Note that the Obama administration supported police being able to search people's cell phones without a search warrant

From the Washington Times:

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police cannot go snooping through people’s cell phones without a warrant, in a unanimous decision that amounts to a major statement in favor of privacy rights.Police agencies had argued that searching through the data on cell phones was no different than asking someone to turn out his pockets, but the justices rejected that, saying a cell phone is more fundamental. . . .
The Obama administration and the state of California, both of which sought to justify cell phone searches . . .
The court did carve out exceptions for “exigencies” that arise, such as major security threats. 

Privacy and Apple Computer: The cost that Apple bears to protect consumers' privacy

Google sells all sorts of detailed information about their users.  People may remember how Google has gotten in trouble for forcibly planting cookies on people's computers.  Here is an article about what Apple is giving up by safeguarding their customers' privacy.  From Ad Age:

. . . The lack of data both companies deliver is frustrating for marketers because these notoriously opaque giants sit atop incredible troves of information about what consumers actually buy and like, as well as who they are and where they live. One person familiar with the situation exec said Apple's refusal to share data makes it the best-looking girl at the party, forced to wear a bag over her head. . . .

Apple knows names and addresses, geographic locations and app and music-purchase histories, and can show ad buyers that a group with specific characteristics also likes certain types of apps or music. However, its user tracking and ad targeting are not cookie-based, meaning agencies can't do automated buys via their cookie-centric trading desks, which allow them to mesh lots of data from different sources. Instead, they have to go to Apple, ask to reach a given audience and, well, trust Apple that it will deliver it. 

Apple might come out ahead of its competitors on data, if it would share. "It's one of the best in terms of data quality and accuracy … but I think Google is a little more open," said Dan Grigorovici, co-founder of mobile-ad firm AdMobius, who was a software manager at Apple until 2012 and a principal developer of iAd's measurement and analytics capabilities. . . . .

Can we trust the government not to misuse your information on your sex life? Obamacare requires detailed info on sex life

So it turns out that Obamacare will collect data on your sex life.  Suppose you are a politician or a political opponent of the Obama administration, should you trust them not to misuse your information to try and intimidate you?  Should you lie to your doctor?  The Obama administration has leaked private tax details of their political opponents (remember Austan Goolsbee leaking private tax information on the Koch Brothers (also here and here)).  Remember the abuse of tax filings by the IRS under Lois Lerner?

Well, the New York Post has this wonderful news:

‘Are you sexually active? If so, with one partner, multiple partners or same-sex partners?”Be ready to answer those questions and more the next time you go to the doctor, whether it’s the dermatologist or the cardiologist and no matter if the questions are unrelated to why you’re seeking medical help. And you can thank the Obama health law. . . . 

The president’s “reforms” aim to turn doctors into government agents, pressuring them financially to ask questions they consider inappropriate and unnecessary, and to violate their Hippocratic Oath to keep patients’ records confidential. . . . 

Doctors and hospitals who don’t comply with the federal government’s electronic-health-records requirements forgo incentive payments now; starting in 2015, they’ll face financial penalties from Medicare and Medicaid. The Department of Health and Human Services has already paid out over $12.7 billion for these incentives. 

Dr. Richard Amerling, a nephrologist and associate professor at Albert Einstein Medical College, explains that your medical record should be “a story created by you and your doctor solely for your treatment and benefit.” But the new requirements are turning it “into an interrogation, and the data will not be confidential.” . . .

Government black box rules for cars are the end to privacy and make car theft easier

Apparently even if you don't take your cell phone with you, the government can still track you with your car.  These rules not only make it  easier for the government to track you, but they apparently they also make it easier for people to steal your car!  From Fox News:

A proposed federal rule that would require black boxes or event data recorders (EDRs) in every U.S. automobile may mean “Big Brother” could be in your passenger seat for every drive.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration rule requires all light passenger vehicles be equipped with an EDR by Sep.1, 2014. Ninety-six percent of new cars already have them - measuring such inputs as speed, lateral acceleration, pedal effort, seat belt use, wheel spin, steering wheel turn and direction. . . .
 But he also said he fears that for all their potential good, the EDRs present a massive privacy dilemma, and an opportunity for fraudsters.
 "They can take that odometer and roll that odometer back to zero,” he said. “They can change the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), which is in the computer. And once they do that, then it's okay for them to very simply steal the motor vehicle and move it away."
Kowalick points out  that YouTube has hundreds of clips that demonstrate how to hack into automobile EDRs. . . .
The potential for malfeasance is huge, but so is the access EDRs give to law enforcement and insurance companies, who could download EDR data to determine whether a motorist  is at fault in an accident. . . .

