Google has responded to Congress, defending its decision to make a controversial change to its privacy policy.

In a 13-page letter (document) to several Congress members, Google explained its decision for changing its privacy policy, and answered a host of questions posed by the lawmakers after the search giant announced its plans.

The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) invites privacy scholars and authors with an interest in privacy issues to submit papers to be considered for FPF’s second edition of “Privacy Papers for Policy Makers.”

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is holding a public forum on privacy concerns about cell phones and their ability to track the location of users.

The forum is being held between 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. EDT at the FCC Headquarters, 445 12th Street, SW, Washington DC 20554.

Audio/video coverage of the meeting will be broadcast live with open captioning over the Internet from the FCC’s web page at www.fcc.gov/live. The FCC’s webcast is free to the public. Those who watch the live video stream of the event may email event-related questions to livequestions@fcc.gov. Depending on the volume of questions and time constraints, the panel moderators will work to respond to as many questions as possible during the workshop.

The Obama Administration officially launched its international cybersecurity strategy in a White House event on Monday, May 16. The event was lead by Homeland Security Advisor John Brennan and Howard Schmidt, the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator. In addition, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, The Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, the Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn and Secretary Gary Locke of the Commerce Department participated as a unified sign of support.

At one time, when you wanted to know something about someone you would use a search engine like Google or Yahoo, but that is not the case anymore. There are hundreds of websites with your personal information listed that will provide your information to someone for a fee and some even for free. Many people always ask, “How did my information get on this site?”, and I often state, “You put it there.” Maybe not directly, but through various online activities such as Facebook and Twitter updates as well as signing up to purchase items online. All of that information is eventually collected and stored in some company’s database.

The political aspect is obvious to many of us, but the information assurance side reveals a scary situation. If the government, with all of its resources is having difficulties protecting sensitive documents, what chances do private companies have?

Cybercrime expert Gregory Evans explains the potential risks hackers can pose to webcams on your system and how to ensure your safety and privacy online.

This issue is a problem as in the case against a Pennsylvania school district that turned on the webcam of various student’s school-issued laptops while the computers and captured images of “inappropriate activity” in the student’s home.

On September 23rd of 2010 the FCC approved the usage of “White Space” for wireless networking access. White Space is the frequency that are between television broadcast channels and many of them became free when TV broadcasters switched from analog signals to digital signals.

The FCC will be ruling on the usage of “White Space” for wireless networking access today (9/23/2010). White Space is the frequencies that are between television broadcast channels and many of them became free when TV broadcasters switched from analog signals to digital signals.

Earlier in the day a security flaw turned Twitter’s Website into a chaotic and potentially unsafe place, filled with annoying pop-up windows that activated just by rolling the mouse over another user’s tweets.

Parents do not allow their kids access to adult content while reading a magazine or watching TV, so the same should be taken into consideration when it comes to using the computer and mobile phone. Yes, mobile phones too. Ideally, parents would like to shoulder surf while their kids are on the Internet, but the reality is that’s not always possible. Teaching kids to use the Internet properly and not to disclose personal information as describe in a recent article is a very important step in keeping them safe, but adding a bit of insurance with an Internet content filtering software geared towards protecting kids can also compliment a potential dangerous situation.