Privacy advocates worry online advertisers will sneak around ‘Do Not Track’ rule

By Stephen C. Webster | RAW Story

Friday, February 24, 2012 

Following the White House’s announcement of support for new one-click Internet privacy rules, electronic privacy advocates warned Raw Story that online advertisers who claim support the new standards might not actually be keen on giving up their most valuable metrics.

Experts who spoke to Raw Story this week warned that if government officials are really serious about protecting Americans’ private data, it’s going to take a lot more than the recently announced voluntary standards.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is concerned that industry groups may be able to find wiggle room around any such proposals that may ultimately become law, merely by altering their little-read terms of service agreements to include the very tracking the “Do Not Track” policy purports to allow users to opt out of.

“Right now we are at the beginning of a difficult negotiation about who is going to be in the room for deciding what ‘Do Not Track’ means [in potential future laws],” EFF activism director Rainey Reitman explained to Raw Story. “Yesterday’s announcement from the [Digital Advertising Alliance] underscored the risk of allowing an advertising company to decide what ‘Do Not Track’ means.”

Following the president’s announcement, the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), an industry group representing the largest online ad networks, said (PDF) that it would implement a series of privacy protections that should allow users to easily opt-out of behavioral tracking systems. However, Reitman warned that while it sounds good, DAA’s move may actually be an effort to pre-empt the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which offers a stakeholder-driven process for open collaboration on privacy standards.

If that’s successful, online advertisers could potentially tweak their terms of service to say they’re in compliance with “Do Not Track” rules merely by exempting unwilling customers from behavioral advertising, while still conducting tracking in the background and away from public view.
“That’s the fear, but I certainly hope that’s not the case,” she said.

Those concerns were echoed to a degree by Joy Butler, a Washington, D.C. attorney and author of the book The Cyber Citizen’s Guide Through the Legal Jungle: Internet Law for Your Professional Online Presence.

“First, everyone is not in agreement on the meaning of ‘Do Not Track,’” she told Raw Story. “To some internet companies, it means no targeted ads will be sent to the consumer, but the consumer’s information may still be recorded, stored, and even shared. Hence, ‘Do Not Track’ may initially insert more consumer confusion into the marketplace.”

She added that even while the Federal Trade Commission will help to enforce adherence to industry privacy policies, “without Congressional legislation to codify it, the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights is only a list of suggested best practices that Internet companies can voluntarily adopt or reject.”

Chris Babel, CEO of TRUSTe, a leading online privacy group, agreed that companies could potentially find ways around “Do Not Track” principles if they become law, but suggested that it wouldn’t be in their interest to do so.

“‘Do Not Track’ and the whole Privacy Bill of Rights is not a law yet,” he explained. “So, one, it needs to become a law. But the question is, could they [evade the law]? Sure, they could. Would they do that? Well, it would be a PR disaster.”

He concluded that companies getting around “Do Not Track” by putting an exemption “buried in the terms of service somewhere multiple layers deep” is probably a bad idea. “I just think that puts you in the crosshairs of so many government regulatory agencies that I don’t think they would do it,” he said. “And I don’t think that anyone would recommend that they should do it.”

So far, companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL have all volunteered to comply with anti-tracking capabilities built into web browsers, and the DAA said it would work with browser makers to unify the technology. What that unifying language will be remains anyone’s guess.

The DAA did not respond to a request for comment.

The War on "Supersized Alcopops"

Prohibitionists succeeded in removing the caffeine from Four Loco. Now they're targeting the alcohol.

Greg Beato | October 28, 2011

Roughly a year ago, it looked like it might be last call for Four Loko, the notorious fruit-flavored malt liquor that was allegedly as lethal as a Mexican drug cartel. While even the strongest incarnation of the beverage contained only 12 percent alcohol by volume (ABV), or about as much as your average white zinfandel, Four Loko also contained caffeine, guarana, and taurine, and these ingredients had made the brand both a college party staple and a convenient target for critics who charged its manufacturer, the Chicago-based Phusion Products, with irresponsibly pandering to young consumers who had already turned the non-alcoholic energy drink market into a multi-billion-dollar business. On November 17, 2010, the Federal Drug administration (FDA) sent a warning letter to the company that essentially advised Phusion Projects to remove Four Loko from the marketplace or else face potential product seizures, injunctions, and prosecutions.

While Phusion had announced a day earlier that it was planning to remove the caffeine, guarana, and taurine from its products, the threat of imminent FDA action produced a substantial chilling effect in convenience-store coolers everywhere. In the wake of the FDA’s letter, Phusion’s three co-founders would later recount at the 2011 Industry Beer Summit, the company lost more than 30,000 distribution points as retailers balked at selling the product. In addition, Phusion was stuck with as much as $30 million worth of unsalable inventory, which according to Phusion vice president of communications, Chris Short, it eventually “destroyed and recycled into ethanol.”

Ironically, the FDA warning letter produced a similar quandary for Four Loko’s foes as it did for Four Loko’s creators—how to proceed when caffeine was no longer part of the mix? While Phusion Products was busy reformulating its product line, Alcohol Justice, a non-profit advocacy organization formerly known as the Marin Institute, reformulated its argument against Four Loko, Anheuser-Busch’s Tilt, and similar products. “They took the caffeine out of their drinks, but now they are fueling youth binge drinking with giant single-serving cans of alcopops,” exclaimed Alcohol Justice’s Executive Director Bruce Lee Livingston in a January 2011 press release. Eliminating caffeine from flavored malt beverages was a start, the organization suggested, but it also proposed that the container sizes of these products be limited to 12 ounces at most, and that their alcohol content not exceed 6 percent by volume.

As it turns out, both Four Loko and Four Loko’s critics have been surprisingly successful in the post-caffeine era. While Phusion faced some temporary setbacks in the wake of the FDA letter, it quickly brought caffeine-free versions of its products to market and experienced strong sales. According to Phusion’s Chris Short, 106,000 retail outlets currently buy Phusion’s products, and there are roughly 600,000 distribution points in those 106,000 accounts. “We’ve been able to regain most of those distribution points we lost [after the FDA ruling],” he says.

