News item

Clinic Director Deirdre Mulligan called for increased privacy protections in a San Francisco Chronicle article entitled “Privacy laws need better controls, technology, panelists say.” The article mentions a panel at Sun Microsystems, which called for “…clearer laws and better technological controls over what information should be public and how it should be used.” Various questions regarding social-networking sites and parental control were raised during the panel discussion. Deirdre Mulligan commented “Nothing is ever forgotten.  read more »

Senior staff attorney Chris Jay Hoofnagle commented on Ask.com’s new privacy feature in a New York Times article. The article, “Ask.com Puts a Bet on Privacy,” discusses how ask.com has added a new feature to its search engines that allows users to make their searches private. Ask.com claims that it erases search information if AskEraser is turned on. However, privacy experts doubt that this new feature will give a competitive edge to ask.com, as it only accounts for 4.7% of all searches in the United States.  read more »