InternetNews.com, November 19, 2009 by Kenneth Corbin
http://www.internetnews.com/government/article.php/3849326/House+Panel+Moves+Closer+to+Privacy+Bill.htm

“Americans falsely believe that they enjoy a right of confidentiality with most businesses,” Hoofnagle said. “They incorrectly assume that privacy law prohibits the user of their personal information.”

NPR, All Things Considered, October 26, 2009 by Martin Kaste
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114163862

“As there’s been growing awareness of how commercial data brokers operate, they’ve become more secretive,” Hoofnagle says…. “If consumers knew the extent to which this data was being collected and repackaged, there would be riots in streets.”

-The New York Times, September 29, 2009 by Stephanie Clifford
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/business/media/30adco.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=privacy%20study&st=cse

About two-thirds of Americans object to online tracking by advertisers—and that number rises once they learn the different ways marketers are following their online movements, according to a new survey from professors at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley.

-Adweek, September 30, 2009 by Brian Morrissey
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3i549ead0f2b0cb6f9051223b3b846580b

“Our findings suggest that if Americans could vote on behavioral targeting, they would shut it down,” the study’s authors conclude.

-WSJ.com, September 30, 2009 by John Letzing
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090930-713200.html#printMode

U.S. Internet users largely “stand on the side of privacy advocates” when it comes to online tracking, even when assured that they are being tracked anonymously, the study concludes. “That is the case even among young adults whom advertisers often portray as caring little about information privacy.”

Wired, September 2, 2009 by Patrick Thibodeau
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/tech-influence-spending-unaffected-by-recession/

“The spending goes up whenever there is a risk of legislation,” said Chris Hoofnagle, director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology…. Over the next year, Hoofnagle expects that Congress will take up bills on security breach notification and behavioral targeting—the display of advertising based on browsing history.

San Francisco Chronicle, August 28, 2009 by James Temple
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/28/BA0419E2FH.DTL&type=printable

There are two major problems with the approach, he said. First, while there’s a legal obligation of trust between doctors and patients or lawyers and clients, no such inherent understanding between a blogger and a free online service has been recognized by the courts. Second, even if Port does successfully argue that such a relationship existed, Google can claim that its duty was limited—in the same way that a lawyer can break his confidentiality obligation to prevent a crime.

Arizona Republic, August 17, 2009 by Andrew Johnson
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/08/17/20090817biz-lifelock0817.html

Hoofnagle, who filed a declaration supporting LifeLock’s pending motion in the Experian case, said that while LifeLock’s ads are misleading, consumers should be able to hire companies to set fraud alerts. “Identity theft refers to a broad range of crimes, including financial and medical identity theft and even impersonation,” he said. “(But) even with credit-monitoring services, you can fall victim to all three types of identity theft.”

The Associated Press, August 16, 2009 by Holly Ramer
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hy-198lZYAltwbqaBxHgUY7damuwD9A437HG0

Some federal agencies collect locally-issued Social Security numbers from grant and loan applicants and report them to credit bureaus as if they were U.S. numbers, regardless of whether the numbers already are in use. That’s the beginning of the problem, which isn’t identity theft but can create some of the same headaches when identities become linked in the eyes of lenders or creditors. “This can really slow you down if there is a default or a history of bad payment,” said Chris Jay Hoofnagle, director of information privacy programs at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

Wired, August 10, 2009 by Ryan Singel
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cookies-think-again/

The study comes as Congress and federal regulators are looking at ways of reining in the online tracking and advertising industry…. Soltani led a summer research team at Berkeley, under the direction of Chris Hoofnagle, the Director of Information Privacy Programs at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. The team tested the top 100 sites to see what their privacy policies said, what their tracking technology actually does and what happens if a user blocks the Flash cookie.

The Washington Post, August 6, 2009 by Jocelyn Noveck
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32305761/

“There are a lot of personal Web sites where people vent,” says Hoofnagle, the Berkeley lecturer. Is there any way to monitor these sites, and perhaps prevent crimes like Sodini’s killing spree? “To my knowledge, there’s no organized effort to look for the foreshadowing of this type of event,” Hoofnagle says.

CBS-5 TV News, July 15, 2009 by Anna Werner
http://cbs5.com/local/credit.card.numbers.2.1085913.html

He points out that in the past, Google has taken additional steps to protect individuals’ privacy, such as blurring faces on the company’s “Street View” mapping feature. “Google has taken some steps here and there to obscure information to protect privacy,” Hoofnagle said. “And there are a number of things one could do to make the document disappear if you really wanted them to.”

-NPR.org, July 6, 2009 by Christopher Joyce
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106324377

Chris Hoofnagle, a technology lawyer at the University of California, Berkeley, says computer criminals don’t even have to get the whole, exact Social Security number to create a “fictitious person” and secure a credit card, something he calls “synthetic identify theft.” They can do it with a fake or partial number.