The new etiquette with Google's wearable computers

Great, people wearing Google Glass into the restrooms.  Nice to know that everything is able to be filmed.  From the New York Times:

Mr. Starner said privacy protections would have to be built into these computers. “The way Glass is designed, it has a transparent display so everyone can see what you’re doing.” He also said that in deference to social expectations, he puts his wearable glasses around his neck, rather than on his head, when he enters private places like a restroom. 

But not everyone is so thoughtful, as I learned this month at the Google I/O developer conference when people lurked around every corner, including the bathroom, wearing their glasses that could take a picture with a wink. . . .

Federal government want drones that will determine if citizens are carrying guns

CNET has this fun warning:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has customized its Predator drones, originally built for overseas military operations, to carry out at-home surveillance tasks that have civil libertarians worried: identifying civilians carrying guns and tracking their cell phones, government documents show. . . . .

Google and privacy

This is actually a pretty effective ad.

Google moving to complete a comprehensive profile of people that includes searches, information in emails, purchases, basically everything

Is there anything that Google won't know about people? Linking what is in your emails to what is in your internet searches and purchases leaves almost nothing that they don't know. From the Washington Post:

Google said Tuesday it will require users to allow the company to follow their activities across e-mail, search, YouTube and other services, a radical shift in strategy that is expected to invite greater scrutiny of its privacy and competitive practices.

The information will enable Google to develop a fuller picture of how people use its growing empire of Web sites. Consumers will have no choice but to accept the changes.

The policy will take effect March 1 and will also impact Android mobile phone users, who are required to log in to Google accounts when they activate their phones. . . .

A user of Gmail, for instance, may send messages about a private meeting with a colleague and may not want the location of that meeting to be thrown into Google’s massive cauldron of data or used for Google’s maps application. . . .

Google has also faced greater scrutiny that it is using its dominance in online search to favor its other applications. Google’s decision to blend Google+ data into search results has been included into a broad FTC antitrust investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is private.

Engineers from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace responded by launching a Web tool that they say shows Google is moving away from its stated mission to be a neutral Web directory.

On the Web site for the plug-in, the engineers wrote that searches for generic terms such as “movies” or “music” prioritize Google+ results over more relevant content.

Here is a nice summary of what Google knows about you. Not only does Google know about what movies you like and what you buy, it also knows this type of information:

You agreed to let Google know about your contacts and mails when you started using Gmail.
You agreed to let Google know about your photos when you started using Picasa.
You agreed to let Google know where you are when you started using Latitude.
You agreed to let Google know what people you interact with and what you are interested in when you started using Google+.
You agreed to let Google store your documents for you when you started using Docs. . . .

So what information does the government have on us?

There is an interesting (if somewhat vague) discussion available here.

Your cell phone documents where you are every seven seconds

Your cell phone keeps very precise information on where you are every seven seconds. That is a little concerning. I suppose that it can be used to solve crime, but it can also be used for other less desirable things too.

But as a German Green party politician, Malte Spitz, recently learned, we are already continually being tracked whether we volunteer to be or not. Cellphone companies do not typically divulge how much information they collect, so Mr. Spitz went to court to find out exactly what his cellphone company, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his whereabouts.

The results were astounding. In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times. It traced him from a train on the way to Erlangen at the start through to that last night, when he was home in Berlin. . . .

“We are all walking around with little tags, and our tag has a phone number associated with it, who we called and what we do with the phone,” said Sarah E. Williams, an expert on graphic information at Columbia University’s architecture school. “We don’t even know we are giving up that data.”

Tracking a customer’s whereabouts is part and parcel of what phone companies do for a living. Every seven seconds or so, the phone company of someone with a working cellphone is determining the nearest tower, so as to most efficiently route calls. And for billing reasons, they track where the call is coming from and how long it has lasted. . . .

Illinois police resist turning over the names of FOID card holders

I think that the police have it right that disclosure of who has a permit to own a gun in Illinois would endanger those who do not own a gun. Someone intent on harming an individual would now be able to look up whether the potential victim is able to defend themselves. From the Chicago Tribune.

