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college&community&public stations a-plenty-- make sure yours is among them:
https://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/26/cispa_critics_warn_cybersecurity_bill_will

And here are the go-to sites for leadership/updates on the issue:
http://www.eff.org/
http://www.epic.org/ (though, just checking.. not sure why EPIC is lagging on this issue thus far.)
And though I don't like ragging on sd'ers, it's a bit troubling that the site which is heralded as bringing the news is "hothardware".. I guess a peeve of mine is overspecialization. Ever the humble polyglot, I make it a point to check aggregators of alternative news daily:
http://www.alternet.org/
http://www.commondreams.org/

and as re Your Rights specifically, a good podcast is http://www.lawanddisorder.org/
... also, CNet puts together a good "Politics and Law" rss feed: http://news.cnet.com/8300-13578_3-38.xml

AMANDLA!

The watch list starts on page 20 of this PDF: http://epic.org/foia/epic-v-dhs-media-monitoring/Analyst-Desktop-Binder-REDACTED.pdf

You could simply extract all of that and paste it into your sig and have the mother of all scan melt-down generators.

I am going to blow up NYC by using terror, social networking, and flu. Agent orange is my favorite mixed drink.

RADIOACTIVE AGRO TERROR!!!!!!!!!twelve131313

Better yet, I had to get my kids inoculated with TAMIFLU and now can't afford to contribute to this year's IRA. I went to the TARGET last night in SAN DIEGO and had a conversation with a SMART cashier. She told me that she was an AGRICULTURE major before moving from EL PASO but decided that GAS was too expensive for that.

WOOT!

P3P has been Old and Busted since Slashdot first covered it in 2002.

Microsoft would never bring it up, if they weren't already in panic mode. This seems to indicate that MS is in far worse shape than we know.

"Requiring a warrant" is a joke. The FISA courts approve about 99.5 percent of requests: http://epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/fisa_stats.html

Then maybe they create a webportal with an easy to use printable form.

"Requiring a warrant" is a joke. The FISA courts approve about 99.5 percent of requests: http://epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/fisa_stats.html

Because Intelligence agencies and prosecutors self-select on what cases they take to court. No sense going through the trouble unless you are fairly certain you will get the warrant.

Harsh treatment? Something weird came up on the scanner.

Do we know that? I mean truly, for certain, beyond any doubt? TSA claims that it's scanners can't store or transmit images (okay, we know that's not strictly true, but for the sake of argument...) so it's not like anyone can contest the body scanner results.

In other words, some TSA guy claims that there was an aberration on the scan result, and therefore they needed to grope^Wfrisk Sen. Paul to clear him through security. Surely there was no intent to harass him, right? Right? Guys? Anyone?

The DHS looked at surveillance from vans with long-distance X-ray capability
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/03/02/docs-reveal-tsa-plan-to-body-scan-pedestrians-train-passengers/
e.g. "drive-by" mode and covert screening from vans http://www.as-e.com/zbv/
http://epic.org/privacy/body_scanners/Body_Scan_FOIA_Docs_Feb_2011.pdf
They build up a 3d like view of metal vehicles. You would think every person in the area would get into shielded rooms (control and guarded waiting room) as the vehicle in question was scanned.
I guess radiation is now 100% safe in the USA.

Is it really that easy to set up your own Exchange server? Does everyone around here keep a Windows server in a coloc somewhere so they can run Exchange?

I'm sorry did you get lost on the way to foxnews.com?

This is the news for nerds site that puts the latest Linux kernel milestone up on the front page.
See these tags on the left side of the screen - cloud, hardware, linux, management, mobile, science, security, storage? Well, I'll tell you, it's not about weather, wood shop, business, exercise, personal defense, or closets.

So you're telling me that the place that puts the latest linux kernel milestone on the front page and where Linux is one of the sidebar links is the place to find people that keep Windows servers around in colocs? Hey, maybe you can tell me why I can never get my Linux questions answered over at msdn.com?

This is (used to be) the place you go to FIND people who have servers in a colo somewhere, who might call you a pussy for finding difficulty in worse things than first party Windows software!

Of course, you know as well as I do that those days are long gone.

You didn't even read any of those linked pages did you? You just copied results from a microsoft+privacy query that sounded bad.

I mean Microsoft Passport? Well hi there 2001! We got ALL of this reeeeeeeeeel sceeeeery stuff from everyone ELSE.

Wow, you figured out that I just got those links from a quick google search even after I tried to hide it by saying "And that's just what I found in a quick google search." Admittedly the first one was old, but still shows a privacy breach, the other two were from 2010. So what is your point? Are you saying "Well sure, MS wasn't so concerned about privacy back in 2001. And maybe not 9 years later in 2010, but , they care about it now!"

Is it really that easy to set up your own Exchange server? Does everyone around here keep a Windows server in a coloc somewhere so they can run Exchange?

I'm sorry did you get lost on the way to foxnews.com?

This is the news for nerds site that puts the latest Linux kernel milestone up on the front page.
See these tags on the left side of the screen - cloud, hardware, linux, management, mobile, science, security, storage? Well, I'll tell you, it's not about weather, wood shop, business, exercise, personal defense, or closets.

This is (used to be) the place you go to FIND people who have servers in a colo somewhere, who might call you a pussy for finding difficulty in worse things than first party Windows software!

You didn't even read any of those linked pages did you? You just copied results from a microsoft+privacy query that sounded bad.

I mean Microsoft Passport? Well hi there 2001! We got ALL of this reeeeeeeeeel sceeeeery stuff from everyone ELSE.

Responding to myself: from the full version of the release, it looks like (b)(5) was an annotation added on top of some blacked-out sections to cite which section of the FOIA justifies blanking out. Some other more limited redactions on later pages have a box saying (b)(6) next to them. So it's not that they blacked out a whole page except for a section heading; they blacked out the entire page and cited (b)(5) as the reason.

http://epic.org/foia_notes/foia_doc_20_snap.PDF

Apparently "(5)(b)" is the only thing we're allowed to know about this project. What the hell?

...we don't have nearly the same blight on our social landscape as America does with their ridiculously conservative "Christian Fundies"

You're right, we don't have the same brand of conservative Christians at all. Here in the US, for instance, they actually failed to fuck with our Internet service.

Wow, what a bunch of hogwash. The identified cancer cluster was identified as "an influx of TSA employees falling victim to various forms of cancer, strokes and heart disease". It is not limited to Boston - it is actually the ATL employees who first mentioned it. I'm sure the exposure over the last 12 months caused all this. Cancer pops up (as does heart disease) the moment you are exposed...

Read the sources, not the press releases.

My proposal for simplifying the legal code: 1) A bill must be read aloud, in its entirety, by sponsoring congressman, in session, before it can be voted on. 2) Automatic 15-year sunset for all laws. 1 would make the laws shorter, and prevent stuff getting "snuck in," plus would make the laws with more sponsors easier to pass, 2 would mean that any law not important enough to be revisited every 15 years would not be important enough to be a law. Also, I'd like there to be a penalty for passing laws that later turn out to be unconstitutional.

I've long been a proponent of sunset laws. But I really like the reading aloud idea. May I also suggest that no one may vote unless they were present for the entire reading. Our congress people already freely admit to not reading laws they vote on.

Just to give some idea of scale. Wikipedia says 150 words per minute is typical for speech. The Patriot Act copied and pasted into Libre Office is 56k words. Which works out to about 6 hours. Not as long as I'd like for something as long as that, but still an improvement.

Not sure if you've heard, but for the last ten years, Commanders-in-Chief from both of the major political parties have been busy stacking that judicial branch with their poster boys/girls (Roberts, Thomas, and Alito courtesy of GWB, and Sotomayer and Kagan courtesy of Obama) while doing everything they can to gut and/or reinterpret the Constitution . I'm not holding out a whole lot of hope that the courts are going to do a whole lot to help out...if you even manage to get to the courts before being dragged off to Gitmo for providing "material aid or support" to "terrorist organizations".

And this is just the @#$!!! we have heard about. Somehow I suspect, no matter how bad you think it is...it's actually much, much worse.

There were restrictions against export of cryptography, but they're largely gone.

The complete removal of those restrictions is fairly recent, but they were relaxed significantly before then.

Amending the Constitution is so difficult, comrade. Better if we merely ignore or reinterpret the Constitution per our whims. For the good of the country, of course.

Lots of US laws already prohibit or limit SSN use:
http://epic.org/privacy/ssn/
http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs10-ssn.htm
If it's illegal to collect and use in whole, is it illegal to cadge in part, and then reassemble and use?
Or does the law have holes?
As rwa2 points out above, deriving the whole SSN ID number from a partial one might be within the reach of a lot of people, not just huge datafarms.

The federal government already gets the public databases pulled it in to their databases. This is exactly why multiple Fusion centers were set up in almost every state, at least what they are willing to admit publicly from the middle of 2009. Who knows how many they actually have now. They are not part of the federal government, but rather setup by the state and local governments, even though they get federal DHS money to set these up. Since they are not federal agencies, they are not restricted by federal rules for data mining and privacy. They collect information from public sources and private databases (think credit reports, grocery stores, and others that sell their databases), link up with businesses, state and local police and then pass all this up to the federal level such as the FBI and Homeland Security. The FBI and DHS then send down terrorist watch lists, and lists of people that the Fusion centers and law enforcement should monitor in their areas. The stated idea was to allow more data sharing between local law enforcement and federal law enforcement along with the help of businesses. What in fact has happened is that the federal government has gotten around rules about what data they can collect by having it passed to them from another/third party, in this case the state Fusion centers. Technically they didn't mine the data, the states did and they just passed the information along to the federal government. So vast amounts of data is being collected already about the public and what is going on in the US, and most people have no clue at all that this is being done.

The problem with all of this is who the Fusion centers are putting on the terrorist watch list. They have put the ACLU on the watch list in Tennessee, Ron Paul supporters in Missouri, people who vote third party or support them, people who advocate for the Constitution, those who are over friendly, people who buy lots of jeans, owners of certain kinds of historical flags, and other crazy things that have come out. It just insane who the Fusion centers are putting on the terrorist watch list, and the insane criteria being used to put people on the terrorist watch list.

http://www.dhs.gov/files/programs/gc_1156877184684.shtm
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010/dec/22/aclu-bristles-over-terror-list/
http://publicintelligence.net/florida-fusion-center-monitored-bp-protests-ron-paul-events-code-pink/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/23/fusion-centers-expand-criteria-identify-militia-members/
http://epic.org/privacy/fusion/

The Miller Test precedent covers something completely different.

It had nothing to do with Federal law or the expansion of Federal authority. To the contrary, it allowed local communities to govern themselves - which is exactly as it should be. That is, control should flow from the people upward, not the other way around.

The Fed's attempt to regulate "obscenity", the Communications Decency Act, was declared unconstitutional within a year of passage, and the SCOTUS let that ruling stand, invalidating the Fed's attempt to control speech from the top down, consistent with Constitutional protections.

If you don't like the way your own local community governs its public environs, it's very easy to get involved and make changes. Lots of other communities around, too, that don't try to dictate "decency" to each other.

You can assert anything you like. That doesn't make it so. The record of your credit card purchases is kept by your credit card company to do business. It's theirs. Medical records are protected by doctor-patient privilege, and by other privacy regulations (e.g., HIPAA). You can read more about that here.

Life is a little bit more complicated than you seem to believe.

These "enhanced" pat downs are offensive and illegal and until someone is willing to stand up and take the damn thing to court the DHS and TSA is going to continue molesting children.

You're in luck, because EPIC has already filed suit. You might want to donate to them; I just did.

Supporting EPIC.

When the intent is to touch the genitals, then is the intent to search or commit a sexual assault. At what stage when committing sexual assault is a search warrant required.

At least everyone is likely to have the last laugh on the TSA, how well are they shielded from the continually exposure to tumour inducing xrays. Of course there will always be people to protect idiots from their own ignorance http://epic.org/privacy/airtravel/backscatter/.

With regards to limits on ionising radiation "the maximum exposure to ionising radiation shall not be more than 1 mSv34 per year for members of the public and 20 mSv per year for exposed workers", what steps are the TSA taking to ensure they are not exceeding mandated limits. One would assume questionnaires are being handed out with risk warnings and notifications for people at risk or do they just no think they will be held legally liable for failing to take due care, especially with children.

