Radio frequency identification, or RFID, is a generic term for technologies that use radio waves to automatically identify people or objects. There are several methods of identification, but the most common is to store a serial number that identifies a person or object, and perhaps other information, on a microchip that is attached to an antenna…

Accompanying the explosive growth of the Internet have been concerns about protecting children from viewing pornographic and other harmful images through cyberspace. In the past few years, Congress has passed several acts to censor Internet sites available to children, but only the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) has received Supreme…

School art therapists face numerous ethical dilemmas, from referrals to therapy, through privacy, safety and predictability in the art therapy room, to the need to balance cooperation with the educational staff and its expectations of shared information with loyalty to the patient. Breach of confidentiality also has legal implications. The…

In this article, the author recounts her experience in 2005 as a library director at the Mount Laurel Library in New Jersey. She thought her people at the library were in fairly good shape in terms of the professional staff's understanding of the confidentiality rules governing their customer information. However, she was wrong. This was driven…

Teenagers will freely give up personal information to join social networks on the Internet. However, a 2007 study by the Pew Internet and American Life project found that most of the 55 percent of teens who place their personal profiles online take steps to protect themselves from the most obvious areas of risk. Parents, teachers, and librarians…

This report is the result of a nationwide survey conducted in March 2008 of student life officers and campus safety directors to assess the impact of the April 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech on campus safety and security policy and practice. Discussion areas include: (1) Student Privacy vs. Need-to-Know; (2) Prevention, Mitigation and Recovery;…

The study of writers and writing in digital environments raises distinct and complex ethical issues for researchers. Rhetoric theory and casuistic ethics, working in tandem, provide a theoretical framework for addressing such issues. A casuistic heuristic grounded in rhetorical principles can help digital writing researchers critically…

This article interrogates the relationship between technology and law enforcement and how changing police surveillance techniques have influenced Western expectations of privacy from the mid-19th century to the present. By examining the evolution of telecommunications devices in particular, the author identifies a diffuse and publicly inclusive…

Submitted to Congress by Senator William V. Roth, Jr., of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, this document reports favorably on Senate Bill 786 (the Information Age Commission Act of 1986), legislation designed to establish a commission to study the impact of computer and communications systems on American society. The report provides: (1) a…

Little is known about the implications of individual differences in privacy preferences. To explore the relationship between privacy preferences and the style and quality of social interaction in a first encounter, 77 of 320 college students completing the Privacy Preference Scale were grouped according to their low (20 male, 20 female) or high…

The findings from a study of 42 administrators in a large metropolitan school district supported the hypothesis that the use of privacy regulation mechanisms is deliberate and dynamic. The researchers considered the age and sex of the administrators, the length of time they'd held their current jobs, their tendencies toward Type A or Type B…

The development of the Privacy Preference Scale is described. Six subscales were constructed from a principal axis factor analysis. The ability of the subscales to differentiate between age and sex groups, and their relationship to personality measures and to self-reported privacy oriented behavior are presented. (Author/RC)

This document provides the public with a single document containing all regulatory provisions pertaining to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Included is a summary of the major comments received after publication of a notice of proposed rule-making. Each summary of comments is followed by a response that indicates whether or not a…

The question of whether protection against unauthorized use of a person's name of likeness for commercial gain is subsumed under property rights or the right to privacy remains unsettled. The thesis of this article is that either area may be appropriate, depending on the plaintiff's motivation in bringing the action. The case of Lugosi v.…

The Tenth Circuit Court affirmed that the University of New Mexico must comply with an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEOC) subpoena for personnel records. The author concludes after examining the case that the court's decision will probably not have an enduring effect in defining employee privacy interests and EEOC access to records. (JT)