Stories by Jay Cline

Setting up a common privacy standard now will earn user trust.

Last week’s announcement by EU privacy regulators that they may start issuing Safe Harbor fines is their strongest position to date, but several indicators point toward a compromise outcome.

How much do companies around the world spend each year on data privacy services to fix the problems we read about in the headlines every day? Nobody as far as I can tell has published an answer to this question. So this month I set out to pull together the best available data points on the market.

EU privacy regulators say U.S. privacy laws are too weak to protect EU personal data. But a new analysis of 358 privacy-enforcement actions paints the opposite picture.

Revelations in 2013 about NSA surveillance and the power of big-data analytics suggest the age of privacy is over. But a new 'privacy death index' places us far from the tipping point.

What if NSA leaker Edward Snowden hasn't been reckless but instead is following a carefully thought-out plan? If so, we can make some guesses about what revelations will come next.

EU privacy hawks and U.S. cloud providers have seen their near-term outlooks swing following the former NSA contractor's disclosures.

Audits can be expensive, and fines and compensatory actions could mean millions more. Here are the things you should be looking out for.

Last week, Google followed through on its plan to consolidate its 60 privacy policies into a single approach. Some privacy advocates and regulators are worried that Google will now be able to know and track people like never before. But on the scale of all the bad things that could happen to our privacy, where does Google's change in approach rank? Have we crossed a Rubicon toward the obliteration of personal privacy, or is a new day dawning for more control over our personal data?

Anybody responsible for data privacy soon discovers a hard truth -- privacy compliance is a highly manual undertaking. Whether it's tracking where all of the company's data is or keeping up with changes in obscure privacy laws, the privacy professional is often sentenced to a life behind spreadsheets. If privacy didn't deal with cutting-edge social issues, it might contend for the most tedious job in the corporate center.

Privacy advocates' criticism over recent moves by Facebook and Google Buzz begs the question: Is privacy possible in a social network? And, if so, which social-network service does it the best?