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Why Cloak?
The leading Web advertising company [DoubleClick.com] plans to build a
database of consumer profiles that will include each user's "name,
address, retail, catalog and online purchase histories, and
demographic data." Until recently, DoubleClick's policy was to not
correlate personal information with its 100,000 million cookies, which
are scattered worldwide. But the new database will rely on the
cookies, which the company places on Net users' computers to record
surfing habits and display pertinent advertising.
CNET, 26 Jan 2000
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The European Union could force Internet providers and
telecoms to build data taps into their Net servers to allow
government security agents to siphon off e-mails, monitor
individuals' Web activity and check newsgroup memberships ...
New Scientist, 8 May 1999, p. 7
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Forty-five percent of large firms said that they monitor
employee email, phone calls, and computer files, according to
the American Management Association survey.
Wired, 15 April 1999
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Six months ago in Turkey ... a teenager received a
suspended jail sentence for making comments critical of police in an
online forum...In Canada... the government is considering extending
national restrictions on hate speech to the Internet. [T]he European
Union is examining proposals that would require Internet service
providers to block "harmful speech"...
Wired, 15 April
1999
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The Russian state police has a plan to monitor every
piece of data sent over Russian bandwidth. ...
The draft project, published on a Russian Web site, says
the system has to enable the security service to upload
"all information, incoming and outgoing, for individual
subscribers of each network." ...
[O]ne service provider noted that the
Russian language has no adequate translation for the
word privacy.
Wired, 21 July 1998
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Police in Malaysia have set up an Internet unit to monitor sites and
newsgroups which have been organising protests against the jailing of
the former Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim.
BBC Online Network, 5 November 1998
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A federal judge ordered the Navy on Thursday to reinstate a senior
sailor who faced dismissal for alleged homosexuality based on
information the Navy obtained from an online computer service. ...
[T]he Navy found a "profile page" posted on America Online ... A Navy
investigator called AOL anonymously and obtained the author's full
name, a disclosure AOL later said it regretted.
AP 29 January 1998
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[A] new software product called Assentor, .. automatically monitors
workplace e-mail traffic and has a great knack for, among other
things, spotting inappropriate jokes, sexual comments and racial
slurs. ...
It uses artificial intelligence techniques to recognize, flag and quarantine
employee e-mail containing anything the program considers obnoxious racist,
religious, sexual or threatening comments.
The New York Times, 24 July 1998
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A new study of consumer privacy on the Internet shows that nearly
two-thirds of all commercial Web sites display some type of warning if
they collect personal information, a sharp increase since last year.
[ie, 33% of sites don't tell you]. [T]he study found that more than
90 percent of all Web sites collect some type of personal information.
The New York Times, 12 May 1999
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[Websense web surveillance software] keeps a log of every Web page
that employees visit as well as the amount of time they spend
there. The software breaks down 670,000 Web sites into 30 categories
-- drugs, hate, sex, travel, sports, shopping, etc. For example, Sage
Osterfeld, the spokesman for Websense, explains, "an alert goes to the
department manager that says Jimbo's been banging Playboy.com all
afternoon."
The New York Times, 4 July 1999
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Popular software used by more than 16 million people to
change a Web browser's computer cursor into cartoon characters and
other images is quietly tracking its customers across the Internet and
recording which Web pages they visit.
New York-based Comet Systems Inc.'s free cursor software reports back
to its own computers with each customer's unique serial number each
time that person visits any of 60,000 Web sites -- including dozens
aimed at young children -- that support its technology.
Computer privacy experts expressed dismay over the behind-the-scenes
communications, which are sent without warning.
AP, 30 Nov July 1999
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