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Comcast: FCC rules shouldn't determine whether customers make "good choices."

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Am Montag ist der neue transatlantische Datenschutzschild in Kraft getreten, Microsoft gehört zu den ersten Unterzeichnern. Die Kommission will es Bürgern möglichst einfach machen, den beteiligten Firmen auf die Finger zu schauen.

U.S. companies needing to transfer personal data of European customers across the Atlantic can now sign up to a new framework to govern such data transfers, with the so-called EU-US Privacy Shield up and running from today. Read More

There are scores of startups making fertility tracker and family planning apps today, but a Consumer Reports investigation has singled out Glow Inc. for serious security and privacy flaws. First, Consumer Reports’ team was able to access very personal information including data and comments about users’ sex lives, history of miscarriages, abortions and more, through a privacy… Read More

The FBI's surreptitious recording devices -- scattered around three California courthouses -- raised a few eyebrows when the recordings were submitted as evidence. The defense lawyers wondered whether the devices violated the conversants' expectation of privacy, admittedly a high bar to reach considering their location near the courthouse steps -- by every definition a public area.The defense team cited a Supreme Court decision involving phone booths, hoping to equate their clients' "hushed tones" with closing a phone booth door. Small steps like these -- used by everyone -- are attempts to create privacy in public areas, but courts are very hesitant to join defendants in erecting privacy expectations in public places.A judge presiding over one the cases (involving alleged bid rigging for auctioned property) thought there might be something a bit off about the location of the FBI's devices.

The EU's "Cookie Law" is a complete joke and waste of time. An attempt to regulate privacy in the EU, all it's really served to do is annoy millions of internet users with little pop up notices about cookie practices that everyone just clicks through to get to the content they want to read. The EU at least recognizes some of the problems with the law and is working on a rewrite... and apparently there's an interesting element that may be included in it: banning encryption backdoors. That's via a new report from European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) Giovanni Buttarelli, who was put in charge of reviewing the EU's ePrivacy Directive to make it comply with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that is set to go into effect in May of 2018. The key bit:

Das umstrittene Datenschutzabkommen zwischen der EU und den USA hat nun auch den Segen der "Artikel 29"-Gruppe der nationalen Datenschützer. Die wollen aber in einem Jahr nochmal genau hinsehen.

But privacy watchdogs warn they'll be gunning for it come 2017 Europe's data protection authorities will hold fire for one year on the new Privacy Shield agreement, withholding any potential legal challenges until mid-2017.…

If you're a long-standing reader of Techdirt, you know we've well documented the shitshow that is the "internet of things." It's a sector where countless companies were so excited to develop, market and sell new "smart" appliances, they couldn't be bothered to embrace even the most rudimentary security and privacy standards once these devices were brought online. The result is an endless stream of stories about refrigerators, TVs, thermostats or other "smart" devices that are busy hemorrhaging personal data, inadvertently advertising that sometimes the smart option -- is actually the dumb one.

European Data Protection Supervisor gives crypto-hawks a thumb in the eye Europe's privacy body has reiterated its pro-privacy, anti-backdoor stance.…

You could not ask for a clearer, easier-to-read, more informative guide to facial recognition and machine learning thank Adam Geitgey's article, which is the latest in a series of equally clear explainers on machine learning, aimed at non-technical people -- and if you are a programmer, he's got links to Python sample source and projects you can use to develop your own versions. (more…)