...Amazon now has what every storefront lusts for: the knowledge of what other stores your customers are shopping in and what prices they’re being offered there. What’s more, Amazon is getting this not by expensive, proactive scraping the Web, like Google has to do; they’re getting it passively by offering a simple caching service, and letting Fire users do the hard work of crawling the Web. In essence the Fire user base is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, scraping the Web for free and providing Amazon with the most valuable cache of user behavior in existence. .... This is the first shot in the new war for replacing the Internet with a privatized merchant data-aggregation network.

VERY interesting poll by The Associated Press on how much #privacy Americans are willing to give up for nat'l #security

From the @Guardian: Pakistan orders ISPs to snitch on users who rely on encryption technology to browse web. #privacy

Last year, Zimmermann announced software called Zfone, which wraps voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls in an additional layer of security. Today, Zimmermann is busy trying to convince VoIP makers to glue Zfone into their own products and announced the first licensing deal this week.

One of the most potentially intrusive technologies for profiling and targeting Internet users with ads is on the verge of a comeback, two years after an outcry by privacy advocates in the U.S. and Britain appeared to kill it.

The technology, known as "deep packet inspection," is capable of reading and analyzing the "packets" of data traveling across the Internet. It can be far more powerful than "cookies" and other techniques commonly used to track people online because it can be used to monitor all online activity, not just Web browsing. Spy agencies use the technology for surveillance.

FBI director visits Google, Facebook this week in bid "to make it easier to wiretap Internet users" #cnet #privacy #calea

Using social networks to make recommendations will always compromise privacy, according to a mathematical proof of the limits of privacy.

A new platform for analyzing when, where, and how smart-phone apps are used will soon be available to thousands of mobile developers.

Bringing Open Government to Courts @harlanyu On RECAP and access to court records. #opengov #gov20 #g2s #privacy

Good opinion piece in @wsj: Ten Fallacies About Web #Privacy I'm planning to talk about this at #g2s next week #gov20

RT @HilliconValley: O'Reilly worried about consumer #privacy 'witch-hunt' (We'll be talking about this at #g2s )

the Eric Schmidt privacy/name change issue... v. funny

RT @JulesPolonetsky Excited to be speaking for this first time on #privacy at @timoreilly #Gov20 #g2s

people on Facebook who are going to a strip club #privacy #thesepeoplehavenoidea

Researchers have demonstrated how it is possible to use GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) data along with a few tools to track down a person’s mobile phone number and their location, and even listen in on calls and voicemail messages.

How Facebook boiled the frog: /via @MParekh tip @techmeme

Either way, the company said, "We'll know." /via @cw

Can you have *too many* followers on Twitter? @pomeranian99 thinks maybe so http://bit.ly/dnPzCo

Our digital bread crumbs can add up to something bigger. http://bit.ly/N8NEI ^VG

Electronic brain implants are becoming increasingly common in both research and medicine but little attention has been paid to the digital security of these grey matter gateways. A new article in Neurosurgical Focus discusses their potential back doors and security weaknesses.

Judge Rules Telecoms Have Immunity Under Unconstitutional FISA Amendments Act

Dozens of boxes with thousands of patients' personal information and medical histories was dumped in a recycling bin outside the a Goodwill store in Cedar Park

Local councils, health authorities and hundreds of other public bodies are to be given the power to access details of everyone's personal text, emails and internet use under Home Office proposals published yesterday. Ministers want to make it mandatory for telephone and internet companies to keep details of all personal internet traffic for at least 12 months so it can be accessed for investigations into crime or other threats to public safety. The Home Office last night admitted that the measure will mean companies have to store "a billion incidents of data exchange a day". As the measure is the result of an EU directive, the data will be made available to public investigators across Europe.

snuggly the security bear

Even by the dismal standards of what passes for a national debate on intelligence and civil liberties, last week was a really bad week.

How Does Bruce Schneier Protect His Laptop Data? With His Fists -- and PGP

SafeCache is a Mozilla Firefox browser extension that protects your privacy by silently defending against cache-based tracking techniques. It allows embedded content to be cached, but segments the cache according to the domain of the originating page.