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Category: Privacy

Lifestreaming Taken Too Far?

As I mentioned recently, I have been experimenting quite a lot lately with the whole lifestreaming concept. But there are limits. bq.God, myBlogLog is creepy. I don’t exactly want people to know what I’m reading.. I don’t share google reader links either. – Eric Rice I tried Wakoopa for a while, but decided to unstall [...]

Caveat Internet

Are you always careful when you are using a public Internet station or a public Access point? bq.Any business traveler who has logged on to a wireless network at the airport, printed a document at a hotel business center or checked e-mail messages at a public terminal has probably wondered, at least fleetingly, “Is this [...]

E-mail Addresses are Public Records

Any website for any sort of government agency in Florida is now required to prominently display the following statement: bq.Under Florida law, e-mail addresses are public records. If you do not want your e-mail address released in response to a public records request, do not send electronic mail to this entity. Instead, contact this office [...]

Age Online

With heightened concerns over sexual predators lurking at so-called social-networking sites, state attorneys general have called for such communities, particularly MySpace, to improve age and identity checks. If only it were so easy, experts say. “We’re all just grasping for solutions,” said Anne Collier, co-author of the forthcoming “MySpace Unraveled: What It Is and How [...]

Life in a Police State

It seems like it has been a bad couple of weeks to be a library Director. Jackie Griffin of the Berkeley Public Library recently resigned under a settlement agreement with the city. Jo Ann Pinder was fired as Director of the Gwinnett County Library without any reason given (although some questionable ones were hinted at). [...]

Shades of 1984

bq.The U.S. Department of Justice is quietly shopping around the explosive idea of requiring Internet service providers to retain records of their customers’ online activities. Data retention rules could permit police to obtain records of e-mail chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity months after Internet providers ordinarily would have deleted the logs–that is, if logs [...]

Anonymous Library Cards

At first, I thought the idea was an odd joke. But then I saw that it was sent to Slashdot by Ben Ostrowsky. So I am sure it is a serious proposal. bq.In short, collecting personal identity information about customers is a dangerous activity for a library. We should be careful to engage in it [...]

Fingerprints instead of…

Indentification via fingerprints seem to be all the vogue of late. And since the story of Naperville Public Library, US Biometrics and their Fingerprints instead of Library Card plan has been commented on at both LISNews and SlashDot, I felt obligated to respond as well. Up until now, fingerprints have been required for everything from [...]

Googling for Profit

Did you catch the buzz about how easy it is to use Google to find unprotected web cameras? It turns out there are some much less innocuous uses for Google.

JC Confidential

bq.I stuck my neck out and got it chopped off. You violate policy and there’s no more discussion. I was fired for trying to do the right thing … helping to return a wallet. I thought I was doing a good deed. – Steve Roberts via Lisnews.com Rules are rules, and as much as we [...]