Having lost the cash cow that created a 2,966 percent sales revenue increase in 2009 and a 306 percent sales revenue increase in 2010, Phusion also made efforts to diversify its product line and penetrate new markets. In the caffeinated 
Loko era, its primary retail channels were convenience stores and liquor stores. In March, in an effort to obtain more placement in grocery stores, drug stores, and mass merchandisers, it introduced a new bottled version of Four Loko. The bottles are 11.2 ounces in size, they contain 8 percent alcohol by volume, and they’re sold as six-packs or twelve-packs. In September, it launched Poco Loko, a 16-ounce can version that contains 8 percent alcohol by volume. According to SymphonyIRI Group, a Chicago-based market research firm, total U.S. sales for Four Loko in convenience stores, supermarkets, drug stores, and mass market retailers excluding Wal-Mart for the 52-week period ending October 2, 2011 were $152 million, a 17 percent increase from the previous year. (SymphonyIRI does not include liquor store sales in this total.)

Earlier this month, Phusion announced that it had achieved the ultimate badge of mainstream approval—Wal-Mart will begin selling 12-packs of the bottled version of  Four Loko this fall. No doubt wary of Four Loko’s growing respectability, Alcohol Justice has ratcheted up its campaign against the brand. In an August 2011 report it published, From Alcoholic Energy Drinks to Supersized Alcopops, it suggests that “supersized alcopops” like Four Loko “may be just as dangerous  as their caffeinated predecessors because of the combination of high alcohol with sweet flavors.” In a press release publicizing this study, Bruce Lee Livingston went even further, claiming that the new “supersized alcopops” are an “arguably more dangerous product” than the alcoholic energy drinks they replaced.

Or to put it another way: By removing the caffeine that had ostensibly made Four Loko and other products like it the most dangerous elixirs ever to poison convenience-store coolers, Phusion and other manufacturers have somehow made their products even more dangerous!

While the logic of that argument may elude all but professional prohibitionists, it apparently had an impact at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In November 2010, when the FDA issued its warning letter to Phusion Products, the FTC issued one as well. In it, the FTC addressed Four Loko’s caffeine content and the fact that the FDA had warned Phusion that caffeine, as used in its product, was “an unsafe food additive” that might “present unusual risks to health and safety.” Selling a product that the FDA had deemed “unsafe,” the FTC advised, might also “constitute an unfair or deceptive act or practice in violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C. § 45.”

While this warning letter noted that Four Loko was sold in 23.5-ounce cans and contained 11 to 13 percent alcohol by volume, it offered no indication that the FTC had specific concerns about these characteristics. On October 3rd, however, the FTC filed a new complaint against Four Loko. (Reason’s Jacob Sullum covers it here.) Essentially, its complaint echoes the argument that Alcohol Justice has been promoting over the last year. A 23.5-ounce, 12 percent alcohol by volume can of Four Loko has as much alcohol as 4.7 cans of regular beer, and yet the oversized cans are marketed as single-serving products meant to be consumed by one person on a single occasion. (The FTC assumes that “regular beer” comes in a 12 oz. can or bottle and contains 5 percent alcohol by volume).  And because in the FTC’s estimation a person cannot safely drink 4.7 servings of alcohol in a two-hour period, it believes that marketing 23.5-ounce cans of Four Loko as a single-serving product is deceptive.

While the chain of reasoning the FTC uses to reach this conclusion is dubious on many counts—why the two-hour cut-off period for starters?—Phusion has already agreed to change its packaging. “Even though we reached an agreement, we don’t share the FTC’s perspective and we disagree with their allegations,” Phusion’s Chris Short told me via email. “Our labeling has always clearly conveyed exactly what’s in the can…However, we take legal compliance very seriously and we share the FTC’s interest in making sure consumers get all the information and tools they need to make smart, informed decisions.”

Thus, while Four Loko’s cans already feature six different statements in 10 locations about the product’s alcohol content and the fact that an ID is required for purchase, it will add yet another message to the mix. “This can has as much alcohol as 4 1/2 regular (12 oz. 5 percent alc/vol) beers,” future cans will read. In addition, Phusion is developing a new reusable cap closure technology that will allow consumers to ration a single can across multiple drinking sessions. Short says the new caps will be the first for any alcoholic beverage worldwide and will be available in stores by Spring 2012.

While Alcohol Justice’s advocacy efforts appear to have inspired the FTC’s complaint against Phusion, the group is less than pleased with the agreement the two parties have reached. In a letter it sent to the FTC, the organization points out that the new disclaimer about a single can of Four Loko containing as much alcohol as four regular beers may actually backfire and “serve as a marketing device” rather than a warning. It also claims that “it’s absurd to even imagine how a [resealable] cap will deter youth from drinking an entire container at once.” And ultimately it concludes that “the high alcohol content in the large single-serving container is itself deceptive.” In other words, the only real way to make Four Loko and similar products fit for commerce is to pursue the course Alcohol Justice has already laid out it in its model legislation: Limit container sizes and alcohol content.

But what if it got its wish? (In its letter to the FTC, Alcohol Justice says that “several states are considering regulation, including legislation based on our model bill, to require that alcoholic products sold in single serve containers be limited to 12 oz. containers with 6% ABV.”) Earlier this year, when Phusion introduced its Poco Loko line, which features 16-ounce cans with 8 percent ABV, here’s what Alcohol Justice had to say: “Phusion’s new line—the cheeky-sounding Poco Loko—could very well convince youth that they can drink more cans of it without risk to their safety or health. However, at 16 ounces and 8% alcohol by volume, one can is the equivalent of more than 2 beers. The high alcohol level plus the sickly-sweet flavors that mask the alcohol taste is a dangerous combination, packaged in cans perfectly sized for shotgunning and drinking games.”

