The measure, H.B. 2288, says “Internet destination history information” and “subscriber’s information” such as name and address must be saved for two years.

Democrat Jill Tokuda, the Hawaii Senate’s majority whip, who introduced a companion bill, S.B. 2530, in the Senate, told CNET that her legislation was intended to address concerns raised by Rep. Kymberly Pine, the first Republican elected to her Oahu district since statehood and the House minority floor leader.

“I was asked to introduce the Senate companions on these Internet security related bills by Representative Kymberly Marcos Pine after her own personal experience in this area,” Tokuda said. “I would defer to her on the origins of these bills as she has done the research and outreach, and been the main champion of this effort.”

Pine, who did not immediately respond to queries, has been targeted by a disgruntled Web designer, Eric Ryan, who launched KymPineIsACrook.com and claims she owes him money, according to an article last summer in the Hawaii Reporter. Her e-mail account was also reportedly hacked around the same time. The article said Pine would advocate for “tougher cyber laws at the Hawaii State Capitol” as a result.

“We must do everything we can to protect the people of Hawaii from these attacks and give prosecutors the tools to ensure justice is served for victims,” Pine said at the time.

The problem here is that this a personal, knee-jerk response to a specific situation that can be taken care of already with the appropriate laws already on the books. What Kym Pine doesn’t realize is that this bill will have unintended consequences for her. If this bill were to become a law, she would be subjected to it as well. You can guarantee that people will start requesting information about her. It will not make her life any easier and people like Eric Ryan will use it to harass her further.

This bill has no privacy protections, no encryption protocols, and doesn’t limit anyone from selling the data collected. It does, however, remove the restriction of law that the police must obtain a court order before obtaining the information. Law enforcement merely needs to request the data.

Politicians need to start learning the law that is already out there and using it to prosecute people if they think the law is being broken. These types of laws do nothing other than erode the privacy that Americans already have and take for granted. Stomping on the fourth and fourteenth amendments should not be an option.

EDIT: Due to pressure, the Hawaiian legislature has decided to table the bill.

Blackburn, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the Fifth Amendment posed no barrier to his decryption order. The Fifth Amendment says that nobody may be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” which has become known as the right to avoid self-incrimination.

“I find and conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer,” Blackburn wrote in a 10-page opinion today. He said the All Writs Act, which dates back to 1789 and has been used to require telephone companies to aid in surveillance, could be invoked in forcing decryption of hard drives as well.

Although the defendant in the case intends to appeal, there are conflicting decisions already on the books.

In March 2010, a federal judge in Michigan ruled that Thomas Kirschner, facing charges of receiving child pornography, would not have to give up his password. That’s “protecting his invocation of his Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination,” the court ruled (PDF).

A year earlier, a Vermont federal judge concluded that Sebastien Boucher, who a border guard claims had child porn on his Alienware laptop, did not have a Fifth Amendment right to keep the files encrypted. Boucher eventually complied and was convicted.

The debate as to whether or not decrypting a computer by a defendant is a violation of the fifth amendment will continue as more cases like these come to trial. On the one side the argument is that decryption is similar to handing over the keys to a storage or safe deposit box while, on the other, privacy advocates state that giving up any information to decrypt a computer is the equivalent of testifying against oneself.

Also of note is that, in this particular case, the prosecution has to prove that she has the means to decrypt the laptop. If she is unable to do so, there is little else the prosecution can do.

As it stands right now, there is case law for both sides and it does not appear as if the debate is going to be settled any time soon. At some point, this issue will reach the Supreme Court because there are far too many conflicting points on both sides, in numerous cases, for the issue to be clear.

Starting on Black Friday and running through New Year’s Day, two U.S. malls — Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. — will track guests’ movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones.

“We won’t be looking at singular shoppers,” said Stephanie Shriver-Engdahl, vice president of digital strategy for Forest City. “The system monitors patterns of movement. We can see, like migrating birds, where people are going to.”

Still, the company is preemptively notifying customers by hanging small signs around the shopping centers. Consumers can opt out by turning off their phones.

This is a disingenuous response from the company as it is already known that turning off the phone will still leave you subject to being tracked.

The tracking system, called FootPath Technology, works through a series of antennas positioned throughout the shopping center that capture the unique identification number assigned to each phone (similar to a computer’s IP address), and tracks its movement throughout the stores.

The system can’t take photos or collect data on what shoppers have purchased. And it doesn’t collect any personal details associated with the ID, like the user’s name or phone number. That information is fiercely protected by mobile carriers, and often can be legally obtained only through a court order.

“It’s just not invasive of privacy,” she said. “There are no risks to privacy, so I don’t see why anyone would opt out.”

The risks to privacy include the fact that the data collected with the cell phone can be matched to video surveillance cameras in the mall. Your credit card information is also tracked when you make a purchase. Once vendors start to share the information, how anonymous is that data really going to be when joining these databases is such an easy task?

“Most of this information is harmless and nobody ever does anything nefarious with it,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, retail analyst at Forrester Research. “But the reality is, what happens when you start having hackers potentially having access to this information and being able to track your movements?”

This is precisely why this sort of research shouldn’t be conducted. The risks outweigh the data that the company can cull later. Just how easy is it to gather the data? Go to the mall with an android phone and start up DroidSheep. Within minutes, you’ll have a nice collection of facebook logins.

As I have suggested before, take the battery out of your phone before you leave for the mall or leave it at home. It’s the only way to be sure you won’t be tracked.