How about all operational personal, flight crews, cleaners luggage handlers and TSA agents, are they also required to be scanned when entering areas of higher security risk.

No need to wonder if there is somebody out there.(though they are no longer an independent entity, having merged with Lexis-Nexis under the Reed Elsevier banner, thus assembling an even more comprehensive collection...)

You should read this article from the EFF. The Ninth Circuit case is here. There were two appeals to the Supreme Court. The Court granted certiorari on the Ontario appeal and denied it on the Arch Wireless appeal.

In the Quon v. Ontario decision, the Supreme Court held that what the Ontario Police Department did was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. In its refusal to hear the Arch Wireless v. Quon appeal, it let the Arch Wireless part of the Ninth Circuit decision in Quon. v Arch Wireless et al stand, namely:

We hold that Arch Wireless provided an "electronic communication service" to the City. The parties do not dispute that Arch Wireless acted "knowingly" when it released the transcripts to the City. When Arch Wireless knowingly turned over the text-messaging transcripts to the City, which was a "subscriber," not "an addressee or intended recipient of such communication," it violated the SCA, 18 U.S.C. 2702(a)(1). Accordingly, judgment in Appellants' favor on their claims against Arch Wireless is appropriate as a matter of law, and we remand to the district court for proceedings consistent with this holding. (Quon v. Arch Wireless et al, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (2008))

The Supreme Court denied cert. when Arch Wireless appealed this point. The Court stated in the case it did hear:

Respondents argue that the search was per se unreasonable in light of the Court of Appeals' conclusion that Arch Wireless violated the SCA by giving the City the transcripts of Quon's text messages. The merits of the SCA claim are not before us...The otherwise reasonable search by OPD is not rendered unreasonable by the assumption that Arch Wireless violated the SCA by turning over the transcripts. (Ontario v. Quon (2010))

The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of Arch Wireless, thus (in the Ninth Circuit at least), that part of the Ninth Circuit decision (that Arch Wireless, as an "electronic communication service" provider, acted illegally, as a matter of law) stands.

What I find really amusing is that this will potentially impact WSU and all schools with sports teams called 'Cougars'. It's kind of like when AOL banned the word 'breast' and people in chat rooms had to talk about 'hooter cancer'!

Moralism is fucking stupid and society needs to get over it. Google is just contributing to the problem and acting like hypocrites to do it. China thinks they censor for 'morality' too, but that wasn't ok for Google, Google only wants to censor for morality on its own terms.

Well fuck us for giving a damn and materially supporting orgs like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).

Their network. Their rules.

I'm with you on being surprised that personal equipment is allowed to connect to a hospital internal network, even more so if it's carrying patient info. Many hospitals, however, do provide public wifi networks for their patient's and guest's convenience (as well as secure wifi for portable equipment).

As someone who both wrote hospital apps as well as ran the hospital IT department, I'll say that people employed for longer than 10 years in the hybrid of healthcare and IT will tell you that way back in the dark ages of the mid-90s, before HIPAA: the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act, there was HIPPA: Health Information Privacy Protection Act. HIPPA was finally discussed in House hearings in 1996. The transcript is online. It was the subject of much discussion in '93 - '95 among the Medical Records and Hospital IT groups.

HIPPA (PL 104-191) was an umbrella act to amend the IRS code "to improve portability and continuity of health insurance coverage in the group and individual markets, to combat waste, fraud, and abuse in health insurance and health care delivery, to promote the use of medical savings accounts, to improve access to long-term care services and coverage, to simplify the administration of health insurance, and for other purposes." Some, but not all of the privacy protections in HIPPA made their way into HIPAA.

EPIC has a good Bibliography on the Confidentiality of Health Information.

In 1987, the Washington City Paper, a paper from the left, published the video rental history of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, from the right. There was next to no dirt found, but it wasn't for lack of self-admitted trying. It was a politically motivated stunt, and they were desperate to find X-rated rentals or even just a penchant for a particular actress of the day.