State police officials have long held that releasing information about the holders of Firearm Owners identification cards would be an unwarranted invasion of privacy prohibited by the state public records law and that disclosure would automatically endanger the lives of gun owners or those who don't have firearms.

In its letter, the attorney general's office disagreed, saying the public has "a legitimate interest" in having the information about who has the right to possess a gun.

Despite the decree, the names likely won't be uncloaked soon. A state police lawyer indicated in a letter Tuesday the agency planned to ask a judge to decide the matter. And Republican lawmakers have filed legislation to make names permanently private.

Through the Freedom of Information Act, The Associated Press requested in September the names of each FOID cardholder in the state and the expiration date of each card. State police denied the request, prompting the public access counselor's intervention. . . .

Thanks to Tony Troglio and Chris Klemm for the link.

Government X-ray Vans going down city streets

Liberals are OK with this? The Obama administration has expanded the use of these vans. Where is their opposition and anger? Note the understandable anger about Google's street view vehicles. Why is this different?

Privacy advocates worried about x-ray scanners making their way around U.S. airports may be surprised to know the technology is also making its way onto America's streets.

The Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. military and even local law enforcement agencies are buying and deploying mobile X-ray vans that can see into the interior of vehicles around them. . . .

"A van that can drive down the street and look through people's clothes, look into vehicles and even peer into your home? I think that's an invasion of privacy and not what we should be doing," Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz told FoxNews.com. . . .

"If a person, such as an illegal stowaway, is present in the vehicle or container being scanned, the system creates only a silhouette with no facial or body detail," the website says. "The system cannot be used to identify an individual, or the race or age of the person." . . .

Chaffetz, who is working on legislation aimed at limiting the use of the backscatter body scanners in airports, says the vans need restrictions.

"There's an appropriate use for these machines -- at ports for instance, coming across the border and inspecting vehicles, hostage situations. But the company that develops these vans says they've sold more than 500 of these roving vans and I don't know who's purchased them," he said. "I think we need to know." . . .

People will have to change names to escape 'cyber past' warns Google's Eric Schmidt

From the WSJ:

Mr. Schmidt is surely right, though, that the questions go far beyond Google. "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time," he says. He predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends' social media sites.

"I mean we really have to think about these things as a society," he adds. "I'm not even talking about the really terrible stuff, terrorism and access to evil things," he says. . . .

Facebook's massive collection of data on people's views

Facebook is collecting a lot of information about people's political views. It is a little concerning given how much time that Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has spent in the past helping out Democrat political causes.

What Zuckerberg didn't point out is that widespread use of the Like button allows Facebook to track people as they switch from CNN.com to Yelp.com to ESPN.com, all of which are sites that have said they will implement the feature.
Even if someone is not a Facebook user or is not logged in, Facebook's social plug-ins collect the address of the Web page being visited and the Internet address of the visitor as soon as the page is loaded--clicking on the Like button is not required. If enough sites participate, that permits Facebook to assemble a vast amount of data about Internet users' browsing habits. . . .

Democrats push for government to get private privacy information on people

So much for Democrat claims that they care so much about privacy.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), senior Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said that provisions in the new financial regulatory bill violate privacy rights by allowing the government to collect any financial information it wants from any financial institution it wants.

Shelby, speaking at a press conference outlining Republican concerns about the financial regulatory overhaul, said that the bill violated Americans’ privacy rights by allowing the government to collect any financial information from any financial firm.

“I’m sure the ACLU – because we’ve heard from them – and others are looking at this very closely. I believe that it violates a lot of people’s privacy,” Shelby said.

Shelby added that Republicans would offer amendments that would attempt to “surgically strike” such objectionable provisions.

Republicans’ privacy concerns stem from the new information-gathering authorities the bill would give to the federal government, allowing it collect any information, including records from Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) and the addresses of depositors, from any financial institution at any time. . . .

This is almost enough for me to want to get rid of my cell phone

Didn't the Dems get upset about being able to check the history of use of public computers in public libraries? Didn't the Dems get all excised about the rights of foreigners? Both cases involving terrorism. Now the Dems want to use our cell phone records for common law enforcement in non-terrorism cases!
Obama wants to be able for the government to get this cell phone tracking data without a search warrant. All the government as to do is go fishing for what people were nearby when a certain crime occurred. Possibly we should just let government go into people's personal files to see if they can find info on whether you committed a crime. Can you make a contract with your cell phone provider that you expect privacy? Tracking an enemy in a war might be one thing, but these guys are going even farther in civilian affairs.

