Privacy Policies

Released one day before the Senate Commerce Committee held its hearing on the privacy implications of online advertising, a new report says targeted ads may involve practices that violate state and federal wiretap laws.

On Tuesday, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) issued a memo, saying Internet service providers (ISPs) that allow an advertising network to copy [their] customers' Web traffic contents are defying "reasonable consumer expectations and may [be violating] communications privacy laws."

Currently, some ISPs are working with third party advertising agencies, which are copying consumer data in order to target specific ads at users. One such firm, NebuAD, testifed before the Senate Commerce Committee yesterday. NebuAd claims it does not violate any laws because they do not collect personally identifiable information. Some, though, argue that any collection of data can ultimately be tied to an individual and disagree with NebuAd's assertion that privacy is completely protected. CDT's memo says the practice most likely violates legal protections provided in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

Today the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee held a hearing on privacy concerns related to online advertising. In what will probably be the first of several hearings, the committee asked panelists about their thoughts on privacy threats vis-a-vis online advertising. Chairman Dorgan noted that no Internet Service Providers (ISPs) wanted to participate at today's hearing, but he hoped to address this issue with them at another hearing in the future. Panelists at this well-attended event included Lydia Parnes of the Federal Trade Commission, Chris Kelly of Facebook, Leslie Harris of the Center for Democracy and Technology, Jane Horvath of Google, Robert Dykes of NebuAd, Mike Hintze of Microsoft, and Clyde Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

HIGHLIGHTS:

This podcast features a 50 minute keynote address from the EDUCAUSE 2008 Enterprise Conference. The speech, "The Big Brother Dilemma," is by Gregory A. Jackson, Vice President & CIO, University of Chicago.

We want cameras watching for problems, but we worry that they will observe or disclose things we'd like to keep private. We want network administrators to track harassing e-mail to its source, but we don't want anyone monitoring our e-mail. We want our buildings to admit occupants and keep strangers out, but we don't want anyone keeping track of when we arrive and leave. In other words, we want big brothers to watch out for us, but we don't want Big Brother to watch us. And IT is caught in the middle.

note: commercial material from television and movies was used in this speech and has been cut out of the recording with as little effect on the speech as possible.

On this podcast we feature a keynote speech from the EDUCAUSE 2008 Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference featuring Lauren Steinfeld, Chief Privacy Officer and Institutional Compliance Officer at the University of Pennsylvania. Her presentation is entitled, "The Privacy Landscape in the Academy".

Lauren B. Steinfeld serves as Chief Privacy Officer for the University of Pennsylvania. In that position, Ms. Steinfeld works on privacy issues involving medical information, student records, electronic data, Social Security numbers, and other personal information. Recently, Ms. Steinfeld has worked extensively on developing policies, procedures and tools to mitigate risks in the information technology area. Ms. Steinfeld has also taught a Privacy Law course at Penn Law.

The 2008 Southwest Regional Conference, "Empowering Community Through Technology," will be held February 20–22 in Houston, Texas. View the program and register by January 23 to save money with low, early-bird rates.

Jean E. Engle, chief knowledge officer, NASA/Johnson Space Center, will present a general session (topic TBA) on Friday, February 22.

The conference will focus on these topic areas: