I've commented about some of the privacy & surveillance implications of adding location meta tags in photos, everyone snapping photos in public with their cellphone cameras, and the rise of amateur surveillance and data-mining. Many of these concerns are repeated…
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More on Facebook and the Contextual Integrity of Personal Information Flows
There has been an interesting discussion on the Association of Internet Researchers mailing list (and across the blogosphere) regarding the addition of feeds at Facebook and the nature of the reaction by its users. Many have criticized the reaction by…
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Critical Perspectives on Social Software and Web 2.0
Anders Albrechtslund has organized an amazing Social Software and Web 2.0: Critical Perspectives and Challenges for Research and Business seminar and workshop hosted by Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark on October 6, 2006: Social software and Web 2.0 are concepts (or…
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TrackMeNot Upgraded
The TrackMeNot lightweight browser extension that protects web searchers against surveillance and data-profiling has been upgraded with some important features: New in version 0.4.x Dynamic query sets ** Option to select search-engines Added statusbar context-menu New windows for log/query display…
Facebook Changes Cause Rift in Flow of Personal Information
Slashdot reports that Facebook, the college student networking site, launched changes to their web site this morning, provoking a massive and immediate response, and not the one the company had hoped for. Hundreds of protest 'Groups' formed, the largest of…
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Volokh Conspiracy: Data-Mining and the Fourth Amendment
The Volokh Conspiracy reports on a Sixth Circuit decision in a Fourth Amendment case that addresses whether querying a database triggers Fourth Amendment protection. The majority concludedthat it does not: If the government collected the data in the database in…
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User-provided Labor on Web 2.0
Putting the cart in front of the horse, I'm starting to think about my post-dissertation research which will focus on the value & ethical implications of the emerging Web 2.0 infrastructure. One issue that seems to frequently emerge is the…
Opting Out of Online Data Vendors
The Privacy Rights Clearninghouse provides a very useful list of online data vendors along with URLs and instructions to remove your information from their databases.
Amateur Data Mining in Google Calendar
The Dumb Little Man blog reveals how easy it can be to figure out who a person is, where they live, and what their daily routine & activities are by simply searching through public online calendars (like Google Calendar) and…
Google to Give User Data To Brazilian Authorities
Here's a good example of the kind of information Google collects from users of its non-search products: The Washington Post is reporting that Google will comply with a Brazilian court order to release data on users of its Orkut social…
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