On-line Privacy Notices "Unenforceable"

As we are dealing with privacy issues as part of a current XIST project I am reminded of a note I wrote last year.

A U.S. court has ruled that even if a company (Northwest Airline in this case) breaks it's own privacy policy there is little that can be done about it. As we design websites we tend to bury the 'important notices' assuming that nobody reads them anyway. It turns out that this means that nobody reads them. To quote from the decision:

"Although Northwest had a privacy policy for information included on the Web site, plaintiffs do not contend that they actually read the privacy policy prior to providing Northwest with their personal information," Magnuson noted. "Thus, plaintiffs' expectation of privacy was low."

Read the article on the news.com site.

Emergency Alerts Delivered to Your Desktop

Given the recent subway bombings in London, England, Canadians might be reassured by the fact that a homegrown company is at the forefront of a web-based emergency alert system.

Developed by Ottawa-based Solana Networks and Sombra Labs, five Canadian cities are testing the Internet Public Alerting System (IPAS). This Web-based alert system would allow local governments to broadcast emergency warnings about terrorist attacks, natural disasters, disease outbreaks, and other emergencies straight to users' desktops.

Users of the system must register for the type of emergency alert notification and then in the event of an emergency, the system would send an alert message that would pop-up in a window on the subscriber's computer.

For more information see the IPAS web site.