Information Policy

Facebook Tweaks Privacy Policy (Again) To Allow ‘Place’ Sharing

Facebook is paving the way for its forthcoming location-sharing feature with yet another update to its privacy policy. In a blog post, Facebook says—opaquely—it has “added the concept of a ‘place’ that could refer to a Page, such as one for a local restaurant” to the document. The new privacy policy refers to individuals providing information about “places” and also notes the possibility of friends tagging individuals in a “place”—but doesn’t offer any other clues.

Last time Facebook updated its privacy policy— in October—the company added language that would have let users include location info in their status updates. Facebook now says “we’ve got some new ideas that we think are even more exciting,” although it doesn’t describe them. A location-sharing feature of some sort, which will allow the social network to battle upstarts Gowalla and Foursquare, is widely expected to launch in late April

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-facebook-tweaks-privacy-policy-again-to-allow-location-sharing-feature/%20%28/

Rwanda's laptop revolution

Rwanda has a plan to prevent any return to the genocide of 1994: connect 100,000 children to the outside world with their own laptops

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/28/rwanda-laptop-revolution

ECJ: The Data Protection Authorities need to be completely independent

A European Court of Justice (ECJ) decision made public on 9 March 2010 in the case of the European Commission vs. Germany rules that the Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) established in accordance with the Data Protection Directive 95/46 needs to be completely independent.

In this case the German regional DPAs were considered as not independent, since they are part of the regional administration and subject to State scrutiny.

The ECJ decision explained that "the supervisory authorities provided for in Article 28 of Directive 95/46 are therefore the guardians of those fundamental rights and freedoms, and their existence in the Member States is considered, as is stated in the 62nd recital in the preamble to Directive 95/46, as an essential component of the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data."

On the scope of the requirements of independence of the supervisory authorities the court concluded that these authorities "must enjoy an independence allowing them to perform their duties free from external influence. That independence precludes not only any influence exercised by the supervised bodies, but also any directions or any other external influence, whether direct or indirect, which could call into question the performance by those authorities of their task consisting of establishing a fair balance between the protection of the right to private life and the free movement of personal data."

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) who supported the European Commission's case in front of the ECJ was pleased with the judgement.

"The judgement of the Court is of great importance. It strengthens and clarifies the position of data protection authorities as part of the fundamental right to data protection. This judgement is relevant for all supervisory authorities in all EU Member States" said the EDPS.

The European Commission started in 2005 an infringement procedure against Germany and Austria for not having created an adequate independence of the Data Protection Authorities.

http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.5/ecj-dpa-completly-independent

e-Government Primer

What is the latest knowledge on how e-government can be implemented effectively in developing countries? What factors must be taken into account? This e-Government Primer was created in response to requests from donors and clients seeking a guide to the introduction of e-Government in countries at the national and subnational levels. It presents an up-to-date range of insights and experiences on applying ICT in the complex environment of government.

http://www.infodev.org/en/Publication.823.html

Lithuanian court rules in favour of BitTorrent user

A Lithuanian District Court has recently ruled against the anti-piracy organisation LANVA in a case against a user of the BitTorrent tracker LinkoManija.net.

Last year, LANVA accused 106 users of LinkoManija.net of sharing Windows 7 Ultimate and brought one of them to court, which has now decided in favour of the defendant due to faulty evidence. The evidence gathered by LANVA consisted of a screenshot of a list of peers as available on uTorrent and the court considered uTorrent was not a certified evidence gathering tool.

As none of parties involved was authorised for such an investigation and therefore the judge stated that LANVA had no right to collect and use the gathered information. The court also ruled that the techniques for such kind of evidence had to be approved prior to the use.

Aside from this case, LANVA together with Microsoft sued the alleged operator of LinkoManija.net in January 2010 demanding about 32 million euro from the defendant Kestas Ermanas and his company for facilitating the illegal distribution of Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007.

The case is ongoing and the assets of Kestas Ermanas and his company had been seized and the associated bank accounts frozen, but the website is functional. It appears however that the defendant had operated the site only until the end of 2009. Kestas also stated that Microsoft had never sent them a proper takedown request. "We informed them that we wanted to cooperate with them, they just had to give us the links to the infringing torrent files," said Kestas who added that "they never wrote back to us."

Following the recent outcome of LANVA case, it is doubtful whether the second case would be successful either. LANVA can appeal the decision but even if they do it, the case will be heard in about a year's time.

http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.6/lithuania-p2p-user-aquited