-ScienceNOW, July 6, 2009 by Karen C. Fox
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/706/1

“Using Social Security numbers for both identification and authentication is no longer tenable, because possession of the number—unlike a fingerprint—offers no verification of identity.”

-Wired, July 6, 2009 by Hadley Leggett
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/predictingssn/

Privacy law expert Chris Hoofnagle of the University of California, Berkeley, says the response must be drastic. “Their paper points to a radical solution: Perhaps we should stop trying to protect the secrecy of the SSN, and just publish all of them to prevent their use as passwords.”

-KGO-TV, July 13, 2009 by Terry McSweeney
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/technology&id=6912260

“If you know where someone was born and the month they were born, you can decode at least part of the Social Security number,” said Prof. Chris Hoofnagle, director of Information Privacy Programs at the University of California Berkeley.… “Even if you guess incorrectly, you still may be able to steal identities through a new form of identity theft known as synthetic identity theft, and in this form of the crime you create a new person, you create a fictitious person, using a similar kind of guessing game of Social Security numbers,” said Hoofnagle.

The Denver Post, July 5, 2009 by Allison Sherry
http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_12754951

Beyond privacy, University of California, Berkeley law professor Chris Hoofnagle worries that teachers, case workers and volunteers will rely too heavily on the computer. “Instead of sitting down with a student and asking her about her problems, the first step is to go to the computer,” said Hoofnagle, director of Information Privacy Programs at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. “How do you handle a conflict between what the student tells you and what the computer tells you?”

CIO.com, June 16, 2009 by Tim Greene
http://www.cio.com/article/495132/Google_Urged_to_Beef_Up_Gmail_Security

The danger, the letter writers say, is “when a user composes email, documents, spreadsheets, presentations and calendar plans, this potentially sensitive content is transferred to Google’s servers in the clear, allowing anyone with the right tools to steal that information.” When public Internet connections are used, that creates a risk of data theft and snooping, they say. Among those who signed the letter are … Chris Hoofnagle, director of information privacy programs at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 11, 2009 by Aisha Sultan
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/998EF1A4F78B6B55862575D200026198?OpenDocument

“Under U.S. law, permission is needed before an image or likeness is used in an advertisement,” said Chris Hoofnagle…. It would be a simple case here: “You approach the company and say, ‘Where is my money?’” he said.

The New York Times, June 2, 2009 by Miguel Helft
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/google-is-top-tracker-of-surfers-in-study/

“Consumers were complaining to the F.T.C. about a lack of control over personal information,” Mr. Hoofnagle said. “That is very different from how the F.T.C. has framed the issue,” he said, noting that under the Bush administration, the agency frowned on privacy practices only if they caused harm to consumers. Mr. Hoofnagle added: “We have a new F.T.C. now. They may scrap the ‘harm’ approach and look at some other method for balancing rights and responsibilities.”

Wired, May 27, 2009 by Kim Zetter
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/lifelock/

Chris Hoofnagle, director of information privacy programs for the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, says the ruling is a disappointment. “The idea that we could some day see a market where we pay $10 a month to a company to opt us out of junk mail, to monitor our credit, to do all sorts of privacy-enhancing steps that we don’t have time to take … for that market to emerge, LifeLock’s business model and similar ones have to be legal,” Hoofnagle says.

Internetnews.com, May 15, 2009 by David Needle
http://www.internetnews.com/webcontent/article.php/3820531/Consumers+Left+in+the+Dark+on+Net+Privacy.htm

“Consent is a trap,” said Chris Hoofnagle, Director of Information Privacy Programs at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. “It’s more than notices and opt-in and opt-out,” he said, adding that details like how a consumer’s information might be used isn’t always made clear, nor how long it might be kept. “Do these things protect consumers? I’m not so sure,” he said. “It’s got to the point that the medium itself is poisoned and consumers feel unsure about being tracked online.”

The New York Times, March 18, 2009 by Louise Story
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/business/19cuomo.html?pagewanted=print

Courts generally consider three factors in privacy cases: the delicacy of the data, its importance to public information and the harm that could come from releasing it, said Chris Hoofnagle, director of information privacy programs at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. “Courts almost never prohibit the government from getting data. The question is, can they publicly disclose it?” Mr. Hoofnagle said. “The taxpayer funding weighs in favor of disclosure, because of the public interest.”

Wired Epicenter, February 25, 2009 by Ryan Singel
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/fcc-threatens-t.html

Longtime phone privacy advocate Chris Hoofnagle … thinks the FCC is laying the groundwork for actually doing something about rogue data selling and pre-texting. “The agency will start its enforcement actions by ensuring that all carriers are filing a security plan, and then will move on to evaluating the substance of the security plans,” Hoofnagle said.

FoxNews.com, February 20, 2009 by Joshua Rhett Miller
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,497285,00.html

“This is the modern problem of public records. They are public, but they exist in practical obscurity. It’s much like how music companies didn’t foresee that consumers would rip CDs. It was thought that their sheer size would make ripping CDs impractical. Something similar happened with public records.”