If Poko Loko’s downsized cans and alcohol content are dangerous because they might convince “youth” that they can drink more cans of it without risk 
to their safety or health, wouldn’t an even smaller, weaker version of the product be that much more seductive and dangerous? Continue down the path of excessive regulation, and eventually no four-year-old in America will be safe from Four Loko.

Oil Prices Plunge as US, Europe Tap Strategic Reserves

by: Kevin G. Hall, McClatchy Newspapers | Report

Friday 24 June 2011

Washington - Oil prices dropped sharply Thursday on news that the U.S. and Europe will sell 60 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves over the next 30 days, a move experts called an important policy shift that should help restrain volatile energy prices.

Oil prices for month-ahead delivery fell by $4.39 a barrel, or almost 5 percent, to settle at $91.02 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil prices rose by more than 20 percent earlier this year but closed Thursday near where they started the year. Gasoline prices nationally averaged $3.61 for a gallon of regular unleaded, down from $3.82 a month ago, but up sharply from $2.74 a year ago.

In simultaneous news briefings, the White House and the Paris-based International Energy Agency said that they'd release oil from emergency reserves, ostensibly to ensure adequate supply to refiners during the peak summer driving season.

Both said the protracted conflict in Libya has resulted in insufficient supplies of light sweet crude oil, more commonly refined in Europe, and that shortfalls were expected in coming weeks. Many European refiners didn't expect the Libyan conflict that began in February to drag on so long. It's removed an estimated 1.5 million barrels a day of oil from the global market, according to IEA.

The U.S. will release half the 60 million barrels, offering it for auction beginning next Wednesday. The U.S. consumes about 21 million barrels a day and the world about 88 million, but the 60 million barrels to be sold from the reserves nevertheless sends an important signal to oil producers and markets, analysts said.

Officials on each side of the Atlantic insisted that they weren't acting to affect prices per se, but rather to head off an anticipated shortage — which would drive up prices. The reserve was created in 1975 following the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo to give the nation an emergency supply in case of disruptions; it's not supposed to be tapped simply to drive down fuel price — as critics in Congress and business groups noted Thursday.

"We're focused on the disruption of supply and this is about insuring that ... this will address the supply disruption" that has taken about 140 million barrels of oil off the market since February, said a senior Obama administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity. "This is about addressing the supply disruption and its potential impact on economic growth."

It's questionable whether the lost Libyan supply has made much difference to the global supply-demand equation. There's little evidence of a global shortage in oil. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has about 4 million barrels a day of spare production capacity.

Refineries in the U.S. — the world's biggest oil consumer_ are operating well below their capacity. Refiners are under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for potential manipulation of oil prices. Their trade association suggested that Thursday's move is motivated to shore up Obama's political standing.

"Releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve today, when gasoline prices are falling and there is no supply shortage, makes no sense and weakens our economic and national security," Charles Drevna, the president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, said in a statement. "The Strategic Petroleum Reserve ... shouldn't be used as a Strategic Political Reserve to boost the popularity of elected officials."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce saw it similarly.

"The Obama administration's decision to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is ill-advised and not the signal the markets need," Karen Harbert, the president of the chamber's Energy Institute, said in a statement. "Our reserve is intended to address true emergencies, not politically inconvenient high prices."

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, joined the critical chorus. "By tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the president is using a national security instrument to address his political problems."

However, independent energy experts saw an important shift in the use of strategic oil reserves. They said these reserves are now being used by 34 rich nations_ which collectively make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with which IEA is affiliated — to quash financial speculation and pressure oil-producing nations.

"We would suggest that today's action represents the first genuine, offensive use of the OECD's 'defensive oil weapon' to send an unforgettable message to OPEC and also to non-commercial players in the crude markets," said Kevin Book, the managing director for ClearView Energy Partners, in a research note.

By tapping reserves, Book suggested, rich oil-consuming nations are showing oil producers that they'll fight back when they think supply is being deliberately restricted to maintain high prices. OPEC collectively refused earlier this month to increase production, but Saudi Arabia separately began to do so and has vowed to raise production as much as 2 million barrels a day if necessary to restrain prices.

In Paris, Richard Jones, a former U.S. diplomat who is now the deputy executive director of the IEA, insisted that Thursday's surprise move had nothing to do with the June 8 collapse of OPEC negotiations.

"Before the release (announcement) took place, we were in consultation with some of these countries, and there is a good understanding that this is not an action directed against OPEC," said Jones.

Jones and administration officials said no decision has been made on possible additional releases if Libyan supplies remain off the market further into the summer.

Book also contended that there's a message for financial players who now make 70 percent or more of trades in U.S. contracts for future delivery of oil.

"In recent conversations regarding potential (Strategic Petroleum Reserve) sales, several senior policymakers told us they blamed speculative interest in oil and products for current price premiums. The structure of today's sale suggests that OPEC wasn't the only target," Book wrote.

Jim Burkhard, the managing director of global oil research for IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associations, said key answers will come when auctions begin next week.

"It will be telling if there is a rapid uptick (in price) of this offer ... that would signal that the market may be a little tighter than we thought before this release," Burkhard said. "If the uptick is weak or slow, that would signal that the market is relatively well supplied. Yes it's been released, but it's not certain how much of that oil will actually be purchased."

Frank Verrastro, the director of energy programs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said: "If refiners bid on the ... crude and actually put it in storage, it's because they believe the market is supplied. We will see what the reaction to the sale is."

Soaring energy prices slowed the U.S. and global economic recovery. Prices have collapsed from the May high of $113 a barrel, but Burkhard expects them to fall further.

"It's a new form of economic stimulus," he suggested, adding that there aren't many government tools left as earlier stimulus measures end. "There is not a whole lot left to try to boost the overall economy. If oil prices decline ... that would be a positive for the economic recovery ... It would diminish one of the economic headwinds that we have been facing this year."

