The Heartland Institute

Privacy is one of our most cherished values, especially in this increasingly connected world. There is no question that we all want to be able to protect ourselves from harms or intrusions into our lives by the government or marketers. Some argue for new, invasive laws and government mandates to protect our privacy. But why ...

After deciding to scrap a program requiring elementary school students to wear heart-rate activity monitors due to a national outcry over privacy concerns, the Parkway School District in St. Louis County, Missouri has changed its mind again and will move ahead with plans to expand beyond the pilot phase conducted this spring ...

On January 31, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony for and against changing the Video Privacy Protection Act, a law written to keep video-store rental lists secret. Netflix was among the proponents of changing the law, which currently prohibits the video rental company from sharing subscribers’ streaming content on ...

A Saginaw, Michigan business owner says requiring customers to swipe their drivers’ license when topping off their tanks could stop drive-offs—clients leaving gas stations without paying. Privacy advocates, however, say the new “Post-Pay” method subjects innocent customers to potential identity theft. Bob Hohn, president of Paxson ...

The Department of Homeland Security granted written permission to its National Operations Center Media Monitoring Initiative to collect and retain data gathered from news anchors, journalists, reporters, or any person using “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.” As ...

The Seattle Police Department has an image problem: it doesn’t want you to see dash-cam videos of its officers behaving badly. The SPD is so adamant about preventing the public from seeing videos of on-duty SPD officers, the City of Seattle sued civil-rights attorney James Egan for requesting disclosure of dash-cam footage ...

The athletic chair of Bay Shore, a Long Island, New York school system, has raised privacy concerns by ordering electronic monitors to track students’ physical activities both on- and off-campus. The New York Post reported January 15 that Ted Nagengast, the Bay Shore athletics chair, claimed the monitors are “a great reinforcement ...

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently proposed a 'Do Not Track' mechanism in response to the fervent call for protecting consumer’s privacy online. We argue that restricting information collection is a misplaced focus in addressing Internet privacy, and develop a mechanism that helps alleviate consumer’s privacy concerns ...

The Sheriff’s Office of Montgomery County, Texas has received an Unmanned Aerial System to assist deputies in fighting crime. The ShadowHawk helicopter operates using a laptop computer and can be deployed from a police SUV. Civil libertarians are expressing privacy concerns over planned use of the so-called drones for civilian ...

Nine public interest groups have petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to rule San Francisco transit authorities broke federal law in August of this year when they shut down wireless service in some of the city’s public transportation systems. As reported in the October issue of Infotech & Telecom News, San Francisco ...

An employee is driving an employer’s fleet vehicle and glances away from the road to text a message. A crash occurs, a victim’s family sues, and said employer pays millions of dollars in damages. A preventable loss? Definitely, says Matt Howard, cofounder and chief executive officer of ZoomSafer.com, which in 2010 developed ...

Government transparency is a widely agreed upon goal, but progress on achieving it has been very limited. Transparency promises from political leaders such as President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner have not produced a burst of information that informs stronger public oversight of government. One reason for this ...

The past decade has seen a proliferation of online data collection, processing, analysis and storage capacities leading businesses to employ increasingly sophisticated technologies to track and profile individual users. The use of online behavioral tracking for advertising purposes has drawn criticism from journalists, privacy advocates ...

Five U.S. Internet service providers, partnering with Hollywood movie studios and record labels, will begin issuing online warnings to consumers sending or receiving pirated material. Continued copyright abuse will result in punishments such as slower Internet speeds. AT& T, Cablevision Systems Corp., Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable ...

In 1994, the Global Positioning System became fully operational. Seventeen years later, concerns are arising about the government-maintained satellite tracking system being used by law enforcement to violate civil rights. There have been several cases within the last two years in which law enforcement agents have put GPS devices ...

Downtown Detroit will soon be under the gaze of 350 surveillance cameras monitored by police, raising privacy concerns among civil libertarians, according to the Detroit Ne ws. The initiative will link new city-installed cameras and existing security cameras belonging to downtown businesses to a central hub operated by the Detroit ...

Truth can be painful. In a relative sense today, most of what you, I, and pretty much everyone else writes, says, and thinks about the Internet is, frankly, pretty much crap. Please don t misunderstand! I m not saying that we're all wrong, or that the topics under consideration aren t interesting or even important in an absolute ...

U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) are attempting to stem the online sale of illegal drugs by encouraging the Justice Department and Drug Enforcement Agency to investigate Bitcoin and Silk Road. The untraceable peer-to-peer Internet currency instrument Bitcoin is used on many sites, but is also used to ...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation s latest draft edition of its Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide is raising online privacy concerns among civil liberties groups. The New York Times reported in June the FBI has drafted revisions to its guide last updated in 2008 that expand the authority of the bureau s agents to ...

Review of The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You , by Eli Pariser, Penguin USA, 304 pages, 2011 $25.95 The Filter Bubble is a salvo fired over the epistemological challenges wrought by Internet filters. Overwrought is more like it. Upon reading The Filter Bubble , I was reminded of the equally overwrought Zager ...