Energy and Commerce Privacy Hearing, November 19
The Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection and the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet will hold a joint hearing on “Exploring the Offline and Online Collection and Use of Consumer Information” on Thursday, November 19, 2009, at Noon in 2123 Rayburn House Office Building. Invited witnesses include: George V. Pappachen, Chief Privacy […]
GW Law Partnership
The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) and The George Washington University Law School have partnered to advance programs focused on the future of privacy law and policy. By bringing together some of the best-thinking people from academia, the private sector and government, we hope to ensure critical examination of the social, legal and policy implications […]
Major utitility launches Microsoft home energy manager – opt-in.
“It’s interesting that customers have to opt-in to Hohm, via Microsoft’s web site, rather than being automatically enrolled. It shows that the utility is probably looking to give its customers a choice.” So says expert commentator Katie Fehrenbacher at earth2tech. We love Katie’s reporting and have learned a great deal about the grid industry from […]
A bit more nuance on "opting in" for cookies in Europe
We have received a dozen calls about the new “consent for cookies” language in the amended EU ePrivacy Directive. Most press coverage has focused on a US centric perspective – the law was “opt-out” and now the standard will be “opt-in”! Well, data protection law and policy in Europe is more complicated than opt-in or […]
FPF Advisory Board Member Lorrie Cranor Submits CUPS Reports to FTC
FPF Advisory Board member Lorrie Cranor, Director of CUPS (CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Lab) at Carnegie Mellon University informs us that the Lab has issued two new technical reports and submitted them as public comments to the FTC’s exploring privacy roundtable series. Here are the abstracts, but the full studies are definitely worth reading! […]
Advertising Privacy
Almost every time we go online, using our computers or mobile devices, each of us produces data in some form. This data may contain only oblique information about who we are and what we are doing, but when enough of it is aggregated, facts about us which we believed were private has the potential to […]
Congratulations to Annie Anton
Congratulations to our friend and advisory board member Profesoor Annie Anton on being named an ACM Distinguished Scientist. http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/distinguished-09/
Smart meters touted for ability to help conserve, but critics are skeptical
Smart meters touted for ability to help conserve, but critics are skeptical Argus Leader Thom Gabrukiewicz November 10, 2009 Empowering electric customers to save money through conservation is the government’s great hope for smart metering, but not everyone buys into the technology. Some have concerns about just who would benefit financially, consumer or utilities. Others […]
IAPP Practical Privacy Series
Jules and Chris will be attending and speaking at the IAPP Practical Privacy Series on December 8 and 9 in Washington, DC. On Tuesday, December 8 IAPP will host a conference devoted exclusively to the Federal Trade Commission and privacy protection. On Wednesday, December 9 IAPP will host a workshop for government privacy professionals, with […]
The 2009 Conference on Cross Border Data Flows, Data Protection and Privacy
Jules will moderate a discussion on November 18th called the “Privacy and Social Networking Services” Panel, from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m., at the 2009 Conference on Cross Border Data Flows & Privacy, hosted by the Department of Commerce in conjunction with the European Commission. Click here for more information on the conference or visit the […]