This will mark the fifth time that oil has been sold from the U.S. reserve. Previous sales were during the U.S. liberation of Kuwait in 1991 (17 million barrels); deficit reduction efforts in 1995-1996 (28 million barrels); an effort to bring down New England heating oil prices in 2000 (30 million barrels); and after hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 (11 million barrels). IEA member states joined the 1991 and 2005 releases from oil reserves.

Latest Creepy Facebook Scheme: Facial Recognition Technology

Is Facebook's new facial recognition tool designed to make the site more useful to users or to boost its value for executives?

By Beth Wellington, Comment Is Free
Posted on June 16, 2011

Remember the uproar when Facebook made your list of friends, pages you are a fan of, gender, geographic region and networks publicly available to everyone? Now, the social networking behemoth has silently enabled facial recognition software without your permission under the rather benign tag "Suggest photos of me to friends." Even if you choose to disable the option, Facebook still will have the technical ability to connect your name with your image. 

Mark Zuckerberg might say his company is just evolving on privacy – witness his comments in this video interview that:

"We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are."

Contrast this with his former claims that privacy is "the vector around which Facebook operates".

Imagine if, in the name this vector, his company had labelled the new feature "facial recognition photo tags" and required users to opt in, rather than disable it after the fact. Methinks Zuckerberg would have had fewer takers.

But already, the deck is stacked against privacy. As media activist Cory Doctorow noted in a TED lecture, Facebook employs "very powerful game-like mechanisms to reward to disclosure – it embodies BF's Skinner's famous thought experiment, the notion of the Skinner box … lavish[ing] you with attention from the people that you love … in service to a business model that cashes in the precious material of our social lives." Is this new feature really designed to make the site more useful to users or to boost its commercial value as it nears an initial public stock offering?

As Joan Goodchild, senior editor of CSO (chief security officer) Online, noted to me:

"Many privacy advocates feel Facebook needs to do a better job of educating folks about what the new feature is, what it does, and how to opt in or out. Many also feel a user should always be opted out of new features automatically, and should then have to opt in themselves. But it is often the other way around when Facebook rolls out these features."

My concerns go deeper: once data is available to third parties, however temporarily, the cat is out of the bag and beyond retrieval. And it's not just this constant meddling with our settings that's releasing our information – there are also security holes, not to mention scams and release of our data by third-party apps, which the Wall Street Journal found "were sending Facebook ID numbers to at least 25 advertising and data firms, several of which build profiles of internet users by tracking their online activities". More recently, Facebook was adding apps to our profiles that we hadn't requested and which we were unable to permanently disable.

And these front doors – and also back doors – are available for governments, including our own, which has been surveilling such security "risks" as the Quakers and calling Virginia opponents of mountaintop removal "terrorists" (pdf) (while excluding the Ku Klux Klan).

There are already huge government-controlled facial databases: your photo on your driver's licence, government-issued identity card, travel visa and passport ends up in a government office. If the government wants to see a photo of your face, it often wouldn't need Facebook to get it. But Facebook's facial recognition feature certainly adds data points and a social graph. 

As Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer of BT wrote me:

"Right now, Facebook has the largest collection of identified photos outside of governments. I don't think we know what the ramifications of that will be."

All this reminds me of Steven Spielberg's Minority Report: the 2002 film, based on a 1958 short story by Philip K Dick, featured law enforcement preventing "precrimes" and corporations bombarding passersby with holographic advertisements which crawled up the sides of walls, addressing them by name.

Goodchild recently listed some of the hidden dangers of Facebook. And this is nothing new. As early as 2005 (the year after Facebook's rollout), MIT students were already detailing (pdf) what they saw as Facebook's threats to privacy:

"Users disclose too much, Facebook does not take adequate steps to protect user privacy, and third parties are actively seeking out end-user information using Facebook."

Facial recognition on Facebook arrived with no notice in the US, unless you kept up with the social network's blog last December. The feature came to general light last week, when Facebook extended the feature to other countries and European regulators started investigating.

In the US, Congressman Edward Markey (Democrat, Massachusetts), co-chairman of the bipartisan congressional privacy caucus, has complained:

"Requiring users to disable this feature after they've already been included by Facebook is no substitute for an opt-in process … If this new feature is as useful as Facebook claims, it should be able to stand on its own, without an automatic sign-up that changes users' privacy settings without their permission."

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre (Epic), spearheaded a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission on 10 June that Facebook's deployment of facial recognition software rises to the level of "unfair and deceptive trade practices". Joining Epic were the Centre for Digital Democracy, Consumer Watchdog and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, all of which asked (pdf) "the commission to investigate Facebook, determine the extent of the harm to consumer privacy and safety, require Facebook to cease collection and use of users' biometric data without their affirmative opt-in consent, require Facebook to give users meaningful control over their personal information, establish appropriate security safeguards, limit the disclosure of user information to third parties, and seek appropriate injunctive and compensatory relief."

 

Facebook has responded to the FTC complaint, with the statement:

"We have heard the comments from some regulators about this product feature and we are providing them with additional information which we are confident will satisfy any concerns they will have."

Facebook provides valuable ways to stay in touch with our friends and families, to network with our colleagues and customers and to coordinate activism. But is hypervisibility really in our best interest, and shouldn't we be the ones making the decisions about what to disclose? Markey submitted legislation in May outlawing the tracking of children online. He might need to add something for adults.

Dem introduces ‘Do Not Track Me Online’ privacy bill

By Sahil Kapur | Monday, February 14th, 2011

WASHINGTON – A California Democrat has introduced an online privacy measure that would allow Web users to opt-out of having their online behavior monitored by advertisers.

HR 654, The Do Not Track Me Online Act of 2011, would empower the Federal Trade Commission to write regulations ensuring that online marketing agencies refrain from tracking users who wish not to be tracked.

