Within a matter of days, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans for a broad network of license plate readers to collect information on Americans' movements nationwide, and then scrapped it. So it appears that on the right issues, at the right moments, privacy advocates and the people they represent have some pull. Wish this […]
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by Andrew D. Selbst, guest blogger A month ago, I wrote about Verizon v. FCC, the D.C. Circuit decision striking down the FCC’s net neutrality regulations. In that post, I noted that the decision contained two distinct holdings. First, the FCC could not impose common carrier regulations (net neutrality is one such regulation) on broadband […]
James Surowiecki, The New Yorker’s financial writer, has this interesting analysis this week about how corporate brands are less valuable than they once were – thanks to the proliferation of consumer information.
by Paul Alan Levy Somewhat more than 25 years ago, I represented a federal prisoner named Brett Kimberlin who made a sensational accusation against a sitting Senator who was running for Vice-President – Kimberlin claimed that, during his extensive career as a drug dealer, one of his customers had been a then-law-student who was the […]
We don’t often have occasion to praise debt collectors on this site, so it’s worth taking note when a debt collection company does the right thing. As many of you will remember from previous posts (see here and here), an online retailer called KlearGear tried to extort $3500 from its customer John Palmer because his […]
Yesterday, I received an unhappy email from the CEO of the on-line "crowdfunding" site Kickstarter, which regular folks use to raise money for unusual and creative projects and businesses. The email began: On Wednesday night, law enforcement officials contacted Kickstarter and alerted us that hackers had sought and gained unauthorized access to some of our […]
Former Michael Copps is very worried about media consolidation. Apparently spurred by what Copps calls "the stunning announcement that Comcast hopes to buy Time-Warner … for more than $45 billion" — a merger that he says could "run roughshod over consumers" — Copps has penned this lengthy "Dear Journalists" letter in the Columbia Journalism Review. Here's […]
We've discussed before the case against Facebook's Sponsored Stories program, which resulted in a settlement to which Public Citizen objected on behalf of a group of parents from around the country. See here for a description of our objections and the settlement. Chief among the settlement's flaws is that it allows Facebook to continue to […]
"Welcome to the new-and-not-so-improved world of payday lending, which has adopted more sophisticated sales pitches and branding to lure unwary consumers into loans that can trap them in endless cycles of debt," writes the Times. So what's the alternative? The U.S. post office has an idea: "Have post offices partner with banks to offer basic […]