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 The purported concern was that people regularly change telephone numbers, and the listings would be out of date, not accurately representing the desires of the current number holders.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.