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Legislating Social Privacy
July 30, 2010
There’s a great deal of talk these days about privacy and social media. Specifically, services like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other popular social networking platforms are coming under increased scrutiny over their privacy policies and data sharing practices. Permalink

When Privileged Access is no longer a Privilege
July 19, 2010
I just read an interesting multi-part investigative report in the Washington Post about how intelligence gathering – and the bureaucracy that has risen since September 11, 2001 to facilitate the harvest and analysis of that information – has spun beyond the federal government’s control, not to mention its ability to make use of the sheer abundance of information. Permalink

Information Governance in the Cloud
July 15, 2010
Just a brief note to bring our recent webinar to your attention. I presented Information Governance in the Cloud along with the good people at Symantec. Permalink

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It's Not Fish Ye're Buying, It's Men's Lives

June 30, 2009

It's not fish ye're buying, it's men's lives.

Scottish author and poet Sir Walter Scott is said to have uttered those words in reference (and reverence) to the toil and sacrifice made by commercial fishermen in an age when harvesting the ocean’s bounty was an even greater risk than portrayed by the popular television show Deadliest Catch.

The phrase came to mind recently while conducting interviews with a number of prominent privacy professionals for an article that will run in a future edition of the IAPP’s Privacy Advisor newsletter. Discussions centered on current economic, technological, and cultural influences on the roles privacy professionals play in their individual organizations.

Just as Sir Walter Scott acknowledged that the mundane purchase of a fish at market involved so much more than an exchange of money, so must today’s corporations acknowledge and address their stewardship of personally identifiable information.

Whether that information pertains to employees, customers, or prospects, it’s not data ye’re storing, it’s people’s lives.

Posted by Mike Spinney at 9:56 am

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Comments

June 30, 2009 7:41pm Susan Lyon

Nice post. Always felt gratified by my work in privacy helping clients understand this. Then you look at what's happening in Iran and you realize even more profoundly the effect privacy can have on lives and a society.