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Monthly Archives: January 2003

FTC Settles Student Data Collection Dispute

The Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint against the Educational Research Center of America, Inc. stating the company had “collected personal information from high school and middle and junior high school students through surveys,” and used this data “to create lists of students that it sells to commercial entities for use in marketing.” A copy… Continue Reading

Verizon Fights to Protect Consumer Privacy

Verizon is appealing the district court’s decision compelling the ISP to release customer data to RIAA in a copyright dispute concerning music downloading. According to Verizon’s deputy general counsel, “If this ruling stands, consumers will be caught in a digital dragnet – not only from record companies alleging infringement of their copyright monopolies – but… Continue Reading

Gov't Internet Monitoring Center Under Development

The Washington Post reports that since the 9/11 attacks the administration has been developing a Global Early Warning Information System (GEWIS) to secure the global telecommunications infrastructure from cyberattacks. This program is not part of TIA, but rather is administered by The National Communications System (NCS), which will become part of the Department of Homeland… Continue Reading

UCLA Internet Report

The UCLA Center for Communication Policy today released the third installment of their report, Surveying the Digital Future. The report addresses topics that include the following; Internet Users – Who is Online, Who is Not; Media Use and Trust; Consumer Behavior, Communications Patterns, Social Effects of the Internet (on family, children, friends, politics); the Internet… Continue Reading

News Aggregators Become Mainstream

J.D. Lasica, blogger and senior editor for the Online Journalism Review, details the advantages of the increasingly popular free and fee-based news aggregator applications in News That Comes to You. These programs allow researchers who are suffering from information overload to scan headlines chosen from among thousands of news feeds that use RSS (Rich Site… Continue Reading

New Gov't Surveillance Database Announced by Bush

President Bush announced during his State of the Union address the implementation of a new government data-mining program called the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. From his speech, “Tonight, I am instructing the leaders of the FBI, the CIA, the Homeland Security and the Department of Defense to develop a Terrorist Threat Integration Center, to merge… Continue Reading