Free Republic

There’s something about cameras that seems to divide our nation, while at the same time pointing out dizzying differences in terms of how we evaluate the technology based on who is using it. We already know that privacy advocates (for lack of a better term) hate facial recognition software when it’s used by law enforcement of any kind. However, most of them don’t seem to have any problems with Facebook and other social media apps “tagging” them and their friends at the latest party. Speed cameras are also seen as being evil, even if they do occasionally catch violent felons...

The Senate voted to kill Obama-era online privacy regulations, a first step toward allowing internet providers such as Comcast, AT&T and Verizon to sell your browsing habits and other personal information as they expand their own online ad businesses. Those rules, not yet in effect, would have required internet providers to ask your permission before sharing your personal information.

The White House will lay out ideas this week for protecting U.S. consumers’ privacy in an era in which the ubiquitous use of computers and mobile phones provides a constant data feed on individuals. But after a 90-day review of “big data,” the White House is expected to suggest ways to encourage companies to protect privacy and identify areas for further study, rather than calling for a legislative overhaul. The Obama administration is treading carefully to avoid further antagonizing major technology companies and international allies angered by the government’s data surveillance programs. The review was led by John Podesta, senior...

A new Obama administration privacy policy released Friday explains how the government will gather the user data of online visitors to WhiteHouse.gov, mobile apps and social media sites, and it clarifies that online comments, whether tirades or tributes, are in the open domain. "Information you choose to share with the White House (directly and via third party sites) may be treated as public information," the new policy says. The Obama administration also promises not to sell the data of online visitors. But it cannot make the same assurances for users who go to third-party White House sites on Facebook, Twitter...

More than half of Germans want greater state control over websites, but about the same share are worried about surveillance of their own online activity, a survey on Tuesday revealed. Many users are concerned about the threats they face online, above all from computer viruses (72 percent), surveillance of their browsing activity (57 percent) and the misuse of personal data (50 percent), the survey conducted by the Allensbach Institute for the German Institute for Trust and Security in the Internet showed. But in a seeming contradiction, a considerable majority (61 percent) also believed there should be greater state controls on...

The vote on the Immigration Reform Bill nears and I've got that same sick feeling I had right before Obamacare passed. The media narrative that passage of this Bill MUST happen at all costs is alive and well, just as it was during Obamacare. Once again, Republican CongressCritters are led down the primrose path by the biased media propagandists for Obama and the GOP just goes along with it, hook, line and sinker! So, we're adding 20,000 new Border Patrol Agents (Democrat voter union hacks) and that's supposed to be the cure all, end all to our illegal alien problem?...

Silicon Valley is fighting privacy advocates over a California bill, the first of its kind in the nation, that would require companies like Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. to disclose to users the personal data they have collected and with whom they have shared it. The industry backlash is against the "Right to Know Act," a bill introduced in February by Bonnie Lowenthal, a Democratic assemblywoman from Long Beach. It would make Internet companies, upon request, share with Californians personal information they have collected—including buying habits, physical location and sexual orientation—and what they have passed on to third parties such...

The largest U.S. websites are installing new and intrusive consumer-tracking technologies on the computers of people visiting their sites—in some cases, more than 100 tracking tools at a time—a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. The tracking files represent the leading edge of a lightly regulated, emerging industry of data-gatherers who are in effect establishing a new business model for the Internet: one based on intensive surveillance of people to sell data about, and predictions of, their interests and activities, in real time. The Journal's study shows the extent to which Web users are in effect exchanging personal data for...

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