Two years ago, when the FBI was stymied by a band of armed robbers known as the "Scarecrow Bandits" that had robbed more than 20 Texas banks, it came up with a novel method of locating the thieves.
FBI agents obtained logs from mobile phone companies corresponding to what their cellular towers had recorded at the time of a dozen different bank robberies in the Dallas area. The voluminous records showed that two phones had made calls around the time of all 12 heists, and that those phones belonged to men named Tony Hewitt and Corey Duffey. A jury eventually convicted the duo of multiple bank robbery and weapons charges.
Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.
In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a mobile device placed and received calls. . . .
U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Lenihan in Pennsylvania denied the Justice Department's attempt to obtain stored location data without a search warrant; prosecutors had invoked a different legal procedure. Lenihan's ruling, in effect, would require police to obtain a search warrant based on probable cause--a more privacy-protective standard. . . .
The Obama administration is not alone in making this argument. U.S. District Judge William Pauley, a Clinton appointee in New York, wrote in a 2009 opinion that a defendant in a drug trafficking case, Jose Navas, "did not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the cell phone" location. That's because Navas only used the cell phone "on public thoroughfares en route from California to New York" and "if Navas intended to keep the cell phone's location private, he simply could have turned it off." . . .

This Clinton nominee didn't get this right. My understanding is that you have to actually remove the battery from the cell phone to protect yourself. Some cell phones won't let you remove the battery.

Democrats endanger individual privacy

CBS News has this:

Section 431(a) of the bill says that the IRS must divulge taxpayer identity information, including the filing status, the modified adjusted gross income, the number of dependents, and "other information as is prescribed by" regulation. That information will be provided to the new Health Choices Commissioner and state health programs and used to determine who qualifies for "affordability credits."

Section 245(b)(2)(A) says the IRS must divulge tax return details -- there's no specified limit on what's available or unavailable -- to the Health Choices Commissioner. The purpose, again, is to verify "affordability credits."

Section 1801(a) says that the Social Security Administration can obtain tax return data on anyone who may be eligible for a "low-income prescription drug subsidy" but has not applied for it.

Over at the Institute for Policy Innovation (a free-market think tank and presumably no fan of Obamacare), Tom Giovanetti argues that: "How many thousands of federal employees will have access to your records? The privacy of your health records will be only as good as the most nosy, most dishonest and most malcontented federal employee.... So say good-bye to privacy from the federal government. It was fun while it lasted for 233 years."

I'm not as certain as Giovanetti that this represents privacy's Armageddon. (Though I do wonder where the usual suspects like the Electronic Privacy Information Center are. Presumably inserting limits on information that can be disclosed -- and adding strict penalties on misuse of the information kept on file about hundreds of millions of Americans -- is at least as important as fretting about Facebook's privacy policy in Canada.)

A better candidate for a future privacy crisis is the so-called stimulus bill enacted with limited debate early this year. It mandated the "utilization of an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014," but included only limited privacy protections. . . .

Federal Government to Track who visits their websites

So where are the Democrats on this privacy issue? From the Washington Post:

The Obama administration is proposing to scale back a long-standing ban on tracking how people use government Internet sites with "cookies" and other technologies, raising alarms among privacy groups.

A two-week public comment period ended Monday on a proposal by the White House Office of Management and Budget to end a ban on federal Internet sites using such technologies and replace it with other privacy safeguards. The current prohibition, in place since 2000, can be waived if an agency head cites a "compelling need."

Supporters of a change say social networking and similar services, which often take advantage of the tracking technologies, have transformed how people communicate over the Internet, and Obama's aides say those services can make government more transparent and increase public involvement.

Some privacy groups say the proposal amounts to a "massive" and unexplained shift in government policy. In a statement Monday, American Civil Liberties Union spokesman Michael Macleod-Ball said the move could "allow the mass collection of personal information of every user of a federal government website." . . .

Amazing: If you value your privacy, be very careful with the "Cash for Clunkers" program

Glenn Beck deserves a lot of credit for pointing this out. This is the privacy agreement for the "Cash for Clunker" website that you sign into when you do the program.