noteworthy wrote:
Tom Malone:

"Privacy may turn out to have become an anomaly."

I prefer Alex Pentland:

You have a right to possess your own data, that you control the data that is collected about you, and that you can destroy, remove or redeploy your data as you wish.

RE: You’re Leaving a Digital Trail. What About Privacy?

Kirby Plessas (Open source intelligence expert currently working as an independent contractor for the Central Intelligence Agency) at DNI Open Source Conference, 11 September 2008:

"Web sites like Wikileaks are not what interests us but those like YouTube where information is posted by thousands of people unaware of our intense interest in fragments which can be pieced together with many other sources. All media used by people eager to share, chat, reveal data about themselves and, most importantly, about others not aware of what is being publicized about them, are the richest sources."

I couldn't resist:

I loved my Olympus C-740. It has travelled all around the world. The batteries lasted a long time, the photos were excellent..

I'll bet!

DNI Open Source Conference Eyeball

Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users' names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Viacom wants the data to prove that infringing material is more popular than user-created videos, which could be used to increase Google's liability if it is found guilty of contributory infringement.

Although Google argued that turning over the data would invade its users' privacy, the judge's ruling (.pdf) described that argument as "speculative" and ordered Google to turn over the logs on a set of four tera-byte hard drives.

The judge also turned Google's own defense of its data retention policies -- that IP addresses of computers aren't personally revealing in and of themselves, against it to justify the log dump.

Judge Orders YouTube to Give All User Histories to Viacom | Threat Level from Wired.com

An online campaign to scuttle a deal giving retroactive amnesty to telecoms that helped the government warrantlessly wiretap Americans is growing in strength, catching Senator Barack Obama between the Netroots that helped vaunt him to the nomination and a presidential campaign desire to seem strong on national security.

Update on the anti-amnesty political campaign.

Telecom Amnesty Foes Lobby Obama Using Obama Tech | Threat Level from Wired.com

However, it should be noted that a more encompassing movement effort has recently sprung up, forged by both progressive and libertarians that will be using the Blue America PAC as a Phase I of of a multi-Phase strategy. It's being dubbed the Strange Bedfellows alliance. The headliners in this alliance are the ACLU, Glenn Greenwald, The Ron Paul Money Bomb team over at Break the Matrix, Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, Matt Stoller of Open Left, and Ari Melber of The Nation.

Last winter political ads targeted opponents of telecom immunity. I felt the campaign was dishonest and in poor taste and spoke about it at Interz0ne. Spending huge amounts of money lying to people on television is a poor substitute for having a rational argument that stands up to criticism. Its interesting to see real money supporting a counter campaign. Is it any different? I think the real money funding the previous ad campaign came from Republican operatives who really don't know shit about the balance of civil liberties and national security in wartime and merely saw a political opportunity to put their allies in power. Clearly a lot of the money on the side of the issue is coming from the other side of the coin, but the mix of this coalition suggests that there may be some genuine non-partisan concern here about the incentives created by this immunity. I hope so.

Strange Bedfellows: The Progressive-Libertarian Alliance | Freedom Democrats

Insiders are not, after all, the main threat to networks, a detailed new analysis of real-world data breaches has concluded.

Verizon's 2008 Data Breach Investigations Report, which looked at 500 breach incidents over the last four years, contradicts the growing orthodoxy that insiders, rather than external agents, represent the most serious threat to network security at most organizations.

Seventy-three percent of the breaches involved outsiders, 18 percent resulted from the actions of insiders, with business partners blamed for 39 percent -- the percentages exceed 100 percent due to the fact that some involve multiple breaches, with varying degrees of internal or external involvement.

I've been wary of "business partners" for years... which is why they ALWAYS get firewalled onto their own segment. However, many companies who claim to be security vendors, advocate allowing them directly into the internal and server segments. Scary... and stupid.

PC World - Business Center: Insider Threat Exaggerated, Study Says

The Supreme Court of New Jersey became the first court in the nation yesterday to rule that people have an expectation of privacy when they are online, and law enforcement officials need a grand jury warrant to have access to their private information.

The unanimous seven-member court held that police do have the right to seek a user's private information when investigating a crime involving a computer, but must follow legal procedures. The court said authorities do not have to warn a suspect that they have a grand jury subpoena to obtain the information.

Writing for the court, Chief Justice Stuart Rabner said: "We now hold that citizens have a reasonable expectation of privacy protected by Article I ... of the New Jersey Constitution, in the subscriber information they provide to Internet service providers -- just as New Jersey citizens have a privacy interest in their bank records stored by banks and telephone billing records kept by phone companies."

"This decision reflects the reality of how ordinary people normally use the internet," he said. "'It's very nice to have the court recognize that expectation is reasonable."

This is a great result, but I fear that it is unlikely to become a national standard.

N.J. justices call e-privacy surfers' right

Federal, state and local cops are huddling together in domestic intelligence dens around the nation to fuse anti-terror information and tips in ways they never have before, and they want the American people to know about it -- sort of.

The dominant catchphrase from the officials was that the centers need to focus on "all threats, all hazards." Officials say the centers must look at even the most mundane crimes, since they can be used to fund terrorism.

Total surveillance, justified by the threat of terrorism, but applied in absolutely every context.
More here.

The fusion centers have subscriptions to private information-broker services that keep records about Americans' locations, financial holdings, associates, relatives, firearms licenses and the like.

Pennsylvania buys credit reports and uses face-recognition software to examine driver's license photos, while analysts in Rhode Island have access to car-rental databases. In Maryland, authorities rely on a little-known data broker called Entersect, which claims it maintains 12 billion records about 98 percent of Americans.

"There is never ever enough information when it comes to terrorism" said Maj. Steven G. O'Donnell, deputy superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police. "That's what post-9/11 is about."

Feds Tout New Domestic Intelligence Centers | Threat Level from Wired.com

The mascot of the DHS privacy office is a flying pig. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Help Name the Homeland Security Privacy Pig | Threat Level from Wired.com

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.

In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime.

Cellphone Tracking Powers on Request - washingtonpost.com