By revealing detailed media purchases to a government, it gives the incumbents the opportunity to smear political challengers.

you must not have travelled recently then.
As of September 30, 2004, US-VISIT entry and exit procedures expand to include visitors traveling to the United States under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) arriving at airports and seaports.

Checking out of the country using the US-VISIT exit procedure is mandatory where an exit solution is in place at the port of departure. If visitors fail to check out through these facilities, it could affect their ability to re-enter the country. Eventually, all airports and seaports may contain exit stations or other alternatives. People will not be penalized if an exit solution is not yet installed at their point of departure. We are working aggressively to communicate these procedures to make sure all visitors understand what they need to do. U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers and various transportation companies are distributing cards that provide instructions for the exit requirements and procedures at those ports of departure.

http://epic.org/privacy/surveillance/spotlight/0705/editorial.html

I do not believe that Bing's privacy policy is any better than Google's. The reason: they both have to follow US Patriot Act:keep the search data for a few months and serve your butt to govt upon request.
As for business in China, Microsoft believes that China can execute all their dissidents overnight, it's their internal problem, MS could not care less. Obey the law - get paid. Need bricks and fuel for gas chambers -- no problem, we deliver! List of names and addresses of all the jews/dissidents? Here you are! Sorry, gotta obey the law, don't want to piss off the shareholders!

Source, please. Pagers use a radio broadcast, IIRC it is not illegal to snoop them, especially considering there is no security barrier to break. Plus no warrant is required for law enforcement to snoop them either, which lends credence to the idea that they are public broadcasts.

It is illegal to record pager messages, as it constitutes a wiretap. A cellular phone is also a radio, but that doesn't mean that's a radio station. The difference is that a a radio station is intended for a wide audience, while a cellular phone call is a private conversation. It was also illegal to listen into the old unencrypted analog cordless phones that operated in the Mhz range and so could be picked up on police scanners.

You're simply mistaken to believe pagers taps don't require a warrant. It's a search, and was held as a wiretap as recently as 2008 by the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Quon v. Arch Wireless Oper. 2008.. Even EPIC lists "pagers" as one of the things they track in wiretap statistics.

Yes... when it comes to matters the US government is concerned about, the UN has often acted as an extension of the USG in the past.

However, it does not appear one can really say the US government opposes internet censorship or utilizing technical means to control people.

All signs point to a politically strong faction of the US government openly supporting censorship, even towards requiring ISPs proliferate (otherwise scarce) technical measures that are capable of suppressing speech.

Examples: Congress may Require ISPs to block certain fraud sites, CIPA, COPA, Communications Decency Act, Executive Order 13233, the 1943 Surprise Hurricane (and the major loss of lives that resulted from the US Government's censorship of critical Forecast info), California Assembly Bills 1792, 1793 restricting the sale of violent video games, both signed into law

Don't know how to use google?

http://zetachannel.com/index.php?topic=5297.0;wap2
http://epic.org/free_speech/copa/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._American_Civil_Liberties_Union

"Simulated child pornography was made illegal with the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. The CPPA was short-lived. In 2002, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, holding that the relevant portions of the CPPA were unconstitutional because they prevented lawful speech. Referring to Ferber, the court stated that "the CPPA prohibits speech that records no crime and creates no victims by its production. Virtual child pornography is not 'intrinsically related' to the sexual abuse of children.""

On the other hand:
"In Richmond, Virginia, on December 2005, Dwight Whorley was convicted under 18 U.S.C. 1466A for using a Virginia Employment Commission computer to receive "...obscene Japanese anime cartoons that graphically depicted prepubescent female children being forced to engage in genital-genital and oral-genital intercourse with adult males."..... On December 19, 2008 the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction.[6] The court stated that "it is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exists." Attorneys for Mr. Whorley have said that they will appeal to the Supreme Court."

and:

In October 2008, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund became involved in a case defending 38 years old Iowa comic collector named Christopher Handley - "there are no actual children. It was all very crude images from a comic book." ... Judge Gritzner was petitioned to drop some of the charges, but instead ruled that 2 parts of the PROTECT Act criminalizing "a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting" were unconstitutional. Handley still faces an obscenity charge..... CBLDF leader Neil Gaiman remarked on how this could apply to his work The Doll's House, saying, "if you bought that comic, you could be arrested for it? That's just deeply wrong. Nobody was hurt. The only thing that was hurt were ideas."

