EU Seeks to Simplify Cross-border Data Protection Compliance

At a conference in Paris organized by the International Association of Privacy Professionals, Viviane Reding has suggested that companies can set their own privacy rules, as long as they do not contradict with one national data protection authority.

See full text here

'Unenforceable' right to be forgotten should not be included in new EU data laws, ICO says

Revisions to EU data protection laws should not give individuals a general 'right to be forgotten', the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has said.

Giving individuals the right to force organisations to delete the personal information they store them about would be misleading, unenforceable and have "implications" for free speech, the UK's data protection watchdog said.


Interesting !  also there is text which says that:

The European Commission recently announced that it plans to publish formal proposed changes to the EU Data Protection Directive by the end of January. EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding has said that a qualified 'right to be forgotten' would be included in the proposals.

For full text see here

Web standards body proposes universal 'do not track' system

The body responsible for making sure components of the world wide web work together has published plans to help create a universal 'do not track' mechanism in web browsers that would give users control of their privacy settings across all sites.
:
:
W3C said it hopes its DNT standards will be in operation from the middle of next year and that they will provide an "exceedingly straightforward" way for internet users to control their privacy.

for full text see here.

F.T.C. Said to Be Near Facebook Privacy Deal

After Google's 20y of external privacy audit, now it's time for Facebook.

Interesting stuff, although not more than common sense.

Under the agreement, Facebook would agree to privacy audits for 20 years, one of the people said. It would also prohibit Facebook from making public a piece of information that a user had originally shared privately on the site without express permission, the person said. The

I am wondering if there is need for a settlement to enforce what would be probably implicit in EU regulations?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/technology/facebook-is-said-to-be-near-ftc-settlement-on-privacy.html

Have a nice weekend,
Salva

An overview of the different cybercrime laws

Hi,

while googling for something different I've found this overview of the different laws (world wide) related to cybercrime. This may be useful for the ones of you dealing with the cybercrime theme now (or soon).

regards,
Salva

http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/taiex/dyn/create_speech.jsp?num=16431

Police must justify use of communication interception technology, lawyer says

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has bought technology that will allow it to intercept and shut-off communications without the help of telecoms companies, according to media reports.

:

Police and other law enforcement bodies have the power to intercept communications under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) subject to approval by the Home Secretary.

:
Under the Human Rights Act individuals are guaranteed the right to privacy surrounding their communications other than if a public authority, such as the police, believe it necessary to interfere with that right "in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others".

:

Full report here

Having these equipments owned by the Police would allow them to perform surveillance on any telephone they may consider (the tel. number) belongs to a suspect... !

Explicit prior consent needed for personal data processing, EU Commissioner says

Organisations that want to process personal data will have to obtain explicit prior consent from individuals to do so under new EU data protection laws, the EU Justice Commissioner has said.

for full text see here

It also talks about the right for the individuals to remove data, they posted, from the Internet..

Data loss

Sorry I've not posted lately, I have been unwell. I hope to post more this weekend. Anyway, here is a website I have found very interesting:

https://www.annualcreditreport.co.uk/identity-theft/data-loss/1094/great-western-hospital-wiltshire.htm

It lists a lot of recent and historic data losses many of which I was unaware of. I think it's useful to know and relevant as a reference.

Hope everyone is well.

600K facebook accounts hacked daily + study on social network's data scraping

Facebook has released an official communication regarding the way it secures the data of its users.
from these data, it can be inferred that about 600.000 accounts are hacked daily ! (isn't this... HUGE?)

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2395402,00.asp#fbid=auDt9W2DPrZ

Also it's interesting their concept of "trusted friends" that can help the user to recover its authentication data if he loses access to its account.
However, interesting to see that the concept of "friend" is personal and 10% of users keep accepting requests from anyone (including the bots created by the authors of this paper in order to scrape personal use data).

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/01/facebook_infiltration_bots/

Also, the fact of having a friend in common would raise the % of people accepting a new connection to 50%... definitely to be kept in mind if facebook wants us to rely on friends to ensure the accounts security ;)

Regards,
Salva

Should Huawei Do Business in Iran?

Interesting to see that to achieve privacy of individuals, technology should not be provided to the government of Iran and facilitate the surveillance of their nation!

 A pressure group called United Against Nuclear Iran has called on Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. to immediately end its business in Iran because, according to the group, the vendor has been "been providing the Iranian regime with cellular and electronic technology that it has used to conduct surveillance on its citizens, and track down human rights activists and dissidents."

Here is the full text