Data Privacy Day 2010 is just around the corner

Data Privacy Day 2010 is occurring on January 28th. Data Privacy Day is an annual international celebration to raise awareness and generate discussion about information privacy. In 2009, both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives recognized January 28th as National Data Privacy Day.

Over the past few years, privacy professionals, corporations, government officials and representatives, academics, and students in the United States, Canada, and 27 European countries have participated in a wide variety of privacy-focused events and educational initiatives in honor of Data Privacy Day. They have conducted discussions, examined materials and explored technologies in an effort to bring information privacy into our daily thoughts, conversations and actions.

“Despite all the benefits of new and innovative technologies, there are doubts and worries that persist about just how much personal information — our digital identity — is collected, stored, used, and shared to power these convenient and pervasive services.”

Richard Purcell, executive director of The Privacy Projects (www.theprivacyprojects.org), organizing sponsor of Data Privacy Day.

Data Privacy Day has also provided an opportunity to promote teen education and awareness about privacy challenges when using mobile devices, social networking sites and other online services.

Everyone is welcome to participate by sponsoring events, contributing writings and other educational resources, joining activities, and taking actions designed to raise privacy awareness.

More information can be found on the event website at: dataprivacyday2010.org.

Privacy International’s stance on body scanners at airports

Following a previous post on the use of body scans at airports, I have come across the PI statement on proposed deployments of these body scanners in airports.

This is taken from their website….

    PI feels that the technology raises a number of troubling issues:
    First, the scanners produce strikingly graphic images of passengers’ bodies. Those images reveal not only our private body parts, but also intimate medical details such as colostomy bags. That degree of examination amounts to a significant – and for some people humiliating – assault on the essential dignity of passengers that citizens in a free nation should not have to tolerate. Deployment of the technology was recently halted at Manchester Airport in Britain in part because the scanners violated child protection laws by electronically strip searching children and young people. There have also been calls in the European Parliament for a Europe-wide ban on the technology.

    Second, Privacy International is skeptical about the privacy safeguards that the US Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) is touting. The TSA say that the technology is capable of obscuring faces, but this claimed protection is just a software fix that can be undone as easily as it is applied. And obscuring faces does not hide the fact that rest of the body will be vividly displayed. This is the equivalent of asking passengers to parade their bodies in front of the screeners, but with bags over their heads.


Read more at Privacy International…