Privacy

Re "A case for LAPD openness," editorial, Feb. 10 Hopefully, the arms of Times editors aren't sore after their vigorous back-patting for the paper's "conscientious discernment" in not publishing a report that was negligently released by the Los Angeles Police Department in violation of its own policy and state law. The report contained detailed information on officers investigated and cleared of racial profiling as well as information on the complaining...

California health regulators fined Kaiser Permanente's Bellflower hospital $250,000 Thursday for failing to keep employees from snooping in the medical records of Nadya Suleman, the mother who set off a media frenzy after giving birth to octuplets in January. The fine is the first monetary penalty imposed and largest allowed under a new state law enacted last year after widely publicized violations of privacy at UCLA Medical Center involving Farrah Fawcett, Britney Spears, California First Lady Maria Shriver and other celebrities.

The National Archives is missing a computer hard drive containing massive amounts of sensitive data from the Clinton administration, including Social Security numbers, addresses, and Secret Service and White House operating procedures, congressional officials said Tuesday. One of former Vice President Al Gore's three daughters is among those whose Social Security numbers were on the drive, but it was not clear which one. Other information includes logs of events, social gatherings and political records.

Told that paparazzi are jeopardizing safety and privacy, California lawmakers advanced a proposal Tuesday that would allow steep fines for illegally taking and distributing photos and videos of celebrities and others who are engaged in "personal or familial activity." A state Senate committee approved the bill by Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles), meant to keep paparazzi from sneaking onto celebrity estates and from violating traffic laws in pursuit of pictures. The measure would allow prosecutors and private individuals to seek civil fines of up to $50,000 against anyone who takes and sells images of people engaged in personal or familial activity if the violator knows the images were unlawfully obtained and if money is exchanged.

A Swiss government official is demanding that Google Inc. immediately take off the Internet any "street view" images of Switzerland, and the company said it would work to resolve problems with the privacy rights regulator. Hanspeter Thuer, Switzerland's federal data protection commissioner, said Google's pictures were violating Switzerland's strict privacy laws by failing to obscure people's identities on the mapping service, which offers detailed street-level images.

Google Inc. has agreed to draw up a separate privacy policy for its digital library in response to a request from the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC emphasized Thursday that it would closely monitor how Google protects readers' privacy. Intense debate has surrounded a class-action settlement with U.S. authors and publishers giving Google the digital rights to millions of out-of-print books. Critics say Google will have too much insight about what people are reading.

Re "Standing face to face with her thief," Column One, Sept. 22 Earlier this year, someone got hold of my credit card number and used it to order merchandise online from a clothing store. The store knew where it was shipped, but refused to tell me because it said it protects the privacy of its customers -- even if someone else's credit card was used in the transaction. I took my story to the police, where the advice was: Guard your Social Security number. But since my brush with identity theft, I've been asked to turn over my Social Security number to several clerks.

Johan Helsingius, an Internet icon who for 3 1/2 years has championed anonymous communication over the global computer network by running a service that makes it possible, pulled the plug Friday on the machine known as anon.penet.fi. Civil liberties advocates said the move, prompted by a Finnish court decision that the anonymity of the service could be breached by court order, raised serious concerns about the future of anonymous speech on the rapidly growing network.

The order allegedly came from the top. Employees at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Van Nuys allege in court documents that during a visit to Los Angeles last year, the company's CEO, August Busch III, got wind of suspected drug use there. On Aug. 18 of last year, with the help of drug sniffing dogs, a random drug search and seizure was ordered. Security guards locked exit gates and refused to let employees off the grounds while the dogs patrolled the parking lots.

Two Orange County women sued Surflink, a computerized surf report, and America Online for $1 million Wednesday for allegedly posting pictures of them in bikinis without their permission. The women, Lyndee Ichikawa and Melinda Sykes, charge that in November 1995 the Huntington Beach online surf report placed pictures of them on its service where the images could be "downloaded" by anyone.