Archive for July, 2008
Google and Viacom: a privacy “Exxon Valdez?”
Might the court order that Google hand over YouTube viewer records become, as Ed Felten and others termed a few years back, an “Exxon Valdez” of privacy that makes informational privacy a national priority? Unfortunately, I suspect not. If the parties reach an agreement to anonymize the data and keep it out of the direct [...]
Another Civil Procedure limerick
I’ve written previously about judges using limericks in their opinions. Here’s another. The ABA Journal notes that U.S. District Judge Ronald B. Leighton found a plaintiff’s 465-page complaint to violate Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)’s requirement that a complaint contain “a short and plain statement” of the plaintiff’s claim. Noting Lord Polonius’ line in [...]
GAO report and pending bill on federal e-mail retention
The GAO has released a report entitled Federal Records: National Archives and Selected Agencies Need to Strengthen E-Mail Management. The report found that “[w]ithout periodic evaluations of recordkeeping practices or other controls to ensure that staff are trained and carry out their responsibilities, agencies have little assurance that e-mail records are properly identified, stored, and [...]
BoingBoing “unpublishing” blog posts
When is it ok to delete a blog post? Dan Solove wrote about this a few years back at Concurring Opinions, where he points to additional posts at Prawfsblawg (here, here, and here). More recently, BoingBoing faced public scrutiny when one of its authors removed posts related to blogger and sex columnist Violet Blue, although [...]
Google finally posts privacy link on homepage
Yesterday, Google finally posted a privacy link on its homepage, replacing the word “Google” in the footer with “Privacy.” A step in the right direction, but the link is in the smallest text, below larger links for “Advertising Programs,” “Business Solutions,” and “About Google.” See below:
Hmm. I wonder if the timing of Google’s change-of-heart had [...]
Archiving Independence Day
The National Archives and Records Administration maintains a great site called Charters of Freedom that maintains high-quality scans of key documents such as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It also includes the Declaration of Independence.
By the way, the picture in the sidebar is the National Archives building being built way-back when.
Happy Independence Day!
ADDENDUM: [...]
Why does Google keep so much information?
Yesterday, I wrote about the “privacy paradox” and Google’s refusal to post a conspicuous link to its privacy policy on its homepage. Today, the New York Times reports that the judge overseeing the Viacom/YouTube copyright lawsuit has ordered Google to turn over a database linking YouTube users to every video clip they have watched on [...]
The privacy paradox and Google
At the New York Times BITS blog, Brad Stone reports on a study about to be released by George Loewenstein and several other Carnegie Mellon researchers about people’s parodoxical attitudes towards privacy and personal information. In one experiment, some people were given express assurances of privacy whereas others were given none. Strangely, the people given [...]
