St. Petersburg Web Design Blog

Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

The FCC has privacy guideines, not laws concerning privacy policies on web sites. Recently they’ve made a few changes to the guideines:

• Extended these privacy guidelines to include ISP’s and mobile phone service providers
• Now urges websites to tell consumers that data is being collected during their searches and to allow them to opt out
• Recommends that mobile companies and Internet service providers also inform customers about data collection and allow users to decline

Pretty lame if you ask me. Especially since there is no reason for companies to comply. Currently internet privacy laws state that yo can basically do whatever you want with data collected from users if you vaguely describe what you are doing with it and how you are protecting the data. The only time you can get in trouble with the law is if you fail to follow your own vague privacy statement, or if you don’t have one and share this data.

At Dream designs we strive to go way beyond these guidelines. One way we do this is by not storing this kind of information. Then it can’t be shared. In some instances we do have to store this information temporarily. For instance if you fill out a contact form, the information you submit is stored until we view it and do something with it, like respond to your question. Then this information is deleted. If you become a client is another example. Obviously we have to store your name and contact info so I can communicate with you about the services you’ve purchased (“Your web site is done early and under budget sir”). Hard to do business without doing this, wouldn’t you say?
That why we have a great privacy policy.
In the future we are going to draft the perfect privacy policy and try ot gain industry wide support for it. It’s a bigger task than you would think. Look for it in the near future.

America has very little privacy laws. Even when it comes to your private health info or private banking info, the law states companies can share it with whomever they like as long as they vaguely describe the manner in which they will give it away or sell it. Evidently these lax privacy laws aren’t enough for the Cable TV industry.

There are some cases where past abuses have been so fraudulent that Congress has acted and specifically denied the sharing of personally identifying information. One such story is with the Cable TV industry. They have specifically forbidden by law from sharing subscribers’ personal information with other parties in limited instances. to be clear, they still share this personally identifying information with lots of companies that they have certain types of relationships with, they just can’t sell it on the open market. They can do even that if they can trick or persuade a citizen into “opting-in” to this sharing. The FCC is to blame for this lame privacy “protection” law.

These freedoms to do almost anything with our personally identifying info like phone numbers, call logs, etc, apparently this isn’t enough for the Cable industry. Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied a petition by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which argued that federal rules on telecom carriers’ use of customer data violated free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution, federal law or both.

Well at least a few judges are trying to stick up for the citizens. Now what can we do about our lawmakers?

link to news story

It seems like the greed in the US banking industry just can’t be slowed.

The AP has just uncovered :

” Banks collecting billions of dollars in federal bailout money sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers to the U.S. for high-paying jobs, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications.

The dozen banks receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for positions that included senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists. The average annual salary for those jobs was $90,721, nearly twice the median income for all American households.”

Maybe we can really count on some “change” here in America, maybe not.

This time the Israeli’s are watching you at the mall, not just sporting events like the Superbowl.

Some of you locals may remember the last time the Superbowl was in Tampa. There was a widely publicized effort to digitally capture every single face that came into the Superbowl.
In the guise of protecting the nation from terrorists Tampa authorities went beyond the law and beyond the constitution. They hired a foreign company to set up camera’s use facial recognition software and run background checks on every single man (or persons?) that entered the super bowl. No approval from the voters and in fact, the program was kept secret until days before the SuperBowl. After it’s release it was touted as the end all to security. Maybe the common man felt safer, but those of us in the know, were worried. Really worried. Well we’re worried again, because they’re at it again.
Continue reading “The Israeli’s are watching you, again.” »

Here’s a message to our President elect. When Britain comes around asking for America’s help in further censorship of the internet. Just say NO.

It seems the UK’s government has taken it upon itself (no, the people don’t want it), to censor the internet, yup, the whole thing.

• They are pushing a plan to set up a government mandated movie style rating for web sites.
• Force ISP’s to display material appropriate for children only after a certain time of day.
• OR just not display any material not suited for children, ever.
• Changing laws to make it easier for someone to sue for Libel if it occurs online.

Does anyone remember when the last time we changed the rating system for movies in America? They made it easier to get the new “X” rating for a movie, calling it NC17 for movies that weren’t porn but were for adults. Theaters all across the country embraced these movies at first, (The cook and his wife were a big NC17 hit). Within one year the Christian “Conservatives” pressured all the major chains and then independent theaters into never showing a NC17 movie again. Now they just won’t make movies like that.

The same thing will happen with the internet if they do the same thing, duh.

Later I’ll add some links to sites that will probably get the new “X” (not “XXX”) rating, whatever they will call it and will probably thus be banned by every state in the union.
Sure, ever since the Civil War, we Americans have lost the ability to control our government, but we can’t fix that now (ever). Sure, our leaders say things like, “I don’t even know how to check my e-mail” (G.W. Bush and John McCain both have said this). But to maintain appearances of a Democracy, our government sometimes listens to large public outcries. It’s also true sometimes they make laws that sound like they are giving us what we want, but really actually giving the bad guys what they want (The CANN SPAM Act ring a bell with anyone?). Now is the time for one of those large public outcries.

link

A watch dog group asked Google to put up or shut on the whole personal data storage issue.

The nonprofit group Consumer Watchdog asked on Friday that Google give users of its search engine the ability to “opt out” of leaving personal data, such as IP addresses, on Google’s servers.

“Many people don’t understand that the kind of unnoticed conversations that are going on between them and [Google's servers],” said John Simpson, policy advocate at Consumer Watchdog. “Some of that can provide a useful, helpful service to the user, but people need to know what they’re providing and made informed judgments about whether they want to or not.”

news story