It may have been a mistake, but there are serious HIPAA violation implications for the law firm.

“In each lighting fixture or each lighting pole, there is processor very much like an iPhone. And it takes inputs and outputs and talks back and forth. And the poles actually talk to each other,” said Ron Harwood.

When you step come into view of the street light, there is a camera that spots you, and the person on the other side sees you by white specs on a black screen. The camera senses that somebody is there, and if wants, it can even take your picture.

The system is also capable of recording conversations making critics cry invasion of privacy.

“This is not a system with spook technology. It’s much more transparent. It can just talk to you and say, don’t fall over Niagara Falls,” said Harwood.

It may be able to just make a stupid joke about Niagara Falls, but the fact that it can spot you, track you, and record your conversations is, indeed, spook technology. It’s worrisome that people are simply accepting a program such as this as the normal course of events. If no one in Farmington Hills fights against it, it will start showing up elsewhere in the United States.

A call to action for librarians about the disturbing side effects to library users of the Amazon Kindle format eBook lending in Overdrive, including the threat to intellectual freedom, lost user privacy, and targeted ads pushed at our library users.

Transcript.

While libraries know who currently has a book checked out, most, if not all, delete the history of the book being checked out. The part of the PATRIOT Act that could force them to keep this information was removed, mainly due to the ALA fighting against it and refusing to cooperate.

Libraries and Amazon.com have two very different missions in life. We’ve seen libraries fight to keep your privacy over and over while Amazon.com monetizes every bit of information about you for their own profit. If you didn’t realize that, you haven’t been paying attention.

If you stay opted in, you’ll eventually start seeing more personalized ads while surfing on your mobile devices, or even when using Verizon FiOS Internet, DSL, or other dial-up services, said Verizon Wireless spokesman Jeffrey Nelson.

The revisions all have to do with a new targeted advertising service that Verizon is offering other companies. The Verizon Online relevant ads program is two-fold. First, it produces business and marketing reports, and second, Verizon aims to sell more targeted ad space.

While you can opt out of their services, for now, there are some other things you can do to protect yourself. You can install VPN services or SSL. If you encrypt everything from end to end, it will be much more difficult to be tracked. If you have an android phone, you could use something like DroidWall to prevent malware, often from your phone company, from getting on your phone.

These companies are not your friend. They are out to make the most amount of money possible for their shareholders. If that means selling your personal information to make a few more dollars, then they will. Although, by law, they have to notify you of it, it is still your responsibility to make sure you are not tracked or used for someone else’s financial gain.

If you have the option to use another cell phone company, you can now cancel your Verizon contract without penalties. They have just made material changes to the contract. You have 60 days to do this, after that, you had better start learning about VPNs, proxies, and SSL.

You can read the rest of my article over at The Daily Censored.

Motorist Jason Senne had filed suit against what he saw as an outrageous violation of privacy after he received a $20 parking ticket in August 2010. The information printed on the citation, and left open to anyone walking past his vehicle, could be used by an identity thief. Senne argued this was a violation of the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act which prohibits disclosure or otherwise making available the information found in motor vehicle records.

“It’s printed by a computer,” Senne’s attorney, Mark Murphy, argued before the court. “They just have software and a printer and this is how they issue their tickets. The secretary of state when a person applies for a driver’s license has an obligation and a duty under the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act to keep that personal information that you tender over to the secretary of state private. They’re not supposed to disclose it. They’re not supposed to give it away…. It’s just being printed on a ticket for no apparent reason.”

Palatine argued that its use of the information falls within a law enforcement exemption and that the printing of the information does not constitute disclosure. The three-judge panel disagreed strongly with the latter claim.

“In the village’s view, a plaintiff must show that personal information was actually handed over to a specific someone, or at least that a specific someone observed the information,” Judge Joel M. Flaum wrote for the majority. “The village’s argument, however, puts shackles on the ordinary meaning of the word disclose… Imagine if a DMV employee placed a stack of driver records on a city sidewalk. Under the village’s reading, only the person whose information was at the top of the stack would have his information disclosed.”

At least one judge saw the danger in issuing parking tickets in this manner.

Judge Kenneth F. Ripple dissented on this point, citing statements from the Congressional Record explaining the intent of the privacy law.

“The exceptions must be interpreted in a manner that is compatible with Congress’s careful attempt to balance individual privacy/security needs and the legitimate operational and administrative needs of the government,” Ripple wrote. “We should not ascribe to Congress the intent to sanction the publication of any and all personal information through the invocation of an exception… We should interpret the statute as permitting the release, through the exceptions, of only the personal information reasonably necessary to effectuate the governmental purpose set forth in the exception.”

Ripple cited the example of actress Rebecca Schaeffer who was murdered by a man who had copied down her license plate number and then looked up her home address in Department of Motor Vehicle records. In this case, Ripple noted a stalker would not even need to go to the DMV since the address is available on the ticket itself.

Judge Ripple clearly makes a case for why this is wrong in the stalking and/or abusive partners example. Placing that much unnecessary information within public view is idiotic and could get someone killed. Another threat is that of identity theft. You won’t know that your identity has even been stolen until it’s too late. You could protect your private information as best as you can, yet it could be employees of the state who put your information in danger and into the hands of identity thieves.

One can only hope that the village will quietly stop printing so much information on their tickets and start using common sense. Until then, motorists will have to be wary about where they park.

Read the case, Senne v. Village of Palatine, here [pdf] .