Tag: privacy
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Privacy and Identity on the Internet
Jeffrey Rosen, law professor at George Washington University (GWU), has called the current incarnation of the Internet “a digital world that never forgets” in a recent piece on privacy for the The New York Times. It’s an astute article looking at the idea of segmented identities, the search for a way to safely control our…
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Market Segmentation and the PRIZM NE System
Market segmentation is a method of grouping people with similar characteristics, primarily for marketing purposes. A number of years ago, USA Today described in detail the information large consumer segmentation businesses track and use to group us. It’s an eye-opening read: The [consumer segmentation businesses] are pinpointing who lives where; what they’re most likely to…
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Privacy and Tracking with Digital Coupons
Data collection and mining can be quite lucrative pursuits for many retailers, and technological advances are providing them with more novel and extensive methods of doing just that. Data mining is a topic I’ve been fascinated with ever since I was introduced to it in university, and this look at how digital coupons track us…
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The CCTV Trade-Off
That CCTV doesn’t substantially help in reducing crime has been shown beyond reasonable doubt, proposes Bruce Schneier, so now the pressing question is whether or not the benefits security cameras do afford are worthwhile. There are exceptions, of course, and proponents of cameras can always cherry-pick examples to bolster their argument. These success stories are…
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CCTV Prevalence in Britain
For many years the British public has often been told that the United Kingdom has 4.2 million CCTV camerasāthat’s one for every fourteen residentsāas widely quoted by politicians, various media, and even the police. This statistic is rarely questioned, but thanks to a recent episode of the excellent More or Less (UK-only?) suggesting that this…