Congress Gives the FCC a Privacy Mulligan

“Don’t collect what you can’t protect” seems like a reasonable approach. Given that the current discourse is all about collection, we probably won’t have the conversation we need to have for a long time. And in the meantime we’re going to hear nothing but nonsense about gatekeepers, “sensitive” browsing histories, and how hard it may be to switch ISPs (as if we don’t do that several times more often than we switch social networks and search providers.

April 3, 2017 0

Five Myths About Internet Privacy

Our web activity is tracked by “edge services” such as Google and Facebook even if we don’t go to their web sites. This is because they both operate tracking networks with the cooperation of web sites that carry their tracking code.

March 30, 2017 0

Congress is Watching You: What to Look For in the House Internet Privacy Debate

Yes. Does Google track you outside of google.com? Yes. Does Google share sensitive data about you with third parties it collects from sites like edmarkey.com and standtallforamerica.com? I don’t know that it does, but it’s entitled to by its privacy disclosures. And the same goes for a dozen other trackers unleashed on web users who visit these two sites.

March 28, 2017 0

What’s a Tracker Network and What Can it See?

In Wednesday’s Senate floor debate over the Congressional Review Act resolution on the Wheeler FCC’s privacy regulations, each Democratic Senator made the same claim: ISPs can see all the web…

March 23, 2017 0

Saving the Web from Humanity

28 years ago today, Sir Tim Berners-Lee designed the web in a memo to his bosses at CERN, the European Union’s research center for nuclear energy. While nuclear energy is…

March 14, 2017 0

Internet Privacy: Just the Facts

In my last post, I reported on a press call by Senator Markey and a group of activists in support of the FCC’s Internet Privacy NPRM. I found the call…

October 24, 2016 0

Solving the Privacy Problem

As we inch toward the FCC’s October 27th Open Meeting that will decide the fates of video streaming and Internet advertising markets, speculation abounds about Chairman Wheeler’s course. In a…

October 6, 2016 0

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Privacy

I had the pleasure of taking part in a panel discussion about privacy in general and the FCC’s privacy NPRM in particular today. The event was sponsored by Cal Innovates at…

September 27, 2016 0

Apple, FBI Talks Need Engineers

Electrical Engineering Times makes a sage, if somewhat obvious observation about the FBI/Apple dispute about unlocking the iPhone 5s used by dead terrorist Syed Farook: The dispute between Apple and…

February 26, 2016 0

Bennett on cybersecurity: ‘We want networks to compensate for errors in judgment’

[powerpress] In the latest High Tech Forum podcast, Richard Bennett sat down with Shane Tews, chief policy officer at 463 Communications, a firm that advises high-tech organizations on Internet policy….

October 20, 2015 0