Written by Christina Drummond
This morning, the Seattle City Council had an initial hearing on the mayor's proposal to authorize a video surveillance program for four parks as early as June 2008.

The ACLU does not support video surveillance and does not support Seattle's proposal for many reasons, which Jennifer Shaw, our legislative director, presented to the Seattle City Council Parks and Seattle Center Committee.

People living in a free society should be able to enjoy public spaces without having to subject their actions to constant government monitoring. This particular proposal would record the activities of innocent people, while illegal acts move to just out of sight of the camera. At the same time, this proposal includes no mechanism to "watch the watchers" and monitor abuses like racial profiling and voyeurism.

People carrying Washington's Enhanced Driver's Licenses or Identicards (EDLs) can rest a tad easier. While the person-specific, unique identification number on the EDL's EPC Gen2 tag can still be accessed remotely by compatible readers when not at the border, those salivating over the possibilities now have a deterrent. Washington just signed into law a bill that makes it a felony and a violation of the Consumer Protection Act to read and store the EDL's RFID number for any non-border crossing purpose, unless the entity has the cardholder's express knowledge and consent.

Written by Christina Drummond
Looking for something to do this Saturday? On February 23, I'll be talking about a variety of transportation related systems that gather location information while you go about your life. From driving your car to taking public transportation, from flying to crossing a border – data is being collected. Together with our legislative director, I’ll be outlining our concerns and activities in this area.

If you’re interested, come join the fun. The 2:15 p.m. talk is part of the ACLU-WA’s afternoon long 2008 Membership Conference. You don’t have to be a member to attend and donations are encouraged for admission (which is free).

Written by Christina Drummond

As I've written before, Washington state residents are the first in the country able to get an enhanced driver's license or identicard, which will double as an alternative to the U.S. Passport for land and sea crossings into Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda.

The ACLU-WA has listed out a number considerations for choosing between a passport and EDL. For those who care about their privacy, the key concern remains that the EDL contains an EPC Gen2 RFID tag that will hold a unique identification number assigned to you, and broadcast that number to anybody with a reader. The Department of Licensing acknowledges this and will send you a little sleeve to shield your license when not at the border.

The past 24 hours have been a civil liberties roller coaster. After the high of the Senate delaying consideration of surveillance rules for FISA, the FCC adopted new rules allowing an entity to own both a newspaper and a broadcast network in a single media market.

FISA and Telecom Immunity – Debate Delayed to the New Year

Written by Doug Klunder
Two recent P-I articles, here and here, discuss employee privacy, especially when it comes to email. The ACLU believes that employees should have a right of privacy in their personal communications, which employers should only be able to breach in cases of serious misconduct.

The articles do a pretty good job of describing the actual (and unfortunate) legal situation--virtually no employee privacy. Despite that legal background, it's important to recognize the reality that many of us do send and receive some personal email at work. So I thought some practical tips might be in order:

As I wrote about last week, Seattle was the location for the last Federal Communications Commission hearing on proposed changes to media ownership rules. The ACLU-WA expressed our concerns about easing rules on consolidation of media ownership in written comments to the FCC Commissioners.

Written by Doug Klunder
One of the great consumer privacy tools of the past decade, the national Do Not Call registry, has recently come under considerable criticism. When it was set up close to five years ago, some of the FTC fine print said that listings would be purged every five years unless renewed by the consumer. The purported concern was that people regularly change telephone numbers, and the listings would be out of date, not accurately representing the desires of the current number holders. The five-year limit didn't arouse much comment at the time, no doubt partly because the very existence of the registry was a huge step forward.

But now, as the five-year anniversary approaches, the expiration of listings has suddenly taken on importance. Many organizations and media outlets have tried to get the word out that people need to renew their registrations. And many have commented that there's no good reason for the purge in the first place.

This Friday, November 9th from 4:00-11:00pm, Seattle's Town Hall becomes the mainstage for the final public hearing on the further weakening of the FCC's media ownership rules.

Like the issue of Net Neutrality, this debate centers around the ability of people to voice and hear diverse communications, not just those that are deemed important by a handful of corporations.

The Seattle-based organization Reclaim the Media is holding trainings all week for those wishing to testify.

Can't make it in person? Grab a drink and tune in to the hearing online.

The Canadian Office of the Privacy Commissioner has just released an online video about how information in social networks can be analyzed, aggregated and used for unintended purposes.

This is from the same Canadian privacy folks who influenced Google to add privacy-protective features to the Canadian images in the Google Maps Streetview tool. Unfortunately, according to a CBC news report, Google is only considering blurring identifiable photos and license plates outside of the USA.