Interesting developments in Germany. They are passing laws that:
1) restrict data mining (on social networking sites) of potential candidates for jobs; and,
2) privacy in the workplace in favour of the employee
Category: Germany
Privacy commissioners vs. Google
Oh dear, Google is in trouble…. they have been -surprise, surprise- criticized by privacy commissioners around the world on their privacy, or lack of privacy practices 😉
Read more at The New York Times. btw. I need to thank Jack for his tweet on this 🙂
Stolen account information as a commodity
This came on the news this weekend:
Stolen account data from a bank in Switzerland are for sale for 2.5 million euros. German state says that it is considering a purchase, when calculating the opportunity to access 100 million in tax liabilities. Germany has previously made a similar deal with good profit back in 2008.
It all feels a little sad when it leads to the legitimizing this type of trade in personal data. Data that has been aquired through breaking the law (hacking).
Read all about it here
Naked protests at Berlin airport
I must take my hat of to the German’s and their protest the use of the so-called “nacktscanner” (naked scanners). Members of the Pirate Party stripped down to their skivvies last Sunday and converged on the Berlin-Tegal airport. They posted a video of their protest to YouTube, with soundtrack provided by Muse’s song “Uprising.” The lyrics articulated their protest: “They will not force us. They will stop degrading us. They will not control us. We will be victorious!” Read more at Wired.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jrgUhOrHFU&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
Missile data, medical records found on discarded hard disks
Researchers bought 300 drives from eBay, other auction sites, second-hand stalls and car boot sales….. and just read what they found…
Covert surveillance of Deusche Bahn’s workers
Really interesting case on workplace surveillance in Germany. Deustch Bahn (railway operator) has been conducting covert surveillance operations without the consent of their employees. It involved covert surveillance operations that were given exotic code names such as “Babylon”, “Traviata” or “Prometheus” as well as a private detective agency.
Deutsche Bahn has submitted a 37-page report to the German government and parliament. In the report, the Bahn admits that three major screenings took place in 1998, 2002/3 and 2005/6.
Although there’s talk of a legal “grey area”, some lawyers are convinced that Deutsche Bahn’s actions were illegal. “Screening the private data of employees and comparing this with the data of supplier companies is in accordance with German data protection law only if the employees themselves and the workers’ council agree with this beforehand. And this was not done apparently. Read more it will be an interesting case 🙂