No, it's not as bad as Microsoft Palladium, later renamed "Trusted Computing". Not only was every box supposed to be hardware identified by the CPU, but the keys and the central key-signing keys would be held by Microsoft, with no clear legal procedure for their release to the government or even the janitor, and with direct control over the features of your software and hardware. It was designed primarily for DRM, and could be used to block the BIOS from being able to load other operating systems.

The list of built-in, abusible aspects of this is stunning. Check out http://epic.org/privacy/consumer/microsoft/palladium.html for details.

Oh how the users of slashdot have forgotten. The entertainment cartel tried to pass much worse. They tried to get laws passed which would require all computers to be DRM controlled.

Not only did they demand a system to keep their files from being copied (at great expense to your computer--they wanted every audio and video input to scan for watermarks. The standards would also require all multimedia hardware (sound cards, video cards, CD/DVD drives) to encrypt everything, so no one could tap into the lines to "steal" any content. They also asked for such features as the ability to erase "pirated"[1] files remotely.

Check out the SSSCA and CBDTPA. Note the euphemism "security" for DRM.

Palladium was Microsoft's answer to this. They tried to sell it as protection against viruses and such. Look in the section titled "How does Palladium work?"

The PC-specific secret coding within "Palladium" that makes stolen files useless on other machines is physically and cryptographically locked within the hardware of the machine.

Palladium was renamed Next Generation Secure Computing Base. It was supposed to go into Longhorn (renamed Vista), but apparently they never got it working properly. Some say this is why Vista is so screwed up.

In fact, I would say the whole reason MS went into the game console business was to test out their DRM ideas so they can incorporate it into mainstream Windows. Game console companies lock down their computers[2] hardcore. It is difficult to run any "unauthorized" programs on their systems, and you risk being arrested for being a "pirate" if you do.

[1] "Pirated" files, meaning any file they don't like.

[2] A game console is just a computer with more emphasis on graphics acceleration and locked down so their manufacturer can charge "royalties" for the privilege of writing programs for their console. Look at the parts in a game console--CPU, GPU, and such. There is no reason you couldn't run a word processor or other programs on it if you were given approval. In fact even the Nintendo DS has a version of the Opera web browser for it.

With authors, scholars, the DoJ and publishers ripping apart the Google book deal[...]

Add to that list privacy advocates.

What's the business model?

http://epic.org/privacy/dnssec/
outlook is not good:

The pilot in Sweden has shown that top-level registrars are not willing to pay 50 euros a year for DNSSEC. The implementation of DNSSEC has proven to be pricely and it is difficult to develop an viable business model and pricing strategy. Sweden proposed a skimming strategy: setting the price high and lowering it to increase demand.

http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsid=116607

A lack of customer demand for DNSSEC and the cost of deployment are two of the main reasons for operators either hesitating or choosing not to implement the technology in the near future, according to ENISA.

The biggest change from Vista, is that Microsoft has stripped most of the bloated DRM and security features from the installation version.

Anyone remember Palladium ?

Well, it never actually went anywhere, Microsoft just changed the name to "Secure Computing Base", this was the cause for most of the slowdown in Vista. Like checking the integrity of the running display drivers 100 times per second while watching a DVD.

So, of course Windows 7 will be faster that Vista, out-of-the-box, but just try to install a flat-scren monitor with HDMI connector, a printer, scanner, a BluRay drive and watch a BluRay movie and, ** blam !!**, you will get a good bit of the crap back on your desktop,

Yes, and rightfully so. A little Googling:

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/Press/faqs.aspx?id=14038&

Generally, the material published must be private information that "is not of legitimate concern to the public." Its disclosure must also be "highly offensive to a reasonable person." ... The pressing question in public disclosure of private-facts cases is whether the information is newsworthy or of legitimate concern to the public. ... "The right to privacy does not prohibit any publication of matter which is of public or general interest."

http://epic.org/privacy/boyer/

Intrusion Upon Seclusion. Intrusion upon seclusion occurs where there is an invasion, through conduct offensive to an ordinary person, of an individual's information in which she has a "reasonable expectation of privacy." Amy Boyer's estate argues that she had a reasonable expectation of privacy in her address and social security number, and that Docusearch's action in indiscriminately releasing this information was reasonably offensive.

