MichaelZimmer.org

A couple of stories popped up on my radar this morning related to cellphone privacy: The New York Times has a story on advertisers increasingly collecting behavioral and locational data from consumers’ cellphone activities: “Advertisers Get a Trove of Clues in Smartphones”. The Berkman Center for Internet & Society recently hosted a talk by Albert [...]

This week, Google launched Google Latitude, a new Google Maps feature that lets users share location data with friends, using either a mobile phone or through an interface on iGoogle. (see how it works here) Unsurprisingly, concerns have arisen regarding the privacy implications of Latitude, and I, of course, have taken issue in the past [...]

Following up, the DVD for the hit action/thriller movie “Eagle Eye” has been released. The second disc of the 2-disc special edition includes the commentary “Is My Cellphone Spying on Me?”, featuring reflections on technology and surveillance by the actors and producers of the film, Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Clearinghouse, and myself. [...]

This post is a bleg: I’ve been asked to film an interview that will accompany the DVD bonus material for the forthcoming (Steven Spielberg produced) action/thriller movie “Eagle Eye,” which features sophisticated surveillance technologies as one of its plot devices. The topic for the interview will be cellphone surveillance. I’ve discussed the topic on occassion [...]

[This thought piece appears on the On The Identity Trail project's blog, blog*on*nymity. Thanks to the amazing folks there for the (second) invitation to contribute to the project. -mz] This post is an attempt to collect and organize some thoughts on how the rise of so-called Web 2.0 technologies bear on privacy and surveillance studies. [...]

The Montreal Gazette has a feature story on how the combination of cellphone cameras and the World Wide Web has resulting in the rise of “cyber-shaming” – a new kind of public shaming for wrongdoers, from litterbugs and bad drivers to negligent nannies: Hey you, the scofflaw parked illegally in the handicapped spot. Smile! You’re [...]

MIT’s Technology Review has a brief article about advances in zoom technology for cellphone cameras. This adds a new dimension to the privacy and surveillance threats cellphone cameras pose. We experienced a major advancement in camera zoom technology around the turn of the century, which spurred Warren & Brandeis to write their seminal article “The [...]

I’ve been meaning to blog about the discussion at Concurring Opinions regarding the rise of “cyber-shaming” – the act of posting online elements of seemingly private conversations or events that you happened to overhear or witness. Examples include the posting of details of annoying cellphone calls overheard, uploading of cellphone camera images of men who [...]

The NY Times has a feature today on the prevalence of GPS-enabled cell phones for the surveillance of one’s kids. (Boost Mobile [page has audio] has also been pitching their GPS tracking features to adults so you can “know where your friends are at.”) Unfortunately I’m much too busy writing the diss to provide any [...]

There has been a spurt of media attention paid to the privacy and surveillance concerns of GPS enabled cellphones: GPS Surveillance Creeps into Daily Life (New Standard) Cellphone as Tracker: X Marks Your Doubts (New York Times) Phone service allows people to track their friends (San Francisco Chronicle) I don’t have a lot of time [...]