“Gentlemen, start your Class Actions!”
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=2008040917193399
Court holds Privacy Act "actual damages requirement" does not require pecuniary harm
Wednesday, April 09 2008 @ 05:19 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: In the Courts
I'm breaking blog silence to report on an amazing decision out of the DC Circuit holding that the federal Privacy Act's requirement that Plaintiffs show actual damages does not require pecuniary harm but can be met by a showing of emotional distress. Am. Fed'n of Gov't Employees v. Hawley, D.D.C., No. 07-00855, 3/31/08.
> [T]he plaintiffs' alleged injury is not speculative nor dependent on any future event, such as a third party's misuse of the data, the court said. The court finds that plaintiffs have standing to bring their Privacy Act claim.
Source - Stanford Law School CIS
Am. Fed'n of Gov't Employees v. Hawley.pdf
“Yes, it's public information, but we never thought it would be available to the public!”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/08/AR2008040803034.html
House Staffers Livid Over Web Site
Financial Information Being Posted Is Too Personal, Aides Say
By Paul Kane Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, April 9, 2008; Page A17
Working from a cramped loft apartment a mile from the Capitol, a small Internet company has sparked a privacy rights battle with hundreds of angry top House staffers upset that the Web site has begun posting details about their personal finances.
In an unusual conflict over constitutional rights, the aides argue that the recent disclosures leave them highly vulnerable to identity theft. But the Web site, LegiStorm, contends that it has a First Amendment right to publish already public information about some of the Capitol's most powerful players -- the high-level staffers -- and is creating a new check against potential corruption.
Related? (see also the dancing cop story, below)
http://www.nebraska.tv/Global/story.asp?S=8142329&nav=menu605_2
Small Kansas company airs Wal-Mart's unguarded video moments
Associated Press - April 9, 2008 2:44 PM ET
A Kansas-based company is selling access to three decades of internal meeting videos it made for retail giant Wal-Mart.
Flagler Productions of Lenexa says it opened the archive after Wal-Mart unexpectedly stopped using the firm in 2006 -- taking away the majority of its business.
The videos, filmed at management conferences and shareholder meetings, include male managers parading in drag and top executives in candid discussions on corporate strategy and hiring practices.
Among those paying the $250-an-hour research fee are plaintiffs attorneys suing Wal-Mart and union organizers.
Wal-Mart spokespeople say the company's not happy to see the archive open to the public but haven't said if it will pursue legal action.
Flagler officials say Wal-Mart never signed a contract so has no legal right to the videos.
More on the “discarded property” argument. Fingerprints, like skin cells or hair, are “abandoned” and therefore okay for anyone to collect and use. (I wonder if they would feel the same if I followed them around picking up used coffee cups and vacuuming the chairs they sat on?)
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080410062152806
Security czar pushes biometrics; Critics raise privacy issues
Thursday, April 10 2008 @ 06:21 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Fed. Govt.
The U.S. homeland security czar says Canadians shouldn't fear plans to expand international sharing of biometric information such as fingerprints.
Michael Chertoff says a person's fingerprints are like footprints.
"They're not particularly private," Chertoff said in an interview yesterday during a brief visit to Ottawa.
"Your fingerprint's hardly personal data, because you leave it on glasses and silverware and articles all over the world."
Source - The Kingston Whig-Standard
[From the article:
At an international meeting next month, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation plans to present further details of a project known as the "Server in the Sky" [Give it a cutesy name and everyone will love it? Bob] that would allow the four countries to compare biometric records on known or suspected terrorists.
... Chertoff says... ...The people who argue against information sharing don't understand that information sharing in many ways is the best protection for privacy, and not a threat to privacy."
It's not lying, it's “Political Marketing”
http://blog.aclu.org/index.php?/archives/608-Did-Mukasey-Lie-About-the-911-Call.html#comments
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Did Mukasey Lie About the 9/11 Call?
Salon's Glenn Greenwald has been chasing down the story behind the comments Attorney General Michael Mukasey made in a speech in San Francisco last week. In the speech, Mukasey claimed that a pre-9/11 call from an "Afghan safe house" to a number somewhere in the U.S. wasn't intercepted because of the intelligence community's inadequate wiretapping capabilities under FISA. Mukasey implied that 9/11 could have been prevented if that call had been intercepted.
Greenwald pointed out yesterday that there are only two possibilities:
(1) The Bush administration concealed this obviously vital episode from the 9/11 Commission and from everyone else, until Mukasey tearfully trotted it out last week; or,
(2) Mukasey, the nation's highest law enforcement officer, made this story up in order to scare and manipulate Americans into believing that FISA and other surveillance safeguards caused the 9/11 attacks and therefore the Government should be given more unchecked spying powers.
Is this question as absurd as I (and most of the commenters) think it is? If not, should the power companies get a share of the profits from anyone who uses electricity?
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/09/2249235&from=rss
Who Pays for Rebuilding the Internet?
Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday April 09, @10:54PM from the anyone-but-me dept. The Internet The Almighty Buck
pcause writes
"The Internet (physical as opposed to technical) was really not designed for applications that want to use maximum bandwidth all of the time, such as P2P and streaming video. Here in the US we've seen Comcast try to balance the demands of P2P traffic with other traffic and its backbone capacity. In the UK, a flame war has broken out between the BBC and ISPs about the same issue. So the question is who pays? Should the content owners, who make the profits pay for the extra infrastructure or should the consumer pay?"
Signs of things to come?
http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/62522.html?welcome=1207828718
Adobe Grabs a Slice of Video 2.0 Pie
By Katherine Noyes TechNewsWorld 04/09/08 2:23 PM PT
Adobe's launch Wednesday of Adobe Media Player gives the company a toehold in the online video space. Additionally, say analysts, Adobe gains a leg up in competing with Microsoft's Silverlight platform, which is a competitor to Flash. That the player supports high-definition video standards helps as well.
Adobe on Wednesday announced that its Adobe Media Player 1.0 is now available as a free download.
... Meanwhile, Adobe also announced on Wednesday Adobe TV, a new network in Adobe Media Player with a series of shows that provide expert instruction and original series programming about Adobe products. [Yes there is lots of free entertainment, but this should suggest uses of this product to all sorts of organizations. Bob]
Hey! Give the guy a break. (but the tag line on the video is true...) Does the store have the right to “publish” this video?
http://www.aolvideoblog.com/2007/07/23/police-office-caught-dancing/
Police Officer Caught Dancing
Posted Jul 23rd 2007 8:39AM by Meredith R., Videologist Chief of Staff
Filed under: Music to Your Ears
Everyone's guilty of singing in the car or the shower when we think no one is watching. This police officer, however, got caught by a security camera in a convenience store -- dancing himself silly.
Dilbert explains “change management”
http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2008458440410.gif
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