Privacy at ALA 2010 Annual Conference

On the heels of a successful first-annual Choose Privacy Week, ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Committee and Committee on Legislation will present “Privacy, Libraries, and the Law” — a panel featuring three of today’s foremost privacy experts in the country…

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Recognizing Partners, Looking to the Future

As we near the close of the first-ever Choose Privacy Week, we are tremendously grateful to the many individuals and organizations that have contributed to its success. Please allow us this blog post to recognize those on the front lines of key privacy issues today…

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Privacy Programming and Public Libraries

We wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the public libraries that have told us about their fantastic Choose Privacy Week programs and activities! Here are some examples chosen from our Events page, and we hope you’ll share more events with us soon!

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• Digital Marketing, Privacy & the Public Interest



Protecting Privacy, Promoting Consumer Rights and Ensuring Corporate Accountability

 

Perhaps the most powerful - but largely invisible - force shaping our digital media reality is the role of interactive advertising and marketing. Much of our online experience, from websites to search engines to social networks, is being shaped to better serve advertisers. Increasingly, individuals are being electronically "shadowed" online, our actions and behaviors observed, collected, and analyzed so that we can be "micro-targeted." Now a $24 billion a year industry [2008 estimates] in the U.S., with expected dramatic growth to $80 billion or more by 2011, the goal of interactive marketing is to use the awesome power of new media to deeply engage you in what is being sold: whether it's a car, a vacation, a politician or a belief. An explosion of digital technologies, such as behavioral targeting and retargeting, "immersive" rich media, and virtual reality, are being utilized to drive the market goals of the largest brand advertisers and many others.

A major infrastructure has emerged to expand and promote the interests of this sector, including online advertising networks, digital marketing specialists, and trade lobbying groups.

The role which online marketing and advertising plays in shaping our new media world, including at the global level, will help determine what kind of society we will create.

• Will online advertising evolve so that everyone's privacy is truly protected?
• Will there be only a few gatekeepers determining what editorial content should be supported in order to better serve the interests of advertising, or will we see a vibrant commercial and non-commercial marketplace for news, information, and other content necessary for a civil society?
• Who will hold the online advertising industry accountable to the public, making its decisions transparent and part of the policy debate?
• Will the more harmful aspects of interactive marketing - such as threats to public health - be effectively addressed?

 

CDD's project works to keep the public informed and the online ad industry accountable.

Promoting Public Health in the Digital Era





The new media can be a boon to fostering healthy behaviors, including access to more information about drugs and lifestyle choices. But marketers also have the power to encourage the consumption of products and drugs that may be harmful to one's health. From investigating the online marketing of unhealthy food and beverages to children and teens to analyzing the threats from digital marketing of prescription and over-the-counter drugs, CDD is working to promote global public health.

(More - Digitalads.org)

 

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• EFF Experts Address Security, Openness, and Privacy at United Nations' Internet Governance Forum

Vilnius, Lithuania - Experts from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will address security, openness, privacy, and other issues at the United Nations' Internet Governance Forum (IGF), set for September 14-17 in Vilnius, Lithuania.

This is the fifth meeting of the IGF, which was established to discuss public policy issues related to Internet governance on a global scale. Approximately 1,500 government policymakers, technologists, politicians, and others will attend.

EFF experts will participate in nine workshops in Vilnius, including "The Future of Privacy," with EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston and EFF International Rights Director Katitza Rodriguez, who is also a member of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group that helped plan the meeting. Also on the agenda is "Governance of Social Media," with EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl and "Why We Need an Open Web," with EFF International Affairs Director Eddan Katz.

For a complete schedule of EFF's participation in IGF see http://www.eff.org/calendar/2010/09/14/eff-united-nations-internet-gover....

WHAT:
United Nations' Internet Governance Forum

WHEN:
September 14-17

WHERE: Lithuanian Exhibition Centre LITEXPO Laisves pr. 5 LT-04215 Vilnius, Lithuania

For more on the IGF:
http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/
http://www.igf2010.lt

Contact:

Rebecca Jeschke
Media Relations Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
press@eff.org


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• Surveillance Court Seeks Public Comments on Proposed Rules

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authorizes a special court the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to undertake electronic surveillance in the United States for foreign intelligence information. The FISC is now seeking public comments concerning its procedures. Comments must received by Monday, October 4, 2010. EPIC previously submitted an amicus brief[ regarding FISA authority and national security. EPIC will be submitting comments to the FISC and endorse changes that improve accountability and transparency for FISA orders. See EPIC - Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and EPIC - Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Orders 1979-2010
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• Lawsuit filed against DHS travel surveillance

In the first lawsuit to challenge one of the U.S. government’s largest post-9/11 dragnet surveillance programs, the First Amendment Project (FAP) filed suit today under the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) against U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the DHS division that operates the illegal “Automated Targeting System” of lifetime travel histories [...]
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• Wall Street Journal: Web Privacy Start-Ups Struggle

The Wall Street Journal reports on new companies that focus on Internet privacy: The majority of Internet users remain unaware of how visible their Web behavior can be to marketers, identity thieves and others, say executives at Web-privacy companies. And those who are concerned about privacy are often reluctant to trust an unfamiliar company with their [...]
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• Court OKs Warrantless Cell-Site Tracking

A federal appeals court said Tuesday the government may obtain cell-site information that mobile phone carriers retain on their customers without a probable-cause warrant under the Fourth Amendment. The decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (.pdf) was not, however, an outright Obama administration victory. Lower courts, the three-judge panel wrote, could demand the [...]
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