Google is facing the wrath of privacy advocates once again over concerns that it’s not posting its privacy policy “conspicuously” enough to comply with California law. On Tuesday, a coalition of groups that have questioned Google’s practices in the past sent a four-paragraph letter to CEO Eric Schmidt, charging that “Google’s reluctance to post a link to its privacy policy on its home page is alarming.”
The FBI has backed down on a secret request for information about a user of the Internet Archive digital library, thanks to a legal challenge from two prominent advocacy groups. The case, which was brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the archive, dates to last year but only became public on Wednesday. That’s because the type of request involved, known as a national security letter, is accompanied by a gag order that forbids the recipient from disclosing its existence or discussing it with anyone except his attorneys, who are also gagged. As a result of a settlement, the FBI agreed to withdraw the national security letter and to lift the gag order.
If tax-hungry politicians get their way, the days of ordering items over the Internet and not paying sales tax may become just a fond memory. Right now, if a California resident orders something from Seattle-based Amazon.com, for instance, he or she won’t be charged sales tax at the time of purchase. That’s because Amazon doesn’t have offices in the state of California. Pro-tax politicians want to change this by allowing California to force Amazon to collect and submit sales taxes–and they may have found an ally in a U.S. Congress that’s controlled by Democrats.
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