James Rule writes for Los Angeles Times, August 3, 2015
Establishing a right to the privacy of our data, and creating meaningful choice over how it can be used, might not take privacy off the endangered species list. But it would forestall its total extinction.
James Rule writes for Los Angeles Times, April 27, 2015
You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to foresee a Faustian bargain—consent to a totally monitored world—emerging from these trends. Our greatest concern should not be unauthorized access to our data, but access by interests rightfully entitled to exploit any data known to exist.
James Rule writes for The Sacramento Bee, September 10, 2014
A broad coalition of civic-minded parties should call for creation of a national monument to those slain without justification by those entrusted with upholding the law. Both public and private funding should be sought for this effort.
James Rule writes for The New York Times, June 11, 2013
While President Obama has conveniently described the costs of what appears to be pervasive surveillance of Americans’ telecommunications connections as “modest encroachments on privacy,” what we are actually witnessing is a sea change in the kinds of things that the government can monitor in the lives of ordinary citizens.
James Rule writes for The New York Times, March 18, 2013
As recent court decisions in the United States and Europe have shown, ordinary citizens have reason to be uncomfortable with Google’s version of “the mind of God” monitoring their whereabouts and Wi-Fi use. Worse, all around the world we now see the powers of the Internet mobilized as weapons in some especially nasty struggles: cyberwarfare, hacking and political repression.
James Rule writes for The New York Times, June 21, 2012
Ordinary people today confront well-financed, sophisticated organizations capable of carpet-bombing the public with insistent one-way exhortations…. The victims don’t have a chance in a million of reaching the harassing callers to share a piece of their indignant minds. The courts have gone back and forth over history balancing rights of free expression against those of privacy. But ultimately the law does recognize a distinction between communication and harassment.
The New York Times, October 4, 2010 by Tara Siegel Bernard
http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/how-to-stop-rogue-automatic-payments/
James B. Rule … recently explored the issue in this article after his bank branch told him it could not cancel a regularly scheduled deduction from his checking account. Though his issue was ultimately resolved, he said he couldn’t help wondering: What would happen if the company refused to stop pulling money from his account?
Counter Punch, September 17, 2010 by James Rule
http://www.counterpunch.org/rule09172010.html
Disagreements inevitably occur—with cell phone companies, internet service providers, even the gym you’ve signed up with for a monthly fee. As every consumer will have noticed, many service providers are enormously easy to communicate with when one wants to open an account—and virtually impossible to reach, when something goes wrong…. There has to be an easy, cost-free way for customers to pull the plug on such arrangements, when their bank accounts are hemorrhaging, and no one at the other end is listening.
The Washington Post, Short Stack Blog, February 2, 2010 by James B. Rule
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/shortstack/2010/02/worse_than_identity_theft_lega.html
Nobody really wants to live in a world totally stripped of private domains and experiences. Still, entrepreneurial zeal in the merchandizing of privacy-eroding activities only seems to grow with time.
The Sacramento Bee, July 14, 2009 by James B. Rule
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/2023379.html
Creating an authoritative, fully centralized trove of all medical data on every American would focus and intensify demand for routine and acknowledged access by a range of government and private-sector interests. The ultimate result could be to render anyone’s medical history about as private as his or her credit or marital history—that is, not very private at all.