Web design blog

“The Belgian data protection authority has told Facebook to stop tracking users who logout or those that have never registered for the social network.”

The Belgian privacy commission has told Facebook to stop tracking the internet activities of people who have not registered with the site or have logged out, after a “staggering” report showed alleged breaches of EU privacy law.

“Facebook tramples on European and Belgian privacy laws”, the data protection authority said in a statement. “Facebook has shown itself particularly miserly in giving precise answers,” it continued, adding that the results of its investigation were “disconcerting” and that it would take legal action if its recommendations were not followed.

Willem Debeuckelaere, president of the Belgian privacy commission, said that the way Facebook is treating its users’ private lives “without respect needs tackling”, and that “it’s make or break time.”

According to a report commissioned by the Belgian data protection agency Facebook has been tracking users on a long-term basis who visit any page — be it a fan page, profile or any other portion of the site that does not require a Facebook account to visit — belonging to the Facebook.com domain.

The opinion published on Friday noted that because Facebook has the power to link internet users’ browsing habits to their real identity, social network interactions and sensitive data including medical information, religious, sexual and political preferences, it is in a unique position compared to most of the other cases of so-called “third-party tracking”.

[Source: The Guardian]

Via BoingBoing.

“Today, the bar has been raised for federal government website reboots with the relaunch of the new FCC.gov, now available in beta at beta.FCC.gov.”

The new site is organized around the three primary activities: file a public comment, file a complaint, and search for information. The insight for that redesign came through a combination of online traffic analysis, requests for information through the call center, and conversations with FCC employees.

Some changes that go along with the new FCC.gov are literally tiny, like the newly launched FCC.us URL shortener. Others look small but are a big deal, like secure HTTPS web browsing across FCC.gov. Other upgrades work on small devices, enabling interested parties to watch proceedings wherever they are: the fcc.gov/live livestream now includes the ability to sense the device that someone is using and convert on the fly to HTML5 or Flash. That livestream can also be embedded on other websites.

All of those upgrades add up to a greater whole. Broadly speaking, FCC managing director Steve Van Roekel and his team of software developers, designers, new media and IT security staff have worked hard to bring Web 2.0 principles into the FCC’s online operations. Those principles include elements of open data, platform thinking, collective intelligence, and lightweight social software. What remains to be seen in the years ahead is how much incorporating Web 2.0 into operations will change how the FCC operates as a regulator.

Nearly two years ago, Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle asked how Web 2.0 technologies could transform the actual practice of governing. The FCC has made a big step toward that vision, at a cost of approximately $1.35 million in total development costs. “Everything should be an API,” said Van Roekel, speaking in a briefing on Monday. “The experiences that live outside of FCC.gov should interact back into it. In a perfect world, no one should have to visit the FCC website.” Instead, he said, you’d go to your favorite search engine or favorite app and open data from the FCC’s platform would be baked into it.

— Alex Howard @ oreilly.com

“Everything should be an API” — words guaranteed to make strong programmers weep for joy

— See [categorySeeAlso slug=”application-programming-interface”]

Also of interest, the new FCC site runs on Drupal:

Specifically, theFCC.gov open source redesign runs on Drupal, like Energy.gov, House.gov and WhiteHouse.gov. The FCC also considered Sharepoint, Documentum, WordPress and Ruby on Rails before ultimately going with Drupal. The use of Drupal at the White House was a “strong validator” for that choice, said Van Roekel. As the White House has done, Van Roekel said that the FCC will contribute code back to the Drupal community.

Via Boing Boing.