Many campuses have decided to outsource email and other services to “cloud” providers. Berkeley has joined in by migrating student and faculty to bMail, operated by Google. In doing so, it has raised some anxiety about privacy and autonomy in communications. In this post, I outline some advantages of our outsourcing to Google, some disadvantages, and how we might improve upon our IT outsourcing strategy, especially for sensitive or especially valuable materials.
Many of us carry tracking devices everywhere we go. Nevertheless, Americans want protections against private and public sector access to mobile phone data.
Flash cookies have declined in use, but will cache cookies & HTML5 become the new way to track users?
The upcoming Princeton workshop could define the meaning of do not track.
Some companies are imposing the law of the jungle on consumers. Privacy law is one of the few tools we have to civilize them.
As much as some in the advertising industry dislike DNT, consumers are likely to judge it harshly too.
What can the Department of Commerce do to make privacy self-regulation work for consumers?
Is the FTC up to the challenge of enforcing consumer privacy rights?
Smart enforcement could enhance competition on privacy
Some companies have mastered the art of privacy PR.
