http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=3366
Email Snooping Can Be Intrusion Upon Seclusion
August 31, 2009 by Dissent Filed under Court, Internet, Workplace
Attorney Evan D. Brown discusses a case that sheds some light on how courts may view a privacy invasion claim of “intrusion on seclusion” when a firm’s employee email is hosted in the cloud:
Local elected official Steinbach had an email account that was issued by the municipality. Third party Hostway provided the technology for the account. Steinbach logged in to her Hostway webmail account and noticed eleven messages from constituents had been forwarded by someone else to her political rival.
Steinbach sued the municipality, her political rival and an IT professional employed by the municipality. She brought numerous claims, including violation of the Federal Wiretap Act, the Stored Communications Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. She also brought a claim under Illinois common law for intrusion upon seclusion, and the court’s treatment of this claim is of particular interest.
[...]
Finally, the defendant argued that the intrusion was authorized, looking to language in the Federal Wiretap Act and the Stored Communications Act that states there is no violation when the provider of an electronic communication services intercepts or accesses the information. The court rejected this argument, finding that even though the municipality provided the email address to Steinbach, Hostway was the actual provider. The alleged invasion, therefore, was not authorized by statute.
The court’s analysis on this third point could have broader implications as more companies turn to cloud computing services rather than hosting those services in-house. [Outsourcing in general? Bob] In situations where an employer with an in-house provided system has no policy getting the employee’s consent to employer access to electronic communications on the system, the employer—as provider of the system—could plausibly argue that such access would be authorized nonetheless. But with the job of providing the services being delegated to a third party, as in the case of a cloud-hosted technology, the scope of this exclusion from liability is narrowed.
Read more on CircleID
The case is Steinbach v. Village of Forest Park, No. 06-4215, 2009 WL 2605283 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 25, 2009)
[From the article:
The court looked to the case of Busse v. Motorola, Inc., 813 N.E.2d 1013 (Ill.App. 1st. Dist. 2004) for the elements of the tort of intrusion upon seclusion. These elements are:
defendant committed an unauthorized prying into the plaintiff's seclusion;
the intrusion would be highly offensive to the reasonable person;
the matter intruded upon was private; and
the intrusion caused the plaintiff to suffer.
Technology presents new challenges to governments. (Of course, this could also be used to “leak” positions on pending legislation and see what the feedback is...)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,646016,00.html
Illegal Election Updates Strike Again in Germany
Ninety minutes before the polling stations closed, the first results in the weekend's German state elections were already being made public. Twitter had struck again. At around 4:30 p.m. two Twitter users had published messages indicating the outcomes for Thuringia, Saarland and Saxony. These messages then made their way around the Internet.
In Germany, it is a crime to publish data gleaned from the exit polls -- a poll of voters taken immediately after they have exited the polling stations -- before the polling stations have closed.
… One of the Twitter accounts belonged to Patrick Rudolph, the head of the Christian Democrats (CDU) in the city of Radebeul in Saxony. "I don' know who wrote it," Rudolph told SPIEGEL ONLINE. It was not him, he says, and he deactivated the account because of this. [One of the problems with relying on your secretary (teenage children?) to handle the technology for you... Bob]
Users got rights?
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=3348
German Court: Google must change its terms
August 31, 2009 by Dissent Filed under Court, Internet, Non-U.S.
Patrick McGroarty of the Associated Press reports that a German court has ruled that Google must eliminate 10 clauses from its terms of service. The Federation of German Consumer Organizations had argued that the clauses could be interpreted to compromise users’ rights to their own data
Google said in a statement that it removed the clauses, which it described “unfortunately framed,” more than a year ago.
Google spokesman Stefan Keuchel said the terms had already been changed when the court released its decision to clarify that users agree to allow data they upload to be viewed and manipulated only by other users they have explicitly authorized — for instance, through a shared Google document.
Read more on AJC.
Students got no rights!
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=3382
Court backs plagiarism detector
September 1, 2009 by Dissent Filed under Court, Youth
David Canton had an article on Canoe yesterday about the use of the plagiarism detector service, Turnitin.com. For those who weren’t aware of the case at the time, several students sued Turnitin.com last year, claiming that the service violated their copyright and was making a profit off their work. The court sided with Turnitin.com, in part, because when students submit their work to the service, they are consenting to having it stored.
I personally disagreed with the court’s opinion, because students are often given no choice about submitting their work — their professors make it a condition of passing the assignment or course. Many educators, in my opinion, have been essentially coercing students into creating a digital record of their thoughts and opinions — records that might come back to haunt them in the future. Of course, someone might reasonably point out that the gripe would be with the educators and not the service, but to the extent that Turnitin.com was storing records that the student authors did not want stored but had no real choice about consenting to, I viewed it as a privacy invasion.
Now Canton reports that the issue is not totally dead. He writes:
However, this may not signal the end of the controversy surrounding turnitin. Legal action is being contemplated by other student groups unhappy with the policies of Turnitin. Some institutions have discussed eliminating the use of the service or letting professors decide if it should be used on a class-by-class basis.
