Guest post by Lance Goddard published in JD Supra.

“Can a person remain anonymous in today’s surveillance society, with heat sensors, satellite tracking, biometric identification, traffic cameras, security monitoring, RFID tags and vehicle broadcast devices in place and expanding? When we reach the point where the government can easily know without coercion where every person stands or sleeps at every moment of every day, then the logic of NAACP v. Alabama no longer applies. The state will not need to compel dissident organizations to provide their membership lists, it will simply know who attended all the meetings.” (No Place to Hide: First Amendment Protection for Location Privacy by Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, PLLC)

Does the above notion of a ‘surveillance society’ sound like a scary future? Whether or not it is here yet, you may already be giving up more rights to privacy than you know when you’re:

Surfing the web…

“Like regular cookies, supercookies are legal means to track a user’s online activity. But there are several differences that cause supercookies to pique the concerns of data privacy advocates. Unlike regular cookies, supercookies circumvent a user’s privacy settings and are hard to detect and remove. They are located in different files on the computer … and cannot be found by browsers’ cookie detectors. Moreover – and this is one of the big issues for data privacy people – supercookies can regenerate user profiles after regular cookies are deleted.” (FTC Is Asked to Crack Down on ‘Supercookies’ as Data Privacy Violation by Ifrah Law – Strategic Defense in Federal Investigations)

Driving your car…

“… The government, on the other hand, argued that cars traveling on public roadways do not have the same Fourth Amendment privacy protections afforded citizens in their home and placing a GPS device on the car to track those same movements is not a “trespass” under the Fourth Amendment.” (Does What Happens in Your Car; Stay in Your Car? Maybe not, say OnStar and the Washington, D.C. Police Department by Jaburg Wilk)

Sharing photos with Mom…

“Photographs posted on Facebook are not private, and Facebook postings are not the same as personal mail. [Plaintiff] points to nothing specific that leads the Court to believe that discovery would cause unreasonable embarrassment. Bald assertions of embarrassment are insufficient… . Facebook posts are not truly private and there is little harm in disclosing that information in discovery.” (Another Excellent Facebook E-Discovery Opinion by Dechert LLP)

Applying for a job…

“… 54% of employers surveyed in 2011 acknowledged using the Internet to research job candidates. The actual number of employers using the Internet is probably higher, and sometimes companies may not even be aware that their employees are researching job candidates and factoring that information into their evaluations.” (Legal Issues Surrounding Social Media Background Checks by Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP)

“Studies show that an overwhelming number of employers conduct some form of pre-employment background check on prospective employees. There are many good reasons to do so: hiring qualified, safe and productive employees, preventing theft or workplace violence, and maintaining employee morale, just to name a few. While no one doubts the need to properly screen an applicant’s background and qualifications, how you go about doing so and what criteria you use can potentially expose your organization to significant liability.” (Pre-Employment Background Checks: The Cure Can Be As Bad As The Disease by Warner Norcross & Judd)

Going mobile…

“[A] push for mobile app privacy policies comes on the heels of Senator Franken’s Congressional hearing in early May after high-profile coverage about a location database discovered in Apple iOS software for iPhones. That tracking file, which contained information about users’ locations using data from Wi-Fi hot spots and cell towers, was extensively covered by major news organizations. Google’s Android software has similar tracking capabilities and creates a similar log file.” (Tracking the Push for Privacy – As Critics Call on Mobile Applications to Include Privacy Policies, Developers Should Be Aware of Compliance and Risk by Poyner Spruill LLP)

“According to the FTC, Frostwire had configured the Android application’s default settings so that, immediately upon installation and set-up, it would publicly share users’ photos, videos, documents, and other files stored on those devices.” (FTC Settlement Bars Company from Using Default Privacy Settings That Share Consumers’ Files by Loeb & Loeb LLP)

Visiting the doctor…

“The complaints alleged that [University of California at Los Angeles Health System] employees repeatedly and impermissibly looked at these [celebrity] patients’ electronic [personal health information]. As part of its investigation, OCR found that from 2005-2008 unauthorized employees repeatedly looked at the electronic PHI of numerous other UCLAHS patients.” (SZD Health Law Strategist: Vigorous HIPAA Privacy Rule Enforcement; Impact of Sunshine Law on Physicians by Schottenstein Zox & Dunn Co., LPA)

“Security breaches occur most often by the careless treatment of patient files in doctors’ offices, hospitals, insurance companies or life science organizations. These problems can be as simple as leaving a document visible to others, posting comments on Facebook or conducting improper elevator data is used to submit fraudulent claims and to seek medical care in somebody else’s name. This isn’t about the high-treachery of computer hacking, but the low-treachery of clueless, careless or corrupt medical personnel.” (Patient Privacy Is Compromised by Identity Theft by Patrick Malone & Associates P.C. | DC Injury Lawyers)