In the IT sector, H1-B visas are a blessing and a curse.  When used appropriately, they bring highly skilled workers to the U.S., help a market grow, and provide needed skills and resources.  When used in a different manner, they bring extortion, crime, and well, a lot of unsavory characterisitics not anticipated by the H1-B program.

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The 'Truth in Caller ID Act' passed the US House of Representatives on Wednesday, April 14, 2010.  The bill is targeting software and processes which would allow a practice called "Caler ID spoofing" or inserting a name, number and other information that is not related to the actual phone number being used.  In several high-profile instances, spoofing has led people to release sensitive information -- such as Social Security and credit card numbers -- to those who then use the information to commit identity theft.

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The United States Government Accountability office has been raising this question for the last year, and are now making their questions public.  Congress asked the GAO in April 2009 to review the data supplied by the large media companies and tasked the GAO with the requirement of quantifying the size and scope of piracy, including the impacts of Web piracy to the film and music industries.  On April 12, 2010, the GAO released a report entitled "Observations on Efforts to Quantify the Economic Effects of Counterfeit and Pirated Goods."

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Google recently launched Buzz, a new social networking tool, which has already generated a slew of complaints from privacy watchdogs. Buzz is an opt-out  program, meaning that Gmail users are automatically signed up for Buzz, with the option of removing themselves from the Buzz network. In the first version of Buzz,  there was a feature which combed through a user's Gmail inbox to identify people that the user emailed most, and automatically added those people as followers without the user's consent. Google responded to many of the initial complaints by revamping Buzz's functions. The revised version changed the "auto-follow" feature to an "auto-suggest" feature, giving users the option of deciding which followers to add. Buzz also no longer connects to a user's Picasa album or Google Reader shared items.

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If you have a cellular phone with you, the federal government can probably pinpoint your location to within 150 feet. The U.S. Court of  Appeals for the Third  Circuit recently heard a case addressing the level of privacy the public can expect in their cellular-phone use, in particular, information regarding when and where cellular phone calls are made and received.

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Capital Records v. Thomas-Rasset has been a very closely followed lawsuit to say the least.  It demonstrated one of the largest verdicts in a copyright infrignement case, and was the most high profile with respect to Peer to Peer file sharing against an individual.

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (or EFF for short) is a very serious group, with a serious intent, and yet their humor is sometimes just so inviting.  They have added four more groups to their takedown hall of shame (That would be DMCA Takedown)...highlighting gross abuses of DMCA takedown's that were issued clearly without any sense or comprehension of "Free Speech".

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In 2008, a European Union panel of privacy regulators asked Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo to eliminate all online query data after six months. This data, which is valuable for the companies running search-engines, includes a computer's unique identification number, location, and the search queries. The Article 29 Working Group held a hearing with representatives from the search engine companies in February 2009, and had established a deadline of the end of January 2010 for each company to respond.

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In relation to the EU Article 29 Working Groups recommendations as to IP address retention from search engines, Microsoft announced that they would limit the time that they associate IP addresses with search terms to six months.

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Note: This post originally appeared on The Security Catalyst Blog

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