Michigan’s New Law Protects Online Privacy

Michigan’s new law, the Internet Privacy Protection Act (IPPA), protects employees, potential employees, students and applicants from giving employers and educators access to their personal social media accounts. Under the new law, accounts such as Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Twitter are covered. Employers and school administrators can’t discharge, fail to hire or admit or otherwise penalize their current or potential employees or students for refusing their request. Read More ›

Categories: Employment, Privacy

Does Apple’s Siri Record and Store Everything You Say?

Many people love having an application on their iPhone that can convert nearly anything they say into text.  But what does Apple do with what you say to Siri?

Most people are unaware that everything you say to Siri is sent to a data center in North Carolina.  It is sent to Apple in order to convert what you say into text. Read More ›

Categories: Privacy

U.S. Supreme Court Strikes Down Warrantless GPS Tracking

Let's revisit a previous posting regarding the scope of the Fourth Amendment in the digital era. 

Last year, the Department of Justice requested the U.S. Supreme Court to approve the warrantless and covert attachment by law enforcement of a GPS tracking device to an individual's vehicle. The DOJ’s request arose from a U.S. Court of Appeals decision, which vacated the life sentence of a convicted drug dealer.  In that case, the Court of Appeals held that law enforcement violated the individual’s Fourth Amendment rights by secretly attaching a GPS tracking device to the individual’s vehicle without a warrant. Read More ›

Categories: Privacy

Facebook Penalized on Privacy

Facebook has reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission regarding charges that it violated users' privacy rights.

Why Facebook was under investigation?

In December 2009, privacy advocates filed a complaint with the FTC following certain changes to Facebook privacy policies.   Specifically, the FTC complaint alleged that Facebook made aspects of its users' profiles - such as name, picture, and friends list - public by default and without user consent. The FTC stated that such actions violated user expectations of privacy and threatened the "health and safety" of users by exposing "potentially sensitive affiliations" such as political views and sexual orientation.

The FTC complaint also alleged other situations where Facebook "made promises that it did not keep," such as promising that it would not share information with advertisers or retain data that it promised users was deleted. Read More ›

Categories: Privacy, Social Media

Proposed Legislation Would Ban Unsolicited Text Messages

Cellular phones continue to play an increasing role in our daily lives, allowing us to stay "connected" 24/7.  That "connectivity", however, blurs and erodes the traditional notions of privacy in an individual's daily life.  Now, your boss, email, customers, and friends are never more than a button's push away. Read More ›

Categories: E-Commerce, Privacy

A Little Known Secret to the War on IP Piracy – that is Free

How would you like to have the weight of the U.S. Federal Government behind you in combating piracy of your product?  And how would you like to have it for free?  If you answered no to both, perhaps you should reevaluate your business acumen.  For those who answered in the affirmative, please read on.

The free service is offered through the Office of Intellectual Property Rights (OIPR) of the U.S. Department of Commerce.  OIPR can assist your company in combating intellectual property piracy of your products.  After you have secured your intellectual property protections at home and abroad and taken local enforcement steps through the administrative or legal process, OIPR will step in on your behalf and work with the foreign government to target, confiscate and destroy the piracy items. Read More ›

Categories: Intellectual Property, Privacy, Trademarks

DOJ Urges U.S. Supreme Court To Approve Warrantless GPS Tracking

The Fourth Amendment protects an individual from unreasonable searches and seizures.  As it stands today, unless an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy, local and federal law enforcement are not required to obtain a warrant prior to conducting a search. Does a person reasonably expect that law enforcement will attach a GPS tracking device to a vehicle to clandestinely monitor that person’s every movement?  The Department of Justice (DOJ) thinks so. Read More ›

Categories: E-Discovery, Privacy