So basically private information of yours that nobody has any right to should never be published openly unless you can show a public interest angle. That's totally reasonable in my book.

How they implement the verification system is their problem. Some never check at all, many others just check the hash value (the national ID number has its last digit generated from a simple hash function)...

Is it just me, or does this "national ID number" sounds just like a social security number?

It's just you... SSNs don't have a check digit.

Yes, yes, I know, that's not what you meant... but actually, they're not very similar at all. The US Government does NOT want everyone in creation using your SSN as an ID number. They'd rather you didn't use it to log onto every website or to look up your driver license. According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center:

The Social Security Administration recommends that you should ask the following questions before releasing the SSN:
- Why your number is needed;
- How your number will be used;
- What happens if you refuse; and
- What law requires you to give your number.

For my part, I always put "decline to state" or DTS in the SSN field unless I see a clear need for the number, such as when filling out paperwork for a new job. My doctor's office does NOT need my SSN, and doesn't have it, for example.

The question is "do you have a right to anonymity when making political editorials?" That's a different question than "do you have the right to make anonymous political editorials?" The answer to the latter question is "of course". The answer to the former question is "of course not".

Horseshit. The Bill of Rights exists because of anonymous free speech. Also, the Supreme Court has a long history of protecting anonymous free speech. You are entirely wrong in every point you make.

The right to anonymous speech is enshrined in the highest law of the land. Whether or not the statements are hurtful is irrelevant. Your political example is particularly clueless.

Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical, minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society.

The parent poster is correct in framing this as a possible abuse of power. It is probably not illegal to reveal someone's identity. It can be illegal to use political power to discover someone's identity.

Your homework assignment (i.e. if you want to debate this without looking like a total idiot) is to prepare an argument against internet anonymity with reference to libel and slander. The links I provided should give you plenty of ammunition. Also, if you dig back through slashdot, there was a recent case in the maryland supreme court (IIRC) involving a fast food franchise trying to subpoena the identities of some critics on the internet, which may or may not have been covered in one of my links. Do note that such an argument is not relevant to the facts of TFA.

The court case resulting from the 2007 FCC regs requiring consumers to be able to opt to not have their information shared was finally decided on 2/19. That's what caused this notice to be sent. For more information check out this link to the EPIC website: http://epic.org/privacy/cpni/. It includes links to opt out for both Verizon and SBC.

That Verizon perhaps has already been doing this information sharing. They just want to stop getting penalized for various marketing activities they undertake.

And court rulings that affirm the new regulations requiring opt-in consent.

So the new regulations are finally making them take notice and be more forthcoming about when they share proprietary information??

Verizon might be on the hot seat right now, but, I won't be surprised if notices like Verizon's or similar agreements start being seen from other carriers.

The U.S. you refer to has ceased to exist: http://epic.org/privacy/hiibel/. The officer still has to have "suspicion" but who isn't suspicious to a cop?

>In any other case, the judge will surveillance must be shut down and the records sealed immediately. This law has been so effective that out of the >hundreds of FISA taps exactly ZERO have been denied.

Not to nitpick, but some FISA taps have in fact been denied (granted, not many):

http://epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/fisa_stats.html

To add a thought, just because the ratio is historically so low doesn't necessarily justify as a fact that the whole game isn't rigged in the first place.

Read the Patriot Act and the FISA bill for your self and see:

Patriot Act:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act
http://epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html
http://www.rense.com/general34/takeover.htm

FISA bill:
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FISA_Amendments_Act_of_2008
http://www.politico.com/static/PPM104_080619_fisapromise.htm

I am willing to bet it doesn't stop Adobe Flash to store "cookies" on your PC. It's pretty useless for average Joes to hide their tracks surfing pr0n since they don't know how to disable flash cookies. Worse, they aren't even aware of the existence of these cookies.