"Consumers have a right to determine what if any of their information is shared with big corporations and the federal government must have the authority and tools to enforce reasonable protections," said the bill's sponsor, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA).

"Failure to do so," read a summary from Speier's office, "would be considered an unfair or deceptive act punishable by law. The covered entity would have to disclose its collection and sharing practices, including with whom the information is shared."

Speier also introduced HR 653, the Financial Information Privacy Act of 2011, which would afford consumers greater control over personal financial information that is often collected by banks.

She called the two bills examples of upholding "privacy over profit."

According to Speier, the bills have been endorsed by the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Consumer Action, U.S. PIRG, Consumer Watchdog, World Privacy Forum, the Center for Digital Democracy, and the ACLU.

Speier referenced a recent USA Today poll which found last week that roughly 70 percent of Facebook users and over half of Google users say they're either "somewhat" or "very concerned" about their privacy.

Google to Be Investigated by FCC

FCC to examine Google Street View's collection of personal data
by Josh Halliday
Friday, November 12, 2010 by The Guardian/UK

Google's collection of personal information – including emails and passwords from unsuspecting internet users – by its Street View cars is to be investigated by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Google's collection of personal information – including emails and passwords from unsuspecting internet users – by its Street View cars is to be investigated by the US FCC.

The data capture, which occurred when Google Street View cars took photographs for the panoramic imaging service, has already been ruled unlawful in many countries, including Canada and the UK.

The US communications regulator said it will now examine whether the collection violated the Communications Act, confirming in a statement that consumers affected by "the breach of privacy" will be given the opportunity of redress. The investigation, thought to have been prompted by a complaint from the pressure group Electronic Privacy Information Centre, comes just two weeks after the US Federal Trade Commission dropped its investigation into the data breach.

Google originally acknowledged the collection of personal information in May, posting an apology on the company's blog and claiming only fragments of information were collected.

However, following an investigation by Canada's privacy commissioner, it transpired that the technology giant had collected so-called "payload" data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks.

Peter Fleischer, the company's global privacy counsel, recently said Google was "profoundly sorry for mistakenly collecting" the sensitive information. "As we have said before, we did not want this data, have never used any of it in our products or services, and have sought to delete it as quickly as possible."

The UK's information commissioner, Christopher Graham, last week ruled that Google had committed a "significant breach" of the Data Protection Act (DPA), announcing that the company will be subject to an audit of its data protection activities in the UK.

Ed Vaizey, the culture minister, announced earlier this month that the Metropolitan police have dropped their investigation into the personal information capture.

Fallout over the data breach has evolved into a wider public scrutiny about users' right to redress when their privacy is invaded by an internet company.

In the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has come in for most of the criticism, with privacy campaigners labelling it an "apologist" for big business and some claiming it to have emerged from the Google payload collection debacle worse than the company itself.

Earlier this week the ICO was accused of being "more Keystone Cops than a protector of our civil liberties" for "not sending technical people" to investigate the payload data at Google's London headquarters in July.

The two senior ICO lawyers who were sent to investigate the data cleared Google of any wrongdoing at the time, only for it later to emerge that the company had committed a breach of the DPA.

Largest US Polluters Want EPA to Keep Their Emissions Secret from Public

Companies Want EPA to Keep Some Global Warming Information Secret in First-Ever Inventory
by Dina Cappiello - Thursday, October 28, 2010 by Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Some of America's largest emitters of heat-trapping gases, including businesses that publicly support efforts to curb global warming, don't want the public knowing exactly how much they pollute.

As the EPA prepares to regulate greenhouse gases, the data companies are being required to submit will help determine what limits eventually are put in place and whether they are working.

While gross estimates exist for such emissions from transportation and electricity production and manufacturing as a whole, the EPA is requiring companies for the first time to submit information for each individual facility.

The companies say that disclosing details beyond a facility's total emissions to the public would reveal company secrets by letting competitors know what happens inside their factories. More importantly, they argue, when it comes to understanding global warming, the public doesn't need to know anything more than what goes into the air.

"There is no need for the public to have information beyond what is entering the atmosphere," Steven H. Bernhardt, global director for regulatory affairs for Honeywell International Inc., said in comments filed with the agency earlier this year. The New Jersey-based company is a leading manufacturer of hydrofluorocarbons, a potent greenhouse gas used in a variety of consumer products. Honeywell wants the EPA to reconsider its proposal, which the company said would damage its business.

Other companies are pressing the agency to require a third party to verify the data, so they don't have to submit it at all, or to allow them to argue on a case-by-case basis to keep some of it confidential, a suggestion the EPA warned would delay public release.

The EPA says it's necessary to make the data public in order for the companies' calculations to be checked.

"It is important for outside groups and the public to have access to this information so they can essentially see and check EPA's and the company's math — giving the public greater confidence in the quality of data," the agency said in a statement.

The EPA required companies responsible for large amounts of heat-trapping pollution to begin this year collecting 1,500 pieces of information. The data, which is due to be reported by March, will be used in the first-ever inventory of greenhouse gases, a massive database that will reveal most sources of greenhouse gases in the United States.

Suppliers of fossil fuels, which when burned release greenhouse gases, plus manufacturers of engines and vehicles, and facilities that release 25,000 tons or more of any of six heat-trapping gases, all must comply with the regulation, the first by the government on pollution blamed for global warming.

Most companies don't have a problem telling the government or the public how much they pollute; they already do it for other types of pollution, such as toxic chemicals and sulfur dioxide, the gas that forms acid rain.

What they oppose — almost unanimously — is the public disclosure of the underlying data necessary to calculate the annual amount of greenhouse gases.

The EPA wouldn't need that information if companies actually measured greenhouse gas pollution at its source. But that equipment is expensive and for many companies would cost millions of dollars.

Even the Federal Trade Commission has weighed in, and asked the EPA to treat data used in emissions equations as confidential since it could lead to collusion among companies and raise prices for consumers.

