There have been several streams of news lately touching on surveillance, and I thought I would jot down a few notes of the ones that appear to be currently most visible.
The disclosure two weeks ago by CNET that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller had privately urged telecommunications officials to record [...]

The CBC is reporting that the B.C. Information and Privacy Commissioner is invetigating a complaint over the fingerprinting of those taking the Law School Admission Test. Gist:

B.C. Information and Privacy Commissioner David Loukidelis has agreed to investigate a complaint about the fingerprinting of aspiring lawyers.
A thumbprint is required to take the Law School Admission [...]

Just weeks after the U.S. Justice Department’s attempt to access search histories from Google and other search firms, Google has released a new version of Google Desktop Search that optionally allows users to store the search index online, the better to permit GDS to search across multiple installations of the user and to permit the [...]

Security Focus features some very harsh criticism by Mark Rasch, a former head of the Justice Department’s computer crime unit, of the U.S. Government’s Google subpoena. Gist:
The Google subpoena fight isn’t really about the anonymous data at issue here today. It is really about the way the government can “deputize” unwilling private companies who [...]

The NYT runs a story today on deepening concerns over the scale of recently disclosed large scale electronic surveillance operations run by the NSA. Gist:

The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that [...]

Dave Pollard writes about phishing, and how to protect yourself.

Bruce Schneier reports on the adoption by South Korea of a measure he’s advocated for quite some time:

The South Korean government is introducing legislation that will make it mandatory for financial institutions to compensate customers who have fallen victim to online fraud and identity theft.
The new laws will require financial firms in the country to [...]

The European Parliament votes Wednesday on the proposed new data retention law. From the NYT:
The European Parliament is expected to approve legislation Wednesday that would require telecommunications companies to keep details on their clients’ phone calls, faxes and e-mail messages for six months to two years to help combat terrorism.
The legislation, written in [...]

I was recently interviewed by the Washington Internet Daily about the creation of Online Rights Canada. The article appears today but is subscription only - here’s what I was quoted as saying:
Unlike the U.S., Canada has few public-interest organizations on telecom, IP, Internet, privacy and related matters, Hyndman told Washington Internet Daily. Lobbying by [...]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic have teamed up to create Online Rights Canada:
Online Rights Canada (ORC) is a grassroots organization that promotes the public’s interest in technology and information policy. We believe that Canadians should have a voice in copyright law, access to information, freedom from censorship, [...]