Privacy protections disappear with a judge’s order
Canadian Privacy Law Blog:
More commentary on the Viacom v. Google/YouTube case, this time from MIT’s Technology review:
Technology Review: Privacy protections disappear with a judge’s order
Privacy protections disappear with a judge’s order
By Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) _ Credit card companies know what you’ve bought. Phone companies know whom you’ve called. Electronic toll services know where you’ve gone. Internet search companies know what you’ve sought.
It might be reassuring, then, that companies have largely pledged to safeguard these repositories of data about you.
But a recent federal court ruling ordering the disclosure of YouTube viewership records underscores the reality that even the most benevolent company can only do so much to guard your digital life: All their protections can vanish with one stroke of a judge’s pen.
“Companies have a tremendous amount of very sensitive data on their customers, and while a company itself may treat that responsibly … if the court orders it be turned over, there’s not a lot that the company that holds the data can do,” said Jennifer Urban, a law professor at the University of Southern California.
In the past, court orders and subpoenas have generally been targeted at records on specific individuals. With YouTube, it’s far more sweeping, covering all users regardless of whether they have anything to do with the copyright infringement that Viacom Inc., in a $1 billion lawsuit, accuses Google Inc.’s popular video-sharing site of enabling.
It’s a scenario privacy activists have long warned about.
“What we’re seeing is (that) the theoretical is becoming real world,” said Lauren Weinstein, a veteran computer scientist. “The more data you’ve got, the more data that’s going to be there as an attractive kind of treasure chest (for) outside parties.”
U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton dismissed privacy arguments as speculative.
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