Aluminum smelters want 11 of the 15 data fields the EPA intends to make public kept confidential, according to comments filed by the Aluminum Association.

Koch Nitrogen Co. LLC, a fertilizer producer, questions the EPA's desire to make unit-specific or facility-specific emissions available, calling it "misguided" since a change in pollution from a single factory is unlikely to influence policy on a global problem.

For DuPont, a founder of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership — a group of businesses that support controls on global warming pollution — the proposal has caused heartburn, according to Michael Parr, senior manager of government affairs. Many of the company's plants, including a titanium dioxide factory in Tennsylvania, release greenhouse gases when generating power.

"We actually lobbied for this reporting bill because we think it is a very good idea," Parr said in an interview. "What we are trying to get across is that if you take that information about how the plant runs and you make that available to the public it does not make the public any better informed about what is coming out of my plant. It exposes the fruits of all my innovation."

FTC ends Google 'Street View' investigation without fines

By John D. Sutter, CNN - October 27, 2010

(CNN) -- The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has called off its investigation of Google's "Street View" mapping program without issusing fines to the company, according to a letter sent from the FTC to Google on Wednesday.

The federal agency had been investigating the fact that Google collected communications, including passwords and e-mails, from people who used open Wi-Fi networks in their homes.

The data collections, which Google says were inadvertent, happened while Google was driving around taking pictures for the Street View function on Google Maps, the Mountain View, California, company said.

The FTC said Google has sufficiently addressed the problem.

"Google has made assurances to the FTC that the company has not used and will not use any of the payload data collected in any Google product or service, now or in the future," David C. Vladeck, the FTC's director for consumer protection, says a letter to Google, which was posted on the FTC's website.

"This assurance is critical to mitigate the potential harm to consumers from the collection of payload data. Because of these commitments, we are ending our inquiry into this matter at this time."

Google, which first mentioned the fact that it had "sniffed" this Wi-Fi data in May, said in a blog post last week that the data included more sensitive information than was previously thought.

"In some instances entire e-mails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords," Alan Eustace, Google's senior vice-president of engineering and research, wrote in a post on that company's blog.

Wednesday's FTC letter acknowledges Google has made changes since investigators uncovered the privacy breaches.

Those changes include "appointing a director of privacy for engineering and product management; adding core privacy training for key employees; and incorporating a formal privacy review process into the design phases of new initiatives."

The FTC letter states: "The company also publicly stated its intention to delete the inadvertently collected payload data as soon as possible."

The United States, however, isn't the only country that's been investigating Google's data collections in relation to Street View, a function of Google Maps that lets users see what streets look like from a man-on-the-street point of view.

More on the international scope of this issue from a CNN explainer:

Last week, the Canadian government said that Google broke the country's law by collecting the data but closed an investigation after calling it "a careless error."

In France, a commission that began investigating this summer ruled that personal data had been collected. Authorities cracked down, even pulling over Street View vehicles to make sure they had stopped collecting personal information.

The Czech Republic has banned Google from expanding the service, and the news sparked an online privacy debate in Germany, where Google is allowing people to opt out of Street View before the images go live.

Great Britain, however, determined that none of the information gathered there was sensitive.

Apple's Mobile Rules To Get FTC Scrutiny

JUNE 12, 2010
By THOMAS CATAN

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Federal Trade Commission will investigate whether Apple Inc.'s business practices harm competition in the market for software used on mobile devices, people familiar with the situation said.

For weeks, the FTC has been engaged in negotiations with the Department of Justice over which agency would review allegations by companies that say they're being shut-out of one of the most important emerging computing platforms.

Adobe Systems Inc. has been engaged in a public feud with Apple over its decision to ban Adobe's Flash video technology from Apple devices. This week, Google Inc. complained Apple's new rules on developers could bar Google and other rivals from selling ads inside iPhone and iPad applications, such as games.

Apple has also banned software developers from using other companies' tools to develop software for its devices.

Both Apple and the FTC declined to comment. The decision was reported earlier by Bloomberg News.

This may not be the only antitrust investigation Apple faces. Justice Department lawyers recently contacted companies about Apple's practices in the music business. The Justice Department could forge ahead with that inquiry independent of the FTC's investigation, said people familiar with the matter.

The Justice Department is already investigating whether Apple and a range of other tech companies improperly agreed not to poach each other's employees.

As it transforms from a niche player in the market for personal computers into a media and consumer electronics giant, Apple has drawn increasing scrutiny from antitrust enforcers. Apple recently surpassed Microsoft Corp.'s market value, a sign of its growing power in the technology industry.

Apple also has clout in the media world: It controls around 70% of online music sales and has more of the overall music market than Wal-Mart Stores Inc., according to market research NPD Group.

Some industry representatives are coming to Apple's defense.

"The iPhone was just introduced three years ago, and all of a sudden (Apple is) being accused of being a monopolist? To me, it's absurd," said Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association, in an interview. "They don't even have a dominant position in smart phones—that's Blackberry."

However, some antitrust enforcers say that if they wait until a tech company has cornered a market it may be too late. The technology sector has powerful "network effects" that, some say grant outsize advantages to first movers and make it particularly difficult for competitors to break in.

The FTC will have a wealth of information to mine for its probe. It recently completed a six-month investigation of Google's $750 million acquisition of AdMob Inc., giving its lawyers knowledge of the mobile-ad market that Apple has also entered.

Despite initial reservations about the deal, the FTC cleared the acquisition last month, in large part because of Apple's entry into the mobile ad market in the latter stages of the probe. The move focused the FTC's attention on the ways in which Apple might give its own ad network advantages on its mobile devices. The concerns about Apple's potential market power helped sway the five commissioners against blocking Google's deal.

"The Commission has reason to believe that Apple quickly will become a strong mobile advertising network competitor," the FTC said last month. "Apple not only has extensive relationships with application developers and users, but also is able to offer targeted ads…by leveraging proprietary user data gleaned from users of Apple mobile devices."

