Interesting article on how to protect your privacy during or after the Windows 10 upgrade

Broken Windows Theory: Microsoft’s Windows 10 is a privacy nightmare. Here’s how to protect yourself.

Windows 10 is the operating system Microsoft needs. In other words, it’s not Windows 8, a Frankenstein’s monster of a tablet-plus-desktop OS that alienated everyone from PC manufacturers to corporate users. Instead, Windows 10 is an incremental improvement on Windows 7, one that is faster, slicker, and has some new bells and whistles, like virtual desktops and functional tablet support. One of Windows 10’s leaps, unfortunately, is straight into your personal data.

Who controls the information about your genes?

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the Sequel by Rebecca Skloot

Last week, scientists sequenced the genome of cells taken without consent from a woman named Henrietta Lacks. She was a black tobacco farmer and mother of five, and though she died in 1951, her cells, code-named HeLa, live on. They were used to help develop our most important vaccines and cancer medications, in vitro fertilization, gene mapping, cloning. Now they may finally help create laws to protect her family’s privacy — and yours.

The family has been through a lot with HeLa: they didn’t learn of the cells until 20 years after Lacks’s death, when scientists began using her children in research without their knowledge. Later their medical records were released to the press and published without consent. Because I wrote a book about Henrietta Lacks and her family, my in-box exploded when news of the genome broke. People wanted to know: did scientists get the family’s permission to publish her genetic information? The answer is no.

Skloot's book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, details the various ways science, in its press to go forward, did so with certain degree of ignorance and disregard for the people who were genetically connected to the most successful cell line in history. The HeLa line saved millions (among so many other things, it was used to develop the polio vaccine), but science never seems to be able to get it right when dealing with the family Henrietta Lacks left behind. Now they've stumbled yet again. At least the team did apologise when they heard of the family's reaction, and took down the data they'd made public, but of course that's like shutting the barn door after the horses have escaped, as it was downloaded and most likely deseminated.

In the United States there are laws that protect seemingly every bit of medical privacy, laws that weren't extant when Lacks lived and died. But laws related to research are still a bit murky. Can someone take tissue or samples from you, remove direct connexion to your name and then publish your genome or use your cells in research without your consent, patenting the result, reaping billions? Science is moving fast, and our legal and ethics system isn't necessarily moving fast enough. Even with consent, most people don't realise what they're signing; they don't understand the legalese or the medicalese, not because of stupidity, but because it's complex and they're untrained in it. So ethics would suggest that we protect those who don't have the knowledge to truly make informed consent by at the very least requiring it be said in simple terms, and, respecting the wishes of those who would rather not participate. Personally I think it's rather wrong to profit from a person's material without compensation or knowledge, unless expressly donated. I recognise the cells are doing nothing sitting in a tube without the scientific manipulation and development, but at the same time, the person or heirs should at least share in the ownership of the cells, which came from his or her body. Would that cripple scientific research? Probably not.

One of the downsides of e-readers

Why Your Kindle is an Open Book to the Government

In 1987, the Federal Bureau of Investigation approached Columbia University librarian Paula Kaufman with a request: keep an eye out for commies.

She refused to cooperate with the bureau's "library awareness" program and her defiance helped spark a nationwide backlash against government snooping into Americans' reading habits. Even knowing the government might be watching, people realized, could change what you choose to read—and in turn alter what you think. As a result of similar incidents that occurred over the years, 48 states now have laws on the books protecting library records, and the other two have legal directives in place that uphold similar standards. (The protections vary from state to state.)

Today Americans read books on Kindles, Nooks, and iPads. But it's a lot easier for the government to see what you're looking at on your e-reader than to find out what you're checking out from the library. The authorities don't necessarily need a warrant to ask private companies that sell or lend e-books, such as Google and Amazon, to hand over private information about reader habits, from the books we buy to the digital notes we make in the margins.

Of concern

Heart Gadgets Test Privacy-Law Limits

The small box inside Amanda Hubbard's chest beams all kinds of data about her faulty heart to the company that makes her defibrillator implant.

