"The Prince Group, the holding company that owns Blackwater, has been building an operation that will sniff out intelligence about business-friendly gov'ts, overseas regulations and global political developments for clients in industry and gov't."

"So the question is not whether Google will always do the right thing—it hasn’t, and it won’t. It’s whether Google, with its insatiable thirst for your personal data, has become the greatest threat to privacy ever known,"

"Advertisers are harnessing technology that targets and follows Internet users on their journeys through cyberspace, collecting data and tracking behavior."

"In many states, it is legal to hire, fire or promote based on what a company finds out about you in your nonwork world. ... A simple Google search has made uncovering someone's personal life that much easier."

"with the added benefit of having my personal correspondence, my friends, family and contacts, my reading lists, my schedule, my location, and my search history all stored under one roof for easy data mining and subpoena! How, er, convenient."

"Dozens of alerts on anti-war meetings and peaceful protests appear to have remained in the database even after analysts had decided that they posed no threat to military bases or personnel."

Sites have emerged offering advice to parents on monitoring their children's social networking profiles (for drug references, sexual photos, etc.) or offering to monitor, decipher, and send reports to parents (just parents?...) for a subscription fee.

"But now some college lawyers and professors are warning that one of the most widely used plagiarism-detection services may be trampling on students' copyrights and privacy."

"I don't want to be forced to hide everything about myself. If some potential employer doesn't like my blog, that's an employer I don't need. If the government wants to persecute me for what's contained in my stored messages, then I will fight back..."

""What used to be private diary entries, or letters, or personal revelations, have now become accessible ‘public records’. We all need to realize that employers and colleagues in the future will have access to our personal postings for years to come"

"More employers are looking online to learn about their employees. Some people are putting sensitive personal information on Web sites, such as myspace.com and friendster.com. And some employers are watching."

"New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks."

"Prior to the internet, investigators would use college yearbooks, bulletin board postings, alumni newsletters, and other tools ... Today, they use the power of the subpoena to obtain online records..."