It added that Apple's ownership of the iPhone software development tools, and its control over the developers' license agreement, "gives Apple the unique ability to define how competition among ad networks on the iPhone will occur and evolve."

Congress Urges FTC to Investigate Google

Congress Urges FTC to Investigate Google Following Revelation that "Street View" Scarfed Wi-Fi Data

Congressmen Joe Barton (R-TX) and Edward Markey (D-MA) wrote to FTC Chairman Liebowitz about Google's collection of consumer's private Wi-Fi transmissions. The House members asked the FTC Chairman to investigate whether Google's actions violate federal privacy laws or consumer protection laws. Google has admitted to collecting email and internet surfing data, but has not clarified the extent or nature of the data collection. The letter from Congress follows an investigation in Europe which revealed that Google's "Street View" vehicles in 30 countries collected not only digital images, but also data transmitted on private wireless networks. EPIC has several privacy complaints pending at the FTC, including one on Cloud Computing.

Why Privacy on Facebook Is 'Virtually Impossible'

Controversy grows, as Facebook's lack of privacy control = goldmine for marketing companies.
May 15, 2010 |

Editor's Note: The controversy over Facebook's aggressive attempts to cash in on information about its members is heating up. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that "anti-Facebook sentiment is surfacing in highly visible places, from the halls of Congress to the blogs and podcasts of influential technology experts like Leo Laporte of Petaluma."It seems to me that ultimately their goal is to funnel all Internet traffic through Facebook.com," said Laporte, who deleted his Facebook profile during a recent podcast and donated money to Diaspora, a project to create a more open and private alternative to Facebook. Laporte was inspired to put an end to his Facebook account by a recent blog post by Jason Calacanis, chief executive officer of Mahalo, a question-and-answer Web site. He accused Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg of trading users' privacy for profit. ... Facebook convened a staff meeting Thursday to discuss the backlash, although some staff members described it as a routine gathering. ...

Type 'How do I ...' into the search engine and one of the first suggestions it comes up with continues: '... delete my Facebook account?' 

"Earlier this month, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and 14 other privacy and consumer organizations filed a complaint against Facebook with the Federal Trade Commission, accusing the popular social network of "unfair and deceptive trade practices" and violating users' expectations of privacy and consumer protection laws. And last month, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., asked the FTC to develop guidelines instructing social networks on how private information can be used. All of this comes in the wake of the company's launch of a new "open" social platform designed to bring Facebook features, such as its Like button, to other Web sites, and an experimental Instant Personalization feature that gives certain Web sites the ability to access a member's name, profile picture, sex and network of friends. The company also launched community pages that made topics in a member's profile more public."

Erik Hayden's article below from Miller-McCune explores the results of a new study that suggest that privacy on Facebook is probably impossible:

***

On Facebook, You Are Who You Know

Even if you do have a mostly private Facebook profile, others can glean vital information about you — just by looking at your friend list.

by Erik Hayden, Miller-McCune.com

Remember the golden days when Facebook used to be for just college students? It was a quainter site — with a much different set of rules.

Drunken party photos used to be unceremoniously splayed out in public, privacy settings were almost nonexistent, wall posts weren’t status updates and there was little need to filter regrettably off-color comments. After all, the only people (you assumed) who saw that stuff were college buddies who were also posting the same incriminating photos of themselves on the site.

Now, after the Facebook explosion, users are more aware of privacy issues than ever before and the new rule of thumb has become “curb public access to your profile as best you can.”

New research suggests that this is nearly impossible.

In a study conducted by Alan Mislove of Northeastern University and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, researchers tested an algorithm that could accurately infer the personal attributes of Facebook users by simply looking at their friend lists. The research culled profile information from two detailed social-network data sets: one from a sample of almost 4,000 students and alumni on Facebook at Rice University and another from more than 63,000 users in the New Orleans regional network.

Researchers developed an algorithm to see if they could accurately infer attributes like high school or college, department of study, hometown, graduation year and even dormitory by dissecting these users’ friend lists. The study cut to the core of the debate surrounding the social-networking site: Is your personal profile your own or, to paraphrase anti-Facebook crusader Leif Harmsen, is it the site’s profile about you?

“The current privacy debate that’s going on concerning Facebook is essentially covering explicitly provided attributes [i.e. information uploaded by you onto your profile],” Mislove wrote. “We see our work as pointing out that there exist many implicitly provided attributes that aren’t even being discussed.” Namely, that your friend’s profile can usually divulge more information than you think.

According to the study, only about 5 percent of users in each network had changed their privacy settings to make their friend list inaccessible. (To hide it, enter your Facebook profile, click on the edit icon above your friends and unclick the blue box marked “Show Friend List to everyone.”) In the New Orleans network, personal profiles remained largely accessible to researchers. Some 58 percent of users disclosed university attended, 42 percent disclosed employers, 35 percent disclosed interests and 19 percent gave the public access to their location.

Because of this information given, Mislove explained that it was relatively easy for his algorithm to accurately pinpoint attributes such as geography (dormitory or hometown) or education background (which high school or college users attend) for a specific user.

In the New Orleans regional network, the algorithm unsurprisingly found that users were 53 times more likely to share the attribute of the same high school with those on their friend list than with other random users in the network. At Rice, the algorithm accurately predicted the correct dormitory, graduation year and area of study for the many of the students. In fact, among these undergraduates, researchers found that “with as little as 20 percent of the users providing attributes we can often infer the attributes for the remaining users with over 80 percent accuracy.”

While marketing companies who specialize in targeted advertising may rejoice, these results may be troubling for those who’ve held out hope that Facebook could provide adequate privacy controls. Not to seem alarmist (“privacy” on the Web has always been overrated), but if these researchers could develop a limited algorithm that can infer rudimentary attributes off locked profiles, the possibilities seem endless for others to harness advanced software that could render current privacy controls completely useless.

