IRS Promises To Abandon Warrantless Email Spying After Public Outcry
The IRS chief has promised to abandon a controversial policy of snooping emails without a warrant. During congressional testimony, the IRS’s acting commissioner, Steven Miller, said “we intend to do that” after Sen. Ron Wyden (CrunchGov Grade: A) asked whether the agency would ditch its warrantless spying policy. The IRS spying policy came under intense scrutiny after documents released to the American Civil Liberties Union indicated that they asserted brazen permission to hunt down suspected tax dodgers. “The Fourth Amendment does not protect communications held in electronic storage, such as email messages stored on a server, because internet users do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communication,” wrote IRS Criminal Tax Division’s Office of Chief Counsel in 2009. It appears that this latest testimony is a partial victory for civil libertarian netizens — partial, because the IRS did not answer whether it will apply its new privacy-sensitive policies to ...
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Firefox development versions show privacy plans moving forward
A new cookie policy and new do not track options are in the most recent development versions of Mozilla's Firefox and appear to cement privacy as one of the major features of the browser in the future
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IRS Can Read Your Email Without Warrant
kodiaktau writes "The ACLU has issued a FOIA request to determine whether the IRS gets warrants before reading taxpayers' email. The request is based on the antiquated Electronic Communication Protection Act — federal agencies can and do request and read email that is over 180 days old. The IRS response can be found at the ACLU's website. The IRS asserts that it can and will continue to make warrantless requests to ISPs to track down tax evasion. Quoting: 'The documents the ACLU obtained make clear that, before Warshak, it was the policy of the IRS to read people’s email without getting a warrant. Not only that, but the IRS believed that the Fourth Amendment did not apply to email at all. A 2009 "Search Warrant Handbook" from the IRS Criminal Tax Division’s Office of Chief Counsel baldly asserts that "the Fourth Amendment does not protect communications held in electronic storage, such as email messages stored on a server, because internet users do not have a reasonable expectation ...
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Microsoft's Latest “Scroogled” Ads Attack Sharing Of Information That Google Developers Need To Process Transactions
Today, Microsoft has leveled more accusations about Google’s practices by way of its “Scroogled” campaigns. This time, the complaints are about how Google handles users’ data when they purchase an application from Google Play. Previous “Scroogled” campaigns have targeted both Gmail and search over ads and privacy. In the two videos below, Microsoft uses animations and words to walk you through “what might happen” if your data were to end up in the wrong people’s hands. It’s a fear campaign, and it really doesn’t have any basis whatsoever. Take a look at the videos and we’ll get into what actually happens when you buy an app from Google Play. In the second video, a “real life” situation is played out on the front steps of an apartment building: A Google spokesperson provided us with the following statement: Google Wallet shares the information needed to process transactions and maintain accounts, and this is clearly stated in the Google Wallet Privacy Notice. Why ...
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Google's Director Of Privacy Alma Whitten Steps Down
As Forbes first reported this afternoon, Alma Whitten, Google’s director of privacy for product and engineering, has decided to step down from her current position. Google has now confirmed this. Whitten joined Google 10 years ago and oversaw the company’s privacy policies during a tumultuous time when its Street View cars were accused of spying on people’s Wi-Fi networks and Google decided to consolidate its over 70 privacy policies under a single document. Whitten has a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon, where her thesis looked into “Making Security Usable.” She spent seven years as an engineer at the company before she was promoted to director of privacy right after the Wi-Fi Street View story broke and Google had been severely criticized for the privacy controls of Buzz, its pre-Google+ attempt at launching a social network. At the time, Google described her as “an internationally recognized expert in the computer science field of privacy and security. She has been our engineering ...
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