It is not the concept of Turnitin that is being objected to by students, it is the manner in which the service is being operated.
It will be interesting to see what develops. The court felt that the benefits of turnitin.com outweighed the concerns of the students who filed the first lawsuit. But in this day and age, is creating a non-optional digital record of a student’s thoughts and opinions really a small thing that is outweighed by the convenience or tool it provides educators who want to rule out plagiarism? What do you think?
Stalking Congress
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/022194.html
August 31, 2009
New on LLRX.com - The Government Domain: Tracking Congress 2.0
The Government Domain: Tracking Congress 2.0 - With the 111th Congress of the United States reconvening on September 8th, e-gov expert Peggy Garvin highlights new tools and sources that enhance and expand your ability to track and monitor the action.
Is this evidence that ISPs are doing what they swear thay don't do?
Drop in P2P Traffic Attributed To Traffic Shaping
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday September 01, @03:27AM from the or-just-sneakier-options An anonymous reader writes
"A new report based on data from 100 US and European ISPs claims P2P traffic has dropped to around 20% of all Internet traffic. This is down from the 40% two years ago (also reported by the same company which sells subscriber traffic management equipment to ISPs). The report goes on to say the drop is likely due to continued, widespread ISP P2P shaping: 'In fact, the P2P daily trend is pretty much completely inverted from daily traffic. In other words, P2P reaches it low at 4pm when web and overall Internet traffic approaches its peak... trend is highly suggestive of either persistent congestion or, more likely, evidence of widespread provider manipulation of P2P traffic rates.'"
Arbitrary is as arbitrary does... or doesn't, depending...
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/08/31/1515239/Woman-Fired-For-Using-Uppercase-In-Email?from=rss
Woman Fired For Using Uppercase In Email
Posted by samzenpus on Monday August 31, @12:49PM from the don't-type-angry dept.
tomachi writes
"An accountant in NZ has been awarded $17,000 NZD for unfair dismissal after her boss fired her without warning for using uppercase letters in a single email to co-workers. The email, which advises her team how to fill out staff claim forms, specifies a time and date highlighted in bold red, and a sentence written in capitals and highlighted in bold blue. It reads: 'To ensure your staff claim is processed and paid, please do follow the below checklist.' Her boss deemed the capital letters too confrontational for her co-workers to read after they woke up from naptime."
Is Microsoft doomed? Can you name anything new from them in the last few years? (Windows7 seems like a major improvement, but addresses a declining market)
Challenging Microsoft With a New Technology
By STEVE LOHR Published: August 30, 2009
Microsoft’s No. 1 rival is a household name, Google. But a strong candidate for No. 2 is a company that is scarcely known outside the technology industry: VMware.
(Related) Lose in this market, and individuals have no reason to buy the same software for use at home.
British small biz falls out of love with Microsoft, heads to the Clouds
by Mike Butcher on September 1, 2009
Remember all that Web 2.0 hype back in the day? Remember how some predicted an end to the monopoly of Microsoft in those basic applications like Word, Excel and others as these functions moved to the Cloud? Well it looks like that trend is well on its way now and especially in the UK.
According to a survey by Accredited Supplier, a B2B services marketplace, Microsoft is losing their grip on the UK small business market under increasing pressure from cloud computing and open source software.
(Related) Another “old guard” company that isn't moving (can't move?) quickly enough to create a service that customers want.
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-10322103-233.html
Is AT&T losing its grip on the iPhone?
by Marguerite Reardon August 31, 2009 11:09 AM PDT
Apple's exclusive deal with AT&T to offer the iPhone may end within the year, according to a prediction from financial analyst Gene Munster, a senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray.
If Munster is correct, opening up the iPhone to other carriers in the U.S. could be a boon for Apple, which would likely see iPhone sales go through the roof. On the flipside, if this prediction were to come true, it would likely mean very bad news for AT&T, which has relied heavily on the iPhone to boost its own wireless sales and revenue.
Interesting concept. The RIAA will no doubt be calling (Think they can read music?)
http://www.noteflight.com/login
Noteflight
Noteflight® is an online application that lets you display, edit, print and play back music notation with professional quality, right in your web browser. You can work on a musical score from any computer on the Internet, share it with other users, and embed it in your own pages. And it's free for individual use.
For my website students
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/conduct-embed-online-interviews-with-wetoku-invites/
How To Conduct Video Interviews with Wetoku (Invites!)
Aug. 31st, 2009 By Tim Lenahan
… Wetoku offers a simple way to meet someone online, record the meeting (or interview) and then share it with others. You may use it for video chat, conduct online interviews, etc.
… Our Makeuseof authors have touched on several video chat type offerings that can help with online interviews (Tokbox, Eyejot, and Gmail’s video chat features). Well, wetoku makes meeting face to face with someone far away even easier.
No comments:
Post a Comment