privacy

The Washington Post's Craig Whitlock reports the White House is preparing a policy to require federal agencies to publicly disclose where they fly drones domestically and what they do with the "torrents of data collected from aerial surveillance": "The presidential executive order would force the Pentagon, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies to reveal more details about the size and surveillance capabilities of their growing drone fleets — information that until now has been largely kept under wraps." Whitlock notes that little is known about the scope of domestic drone use by the federal government.

The Federal Aviation Administration has opened an investigation into a TV station's use of a drone to investigate a car crash, the Associated Press reports. "The case of the Hartford crash, in which the victim's body was left hanging out of a mangled car, highlights some of the safety, privacy and ethical issues that journalists will wrestle with as interest grows in using drones for newsgathering," the AP notes.

For now, the FAA has not authorized the use of drones for commercial purposes, including journalism, the AP further notes. The FAA isn't expected to propose regulations on the commercial use of drones weighing less than 55 pounds until November.

The digital divide isn't just about access to the Internet.

The Guardian reports that most Internet traffic on the cloud comes from the developed world: "an estimated 60% of such cloud traffic came from Europe and North America, followed by the Asia-Pacific region (33%). Latin America, the Middle East and Africa together accounted for only 5%." Similarly, the rule of law to protect privacy is more advanced in the developed world than in the developing world (albeit with the caveat that the National Security Agency is engaged in massive surveillance that undermines that rule of law): as of this year, 101 countries had data privacy laws or bills in place, but only 40 developing economies have such laws or bills, according to The Guardian.

The Guardian also reports: "The Information Economy Report 2013, released on Tuesday by Unctad, the UN trade and development body, warns that the global shift towards cloud computing, which allows users to store and access data remotely, brings a range of legal as well as technological and infrastructure challenges for poor countries."

A Connecticut panel, appointed to review the state's public records laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shootings, heard testimony related to its charge to "recommend to lawmakers how to alter the delicate balance of victims' right to privacy and the public's right to know about crimes and the operations of agencies like police departments," The Connecticut Post reports.  One father whose son was murdered asked: '"What right do have to see my son's body or hear his last moments, just because such information is in a government file cabinet?"' The Post reported. But proponents of disclosure testified it would keep law enforcement accountable for their response in emergency situations.

Wired looks at how the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Smith v. Maryland has been used to justify the massive level of surveillance conducted of Americans. That 1979 decision started with a purse-snatcher whose obsession with the victim of his crime led police to use a pen register to track all of his phone calls, including the multitude of times he rang her. "Nobody is more surprised by the long-term ramifications of the case than the prosecutor who won it," Wired reports. "'It was a routine robbery case. The circumstances are radically different today. There wasn’t anything remotely [like] a massive surveillance of citizens’ phone calls or communications,' [Stephen] Sachs says. 'To extend it to what we now know as massive surveillance, in my personal view, is a bridge too far. It certainly wasn’t contemplated by those involved in Smith.”'