Ms. Hubbard herself, however, can't easily get that information unless she requests summaries from her doctor—whom she rarely sees since losing her insurance. In short, the data gathered by the Medtronic Inc. implant isn't readily accessible to the person whose heartbeat it tracks.

"This is my health information," said Ms. Hubbard, 36 years old. "They are collecting it from my chest."

The U.S. has strict privacy laws guaranteeing people access to traditional health files. But implants and other new technologies—including smartphone apps and over-the-counter monitors—are testing the very definition of medical records.

The article also discusses issues with health-data-collecting applications for smartphones.

Some statistics on how personal info is shared

that could lead to things like identity theft, hacking, etc.:

Infographic: Are You Revealing Too Much on Social Networks?

You would think anyone who watched Law & Order would know, but....

It’s Tracking Your Every Move and You May Not Even Know

A favorite pastime of Internet users is to share their location: services like Google Latitude can inform friends when you are nearby; another, Foursquare, has turned reporting these updates into a game.

But as a German Green party politician, Malte Spitz, recently learned, we are already continually being tracked whether we volunteer to be or not. Cellphone companies do not typically divulge how much information they collect, so Mr. Spitz went to court to find out exactly what his cellphone company, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his whereabouts.

The results were astounding. In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times. It traced him from a train on the way to Erlangen at the start through to that last night, when he was home in Berlin.

Cell phone records are frequently used by police to track people accused of crimes, as records show not only what calls are made but from near which tower.

I personally don't see the appeal of Foursquare or other applications that are location-based. I don't include location information when I use Twitter, for example. I try to be somewhat careful, despite having a fairly robust presence on the web, of telling people exactly where I live, although a quick search brings it up fairly quickly, despite a lot of old addresses being there as well, and one would just have to correlate my bus riding posts with the addresses to figure out which one is current. But even it doesn't list my apartment number. But of course all a stalker would need to do is find me at work and follow me home. I know this. But I'm not going to hand over my exact location at any given moment for a coupon or two, either. I guess I embrace technology up to a point. We can't control all the information about us, but there's some we can control, and I'm all for trying to find a balance between privacy and living in the 21st century.

Do you Google yourself regularly?

Okay, it sounds vaguely obscene, but many of us do it, and for good reason, because potential employers, mates, and a variety of other people do it, too. Besides, you should always be aware of how you present yourself and know what people are saying about you. Which brings us to this:

More of us are checking our online ‘reputations': Pew study finds that younger Net users are more diligent about doing so

Contrary to assumptions that young people don't care about privacy, they're actually much more savvy about it than their elders. I always like the Pew studies--they're interesting and provide a glimpse into how the Internet is really experienced.

That's a little disturbing

Britain is considering legislation to create a centralised database which will store details of all phone calls made, websites visited, and e-mails sent by UK citizens, ostensibly to fight crime and terrorism. Supposedly the content itself will not be stored. Still, opponents have labelled it as 'Orwellian' and a breach of the principles of a free society. I would like to think that the US, with its emphasis on civil liberties, would encounter great opposition in passing such legislation and could not get it through Congress, but then I had a lot more faith in the American government before the Bush Administration got a hold of things. Here's to the opponents in Britain prevailing.

Phone calls database considered
Warning over phone calls database
'No decision' on giant database
Giant database plan 'Orwellian'

A victory for privacy advocates

Lawyers in YouTube lawsuit reach privacy deal

It seems to me that the plaintiffs in this case would get more out of records of people who posted videos, rather than those who watched them, but the deal makes sure that the latter information is presented without usernames or other identifiable information attached.

Interesting

YouTube Feature Tells Video Creators When and Where a Clip Is Being Watched

Don't worry--it won't tell them where you live, beyond which state you're watching from (or in the case of international users, which country). There are also plans to tell creators which site the video was reached from, to debut in a couple of weeks.

I'm sure both privacy advocates and marketing people are going to be all over this.