News & Commentary

In response to pressure from privacy advocates and an online petition signed by 55,000 of its members, Facebook has made some changes to its invasive ad system that we blogged about yesterday.

In August we blogged about privacy problems on the social networking site, Facebook, and its plans to unveil a new targeted advertising system. The system is now up and running. It not only analyzes your activity on Facebook , but also monitors your other Internet activities and reports them back to your Facebook friends in the form of advertisements.

A recent ballot initiative asked San Franciscans to decide whether they want a citywide municipal WiFi network. Almost two thirds of the city voted yes on measure J, the Citywide Wireless & Internet Network initiative, but they are unlikely to get their wish any time soon. EarthLink, the internet service provider that had planned to partner with San Francisco to provide free and low cost Internet access, has concluded that municipal WiFi networks are not going to be profitable in the near future.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security Privacy Office has announced a public workshop, CCTV: Developing Privacy Best Practices, December 17-18, 2007, at the Hilton Arlington Hotel (Ballston Metro Stop) in Arlington Virginia.

The ranking members of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, Democrat Herb Kohl from Wisconsin and Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah, have just sent a joint letter urging the FTC to thoroughly explore Google's planned $3.1 billion purchase of online marketing company, DoubleClick. Google has been taking substantial hits in the press for the last few months about its desired merger.

What happens when you mix political speech, clips of "The Daily Show" and self-styled YouTube video blogs? Last spring Allen Asch found out first hand when Viacom sent him takedown notices for copyright infringement.

Last week, the ACLU of Northern California, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and several other public interest groups released a set of fair use guidelines for user-generated content (UGC).

The California Research Bureau (CRB), the non-partisan government agency responsible for researching topics for the Governor and the State Legislature, has begun to tackle the thorny issue of RFID.

Yahoo! executives faced harsh criticism this week from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for the company's role in the Chinese government's arrest of journalist and democracy advocate Shi Tao.