QR Code Press

“Certain circumstances” allow a smartphone to be tracked by the NSA

07/31/201107/31/2011 Stephanie Beck

A National Security Agency (NSA) lawyer has announced that the department is capable of tracking citizens in specific situations using smartphone location data, and that it will be providing further details into this fact in the near future. Users of smartphones have been voicing concerns about having their movements followed and, as it turns out, they weren’t entirely being paranoid. Matthew Olsen, general counsel of the National Security Agency, spoke at a hearing, discussing the rights of the government to obtain and use this information. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon…

Obama administration considers privacy protection for teens

07/24/201107/24/2011 Jennifer Goula

More than a dozen advocacy groups for privacy and child protection have requested that the Obama administration include adolescents into the recommendations it makes for privacy protection within this year’s white paper. This was only one of the two primary requests made by the groups in a letter that was issued to the Commerce Department, Justice Department, the White House, and the Interagency Subcommittee on Privacy and Internet Policy co-chairs for the National Science and Technology Council at the White House. These groups include the American Academy of Pediatrics, the…

Location based ads threatened by newly proposed law

06/22/2011 L. Green

Senator Al Franken has sponsored a new bill that could lead to consequences for the location-based advertising marketplace which is only just beginning to get off the ground. Joined by Senator Richard Blumenthal in sponsoring this proposed litigation, Franken’s bill would necessitate that businesses obtain specifically expressed consent from mobile device users before data regarding their locations can be collected from their devices. Moreover, it would mean that these businesses would also need to obtain the user’s consent before the collected data may be shared with a third party such…