Recently in Internet & Online Privacy Category

There have been nine tech giants accused of involvement in the PRISM surveillance according to the information provided by the now out of the jurisdiction Edward Snowden: AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, Skype, Yahoo, and YouTube.

All of these companies who were linked to the PRISM program, according to The Washington Post, have staunchly denied involvement or even knowledge of the surveillance, which seems odd in light of federal law which immunizes them from suit based on their involvement.

The other monster has reared its ugly head, and the (top, top) secret is out: PRISM is a real thing. Just as you thought you may have been inundated with too much news about the National Security Agency (NSA) and Verizon scandal, The Washington Post and The Guardian both decided to drop a second bomb on us late last week, revealing information from a leaked Powerpoint slide presentation. This one doesn’t involve metadata from phone records, but content collected from Internet giants like Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and other sites that you likely use on a daily basis.

Suddenly, the Verizon debacle looks like small(er) potatoes.

But, what is there to know about PRISM, exactly? Not only is there a wealth of information out there, but there are layers and layers of accusations and denials to go with it. News updates on this matter happen every second. Now, even a whistleblower has been confirmed. Here are some basics that break it down:

By now, you're probably familiar with the National Security Administration's domestic phone surveillance scandal. If you aren't, we covered it yesterday.

Though lawmakers are mostly parrying inquiries by stating that the domestic surveillance program has been ongoing for over seven years and is legal per the Patriot Act, such non-answers won't suffice in the long-term. One would imagine with the nation now aware of the extent of the NSA's domestic spying, that the status quo won't hold.

When the news of the latest, and some might argue greatest, overreaching surveillance effort by the U.S. government broke, my initial response was a half-yawn. Phone records? Whoo-hooo. The NSA will now know exactly how lonely my life is.

Actually, they won't. Verizon is too dang expensive.

Then we learned that more than phone numbers were involved. The NSA has been subpoenaing metadata, from phone serial numbers to GPS locations. This is more than "how many times did he call Pizza My Heart?" This is every call, every GPS location, and even every cell tower that your phone connects to, transferred to the government's computers daily.

This isn't 1984. This is Enemy of the State.

What good is a deadbolt lock on your front door when the back door is missing and the house keys are sitting inside, in plain sight?

It's not a perfect analogy, but its pretty close to the situation many Apple users are in, without even knowing about it. Earlier this year, Apple released two-factor authentication. It was heralded, as all two-factor implementations are, because as more and more of our data (and our clients' data) move to the cloud, there is more and more to lose from someone cracking a simple password.

We've seen it again and again -- startups revolutionize a traditional practice only to meet resistance from outdated or misapplied laws. When Square introduced an iPhone attachment that processed credit card payments (genius), it ran afoul of state money transmitter laws. Uber allows you to hail a taxi from your phone (brilliant), but it clashed with state and city taxi laws across the country.

And now we have AirBnB. This ingenious startup allows you to sublet a spare room, or an apartment, for a few days at a time. For those visiting a pricy city, it's a godsend. In fact, Crain's New York notes that the startup is expected to generate nearly $1 billion in economic activity in New York City in 2013, most of which is outside the cluster of hotels in the midst of Manhattan.

The only problem is, the entire thing is illegal, at least in NYC.

Employers can, in most cases, monitor employee email. The problem is, that's a time-consuming chore. Unless litigation ensues (or is threatened), most employers would rather spend their time doing something more productive.

Ah, but for every tech need, there is an invention. We already know that there is software (or "bots") that can scan email to filter out spam or junk messages. And Google uses a similar technology to scan your email and deliver personalized advertisements. How about taking that same technology and using it to monitor employees' email for violations of company policies?

The greatest faux-news site on the Internet has just gone where many real news sites have gone before: Syria.

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) are a group of pro-Syria hackers who, according to Slate, have cracked the Twitter accounts of some of the biggest names in journalism, including the BBC, NPR, CBS, "60 Minutes", Reuters News, and the Associated Press. The AP hack, of course, resulted in a fake tweet about an explosion at the White House that triggered a brief stock market panic.

With so much of our data, and our clients' data, transferred over the Internet, lawyers have an especially significant interest in data privacy. We aren't tweens visiting Justin Bieber sites. We are counselors with clients' financial records, identifying information, and sensitive case data stored on our computers, in the cloud, and occasionally, in our email inboxes.

When evaluating service providers, we have repeatedly advised our readers to look at the company's privacy policy, terms of service, and past practices. Who owns the data? Who can access it? Do they suffer frequent security breaches?

It's not just the company and hackers you have to worry about, however. Though the Feds aren't peeping into everyone's inboxes, if you have a client with a sensitive matter, isn't worth choosing the most stalwart provider?

Houston magistrate Judge Stephen Smith rejected a rather vague Rule 41 search and seizure warrant application this week, and you should probably care about it.

As Judge Smith explained it, “the Government seeks a warrant to hack a computer suspected of criminal use.” As Slate describes it, the FBI wanted “to install a spy Trojan on a computer in an unknown location … to covertly infiltrate the computer and take photographs of its user through his or her webcam. The plan also included recording Internet activity, user location, email contents, chat messaging logs, photographs, documents, and passwords.”