“The privacy story on these sites is more complicated that we like to think, as your privacy is not just a function of what you provide, it’s a function of what your friends and community members provide as well,” Mislove elaborated.

Researchers concluded that it wasn’t “sufficient” to just give users access to privacy controls for their own profiles; the option to censor friend lists should be given to make sure that private information cannot be inferred.

As the title of the study states, on Facebook, you are who you know.

Wall Street’s Big Banks Are the Problem Rather than Apple in FTC Claim

I think this article is correct except Apple should be nailed with the banks as well.

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Apple Isn’t the Problem. Wall Street’s Big Banks Are the Problem
Tuesday 04 May 2010
by: Robert Reich | RobertReich.org

Why is the Federal Trade Commission threatening Apple with a possible lawsuit for abusing its economic power, but not even raising an eyebrow about the huge and growing economic (and political) muscle of JP Morgan Chase or any of the other four remaining giant banks on Wall Street?

Our future well being depends more on people like Steve Jobs who invent real products that can improve our lives, than it does on people like Jamie Dimon who invent financial products that do little other than threaten our economy.

Apple’s supposed sin was to tell software developers that if they want to make apps for iPhones and iPads they have to use Apple programming tools. No more outside tools (like Adobe’s Flash format) that can run on rival devices like Google’s Android phones and RIM’s BlackBerrys.

What’s wrong with that? Apple says it’s necessary to maintain quality. If consumers disagree they can buy platforms elsewhere. Apple was the world’s #3 smartphone supplier in 2009, with 16.2 percent of worldwide market share. RIM was #2, with 18.8 percent. Google isn’t exactly a wallflower. These and other firms are innovating like mad, as are tens of thousands of independent developers. If Apple’s decision reduces the number of future apps that can run on its products, Apple will suffer and presumably change its mind.

On the other hand, the four largest U.S. financial institutions are so big and the rest of the economy so dependent on them that if one of them makes a bad decision it can take us all down. Between them they hold more than $7 trillion in assets, over half the size of the entire U.S. economy.

So why is the FTC nosing around Apple and not around Wall Street? Because the Federal Trade Commission Act allows the agency to stop “unfair methods of competition” almost anywhere in the economy except in the financial sector. Banks are explicitly excluded.

Another reason for financial reform.

And how are we doing on that front? Senate Dems and Republicans have just agreed to jettison a $50 billion fund in the financial reform bill that would have been used to wind down operations of a failing bank. Republicans had created a smokescreen by alleging that the fund could be used for more bailouts. They don’t want the public to see the real problem – that the biggest banks are so big that if one or two gets into trouble, the Fed or the Federal Deposit Insurance Company will almost certainly have to bail them out in order to protect the financial system. And this implicit guarantee allows them to make even riskier bets that generate even bigger profits – enabling them to grow even larger.

The only way to make sure no bank is too big to fail is to ensure no bank is too big. The biggest banks should be broken up. Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Ted Kaufman (D-Del) have introduced an amendment that would do exactly that. And a growing number of House members are getting ready to do the same.

Hands off Apple. But cut the big banks down to size.

Facebook Steps Up Lobbying

FB Deepens Ties with Intelligence Agencies, FTC

Facebook has been gradually boosting its profile in Washington D.C. over the past year and is on the hunt for a second senior lobbyist to add to its office of four. Disclosures released a few days ago show that, on top of lobbying the usual suspects Internet companies reach out to like the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. senators and representatives, the fast-growing social network has also been busy deepening ties to government intelligence and homeland security agencies. Facebook spent $41,390 on lobbying in the first quarter of 2010. That’s on top of the $207,878 it spent last year — the first year Facebook began releasing such disclosures. Although these numbers are tiny compared to the $4.3 million Google spent on lobbying last year, expect them to grow with the company’s influence and ambitions. What’s interesting about Facebook’s lobbying in D.C. is what it spends money on despite its small size. It was the only consumer Internet company out of Google,Amazon, eBay, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple to reach out to intelligence agencies last year, according to lobbying disclosure forms. It has lobbied the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — an umbrella office founded in the wake of Sept. 11 that synthesizes intelligence from 17 agencies including the CIA and advises the President — for the last three quarters on privacy and federal cyber-security policy. It has reached out to the Defense Intelligence Agency too. Andrew Noyes, the company’s manager of public policy communications, says most of Facebook’s work in D.C. consists of basic education — helping legislators and agencies understand how to use the social network for campaigning, reaching out to their constituencies and in their regular line of work. The U.S. Navy used Facebook to alert Hawaiians of a possible tsunami from the Chilean earthquake earlier this year, while the company says 35 government agencies are using social media for governance. He said the meetings with intelligence agencies were similar. “We disclose this because it’s the right thing to do,” he said. (To be fair, Google and Microsoft also lobbied the Department of Defense last year although they did not reach out to intelligence agencies.) At the very top of Facebook’s agenda in D.C. is privacy, he said. There’s much at stake. The ease of data collection and sharing on the web is on a collision course with privacy. The suite of projects the company unveiled yesterday at its f8 conference in San Francisco may spark further privacy concerns about the mass of data it will now be tracking on users as they traverse the web. To head off concerns that it is too cavalier with pushing users to be more public, Facebook made a savvy move when it brought longtime privacy advocate Tim Sparapani from the American Civil Liberties Union on-board last year. Even though the company says its role in D.C. is about awareness for now, developing these relationships will help Facebook get ahead of and influence legislation that may curb its ad targeting abilities. For the last year, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) has pledged that he would draft a web privacy bill, but little has come of it so far. Facebook’s competitor Google has already become a punching bag for privacy advocates; ten governments including France, Germany and the U.K. issued a letter to the search giant on Monday asking it to do more to protect consumer privacy, while legislators have asked the Federal Trade Commission to look into Google Buzz.