iPhone Vulernable To Hackers

This AP article reports on a vulnerability within Apple's iPhone which could make it susceptible to hackers.

YouTube To Institute Copyright Filtering

See this article from InfoWorld and this article from Wired News which discuss Google's intent to implement an antipiracy tool on it's YouTube website. According to the articles, Google plans to implement the changes as soon as this Fall.

Government Barred From Accessing Emails From ISP

In a recent 6th Circuit decision, Warshak v. United States (June 18, 2007), the Court ruled that email users have a reasonable expectation of privacy and thus barred the government from accessing emails from the Internet Service Provider of a criminal defendant.

Law Firm Cleared of Hacking Opponents' Web Archives

Yesterday's New Jersey Law Journal reported on a case (Healthcare Advocates Inc. v. Harding Earley Follmer & Frailey) in which a law firm had been sued for allegedgly violating copyright and anti-hacking laws when it recovered old web pages belonging to its client's adversary. The opinion by Judge Robert Kelley, Jr. of the US District Court of Eastern District of Pennsylvania stated that the firm, in accessing pages from the Way Back Machine, did not violate any law. As stated in the opinion, "They did not 'pick the lock' and avoid or bypass the protective measure, because there was no lock to pick...Nor did the Harding firm steal passwords to get around a protective barrier... The Harding firm could not 'avoid' or 'bypass' a digital wall that was not there." A copy of the Complaint is available here. The opinion does not appear to be online.

Top Ten Opt Out List

Also from the World Privacy Forum: The World Privacy Forum's Top Ten Opt Out List is "a list of what top things to opt out of, and how to opt out. Millions of people have heard about the Do Not Call list, an opt out list that gets people off of telemarketing lists. But many fewer people have heard about the other opt outs that are available, like those that can take people out of data broker lists or opt outs that can stop schools from giving out directory information like email and home addresses."

State Security Freeze Laws

This page from the World Privacy Forum provides an overview of state security freeze laws, as well as a list of states with enacted security freeze legislation. Each entry includes a link to the full text of the that state's security freeze statute.

IT Disaster Recovery Tool-kit

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers publishes this tool-kit which is designed to assist state CIOs and their staff in IT disaster recovery and business continuity planning. It is an updated and expanded version of business continuity and disaster preparedness checklists utilized for a brainstorming exercise at the “CIO-CLC Business Continuity/ Disaster Recovery Forum” at NASCIO’s 2006 Midyear Conference.

Spyware's Effect on Web Site Traffic Counts

Ben Edelman has a new article entitled "How Spyware-Driven Forced Visits Inflate Web Site Traffic Counts." Also see this related New York Times article from Dec. 11 of 2006 entitled "In Web Traffic Tallies, Intruders Can Say You Visited Them."

House Committee Passes Social Security Privacy Legislation

In a press release, the House Ways and Means Committee stated "During the course of the 16 hearings conducted by the Subcommittee, numerous experts testified that the easy availability of Social Security numbers (SSNs) in the public and private sectors, combined with the number’s widespread use as an individual identifier, greatly facilitates the crime of identity theft. The bill would restrict the use of the SSN by government and business, to make it less accessible to identity thieves, while providing exceptions for legitimate and necessary uses of the number." Click here for a text of the bill.