollar question,” said Alex Fowler, the global privacy leader at Mozilla, the nonprofit organization that created the Firefox browser. Firefox was one of the first to include a Do Not Track option.“When you look at user testing, the expectation for the user for Do Not Track means, don’t behaviorally target me and also don’t collect information on me,” Mr. Fowler said. 

Click here to read more.

Stay tuned...

Obama Administration's Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights

By now most anyone that has come to this blog knows, at least in general terms, what is called behavioral targeting. This massive, growing multi-billion dollar industry is built on the tracking of you on the internet - and EVERYTHING you do on it...and then compiling, storing and selling that data to third party advertisers (while being accessed by government when requested...which we know is a lot)

This rise in behavioral tracking has made it possible for consumer information to be potentially misused, increases the threat of identity theft, and is a fundamental violation of privacy. Often times, such behavioral tracking is particularly targeted at vulnerable consumers for high-price loans, bogus health cures and other potentially harmful products and services. To date, to what extent "Do Not Track" rights exist, it has been a voluntary request from industry - which borders on pointless.

Now to my cautious optimism regarding the Obama Administration's announcement last week that it supported a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. The proposal lays out seven principles of privacy protections, including the right to exercise control over the dissemination of one’s data and the right to transparent privacy policies. The bill of rights is not legislation, acting more as a framework and statement of principles, but it does at least sound like the Administration "gets it" in a way we haven't heard before.

Consumers deserve the kinds of broad rights to protect their own information online the President is advocating - particularly that fundamental right to control how how personal data is used and that we deserve the right to avoid having our information collected and used for multiple unknown purposes. We also DESERVE the right to make sure our information is held securely, and not KEPT for long periods of time. And of course, we must have the right to hold those who are handling or misusing their personal data accountable when things go wrong.

To be sure, its an outline, and it still needs to make it through the legislative process (though the administration has threatened to bypass them...which is also a good sign) - meaning a GOP controlled House will have an opportunity to destroy, as it does with all public policy, anything it gets its hands on if it serves the profit motives of big business. 

Clearly, when you talk about companies like Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft...we're talking some big time heavy hitters with LARGE check books and hordes of high priced lobbyists. In other words, the devil will be in the details...and what will matter most might just be whether there are real, enforceable rules that punish these giants for breaking them.

But before I go into more of why tough legislation is needed - and privacy on the web is better protected, let's get to some of the details released.

From the New York Times:

Companies responsible for the delivery of nearly 90 percent of online behavioral advertisements — ads that appear on a user’s screen based on browsing and buying habits — have agreed to comply when consumers choose to control online tracking, the consortium said on Wednesday.

But even if a click of a mouse or a touch of a button can thwart Internet tracking devices, there is no guarantee that companies won’t still manage to gather data on Web behavior. Compliance is voluntary on the part of consumers, Internet advertisers and commerce sites.

"The real question is how much influence companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook will have in their inevitable attempt to water down the rules that are implemented and render them essentially meaningless,” John M. Simpson, privacy project director for Consumer Watchdog, said in response to the administration’s plan. "A concern is that the administration’s privacy effort is being run out of the Commerce Department.”

It’s critical that government enact strong privacy regulations whose protections will remain with consumers as they interact on their home computer, cell phones, PDAs or even at the store down the street. Clear rules will help consumers understand how their information is used, obtained and tracked,” said Amina Fazlullah of U.S. Public Interest Research Group. “In the event of abuse of consumer information, this legislation could provide consumers a clear pathway for assistance from government agencies or redress in the courts.”

...

The new privacy outline brings together several efforts to develop and enforce privacy standards that have been progressing for the last couple of years on parallel tracks, under the direction of advertisers, Internet commerce sites and software companies.

The next step will be for the Commerce Department to gather Internet companies and consumer advocates to develop enforceable codes of conduct aligned with a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights” released as part of the administration’s plan on Wednesday. The bill of rights sets standards for the use of personal data, including individual control, transparency, security, access, accuracy and accountability. 

Read more here.

I'm a big supporter of limiting commercial tracking of our online activities, not just in the commercial sphere, but protecting it from government that increasingly demands this information from private companies.Similarly, there's a long, clear record that self regulation doesn't work - so creating rules and laws to protect people's privacy on the internet is critical, and now possible.

In principle, the proposal does look good...so what I'll be watching for is just how watered down this legislation becomes over time...and that we don't forget some of the key protections necessary, as recently outlined by a coalition of consumer groups, including: 

· Sensitive information should not be collected or used for behavioral tracking or targeting.
· No behavioral data should be collected or used from anyone under age 18 to the extent that age can be inferred.
· Web sites and ad networks shouldn’t be able to collect or use behavioral data for more than 24 hours without getting the individual’s affirmative consent.
· Behavioral data shouldn’t be used to unfairly discriminate against people or in any way that would affect an individual's credit, education, employment, insurance, or access to government benefits.

This would also include: No sensitive information (like health or financial information) should be used for behavioral tracking, no one under 18 should be behaviorally tracked, Web sites and ad networks shouldn’t be able to keep behavioral data for more than a day without getting an OK from the individual they’re tracking, and behavioral data can’t be used for discriminatory purposes.

Here are a couple responses from privacy advocates to the Administration's proposal worth noting here:

“The devil is going to be in the details,” acknowledges Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy for the nonprofit group Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. “It is a framework that certainly represents a decent start, but the key is going to be in three components,” he says, which include the legislation and regulations that grow out of it, and the enforcement thereof.

On paper, then, it looks fine as a work in progress, though Stephens does acknowledge that at least one provision – the “Respect for Context” clause, which says companies “will collect, use, and disclose personal data in ways that are consistent with the context in which consumers provide the data” – seems somewhat subjective and open for interpretation. As such, consumers concerned about their privacy will have to wait and see how this vague language of the bill of rights will translate into actionable regulation.

...

“Anybody can stand behind some broad principles about respecting privacy rights,” Reitman says. “Whether it’s enforceable is still a far-off issue....even without legislation, the administration will convene multistakeholder processes that use these rights as a template for codes of conduct that are enforceable by the Federal Trade Commission.”
...

“The way it is right now … it’s historically been self-enforcing,” says Rainey Reitman, activism director for the digital rights advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “The White House statement today changes that, so it will be under the umbrella of FTC enforcement.”

And this one:

Ellen Bloom, a senior director of policy for Consumers Union, was at the press conference today in Washington, D.C., where the "Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights" was unveiled. She said consumers are very concerned about Internet companies passing along their private information to third parties. And she is happy that the administration is taking steps with the "Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights" to protect consumers. But she said the group will continue to educate and advocate to make sure privacy protections are strong enough to do the job.

"We are glad that the FTC and the advertising industry will breathe new life into the Do Not Track rules," she said. "This is a welcome first step toward providing a single simple tool to opt out of being tracked online. We are encouraged that we're on the right track. But we are not ready to rest."

More Backdrop on Behavioral Tracking

To get an even better understanding of why this matters, and what's happening to you and your information every time you get on the net check out this congressional testimony from a year or two ago from Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy...most of this is from the testimony and the groups press release...and it should clarify some of this obviously complicated issue.

“As with our financial system, privacy and consumer protection regulators have failed to keep abreast of developments in the area they are supposed to oversee,” he explained. “In order to ensure adequate trust in online marketing—an important and growing sector of our economy—Congress must enact sensible policies to protect consumers.”

“Whether using a search engine, watching an online video, creating content on a social network, receiving an email, or playing an interactive video game, we are being digitally shadowed online....Our travels through the digital media are being monitored, and digital dossiers on us are being created—and even bought and sold.” 

Singling out behavioral and “predictive” targeting for their violations of user privacy, Chester noted that the “consumer profiling and targeted advertising take place largely without our knowledge or consent, and affects such sensitive areas as financial transactions and health-related inquiries. Children and youth, among the most active users of the Internet and mobile devices, are especially at risk in this new media-marketing ecosystem.”

“Americans shouldn’t have to trade away their privacy and accept online profiling and tracking as the price they must pay in order to access the Internet and other digital media,” Chester declared, adding that far from being an impediment to continued growth in the online sector, meaningful privacy safeguards will actually stimulate the digital economy.

“The uncertainty over the loss of privacy and other consumer harms will continue to undermine confidence in the online advertising business,” he explained. “That’s why the online ad industry will actually greatly benefit from privacy regulation. Given a new regulatory regime protecting privacy, industry leaders and entrepreneurs will develop new forms of marketing services where data collection and profiling are done in an above-board, consumer-friendly fashion.”

Privacy is a fundamental right in the United States. For four decades, the foundation of U.S. privacy policies has been based on Fair Information Practices: collection limitation, data quality, purpose specification, use limitation, security safeguards, openness, individual participation, and accountability.

Those principles ensure that individuals are able to control their personal information, help to protect human dignity, hold accountable organizations that collect personal data, promote good business practices, and limit the risk of identity theft. Developments in the digital age urgently require the application of Fair Information Practices to new business practices. Today, electronic information from consumers is collected, compiled, and sold; all done without reasonable safeguards.

Consumers are increasingly relying on the Internet and other digital services for a wide range of transactions and services, many of which involve their most sensitive affairs, including health, financial, and other personal matters. At the same time many companies are now engaging in behavioral advertising, which involves the surreptitious tracking and targeting of consumers.

Click by click, consumers’ online activities – the searches they make, the Web pages they visit, the content they view, the videos they watch and their other interactions on social networking sites, the content of emails they send and receive, how they spend money online, their physical locations using mobile Web devices, and other data – are logged into an expanding profile and analyzed in order to target them with more "relevant" advertising.

This is different from the "targeting" used in contextual advertising, in which ads are generated by a search that someone is conducting or a page the person is viewing at that moment. Behavioral tracking and targeting can combine a history of online activity across the Web with data derived offline to create even more detailed profiles. The data that is collected through behavioral tracking can, in some cases, reveal the identity of the person, but even when it does not, the tracking of individuals and the trade of personal or behavioral data raise many concerns.

Let's hope this Administration's actions match its words, that industry power won't weaken these principles beyond their usefulness, and of course, let's hope Congress is bypassed, as they serve NO PURPOSE (esp. the House) except to protect corporations and undermine people.

More to come....