Cody Taylor

An anonymous reader writes “In response to Google’s recently announced plans to expand the tracking of users, the international anti-advertising magazine Adbusters proposes that we collectively embark on a civil disobedience campaign of intentional, automated ‘click fraud’ in order to undermine Google’s advertising program in order to force Google to adopt a pro-privacy corporate policy. They have released a GreaseMonkey script that automatically clicks on all AdSense ads.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes “In response to Google’s recently announced plans to expand the tracking of users, the international anti-advertising magazine Adbusters proposes that we collectively embark on a civil disobedience campaign of intentional, automated ‘click fraud’ in order to undermine Google’s advertising program in order to force Google to adopt a pro-privacy corporate policy. They have released a GreaseMonkey script that automatically clicks on all AdSense ads.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Yale legal scholar suggests a radical reinterpretation of the Fourth Amendment, in which “security” replaces “privacy” as the guiding principle.

In an apparent privacy error that underscores some of the biggest problems surrounding cloud-based services, we’re hearing that Google has sent a notice to a number of users of its Document and Spreadsheets products stating that it may have inadvertently shared some of their documents with contacts who were never granted access to them.

An anonymous reader writes “Wired has a story about Rob Spence, a Canadian filmmaker who plans to have a mini camera installed in his prosthetic eye. ‘A camera module will have to be connected to a transmitter inside the prosthetic eye that can broadcast the captured video footage. To boost the signal, he says he can wear another transmitter on his belt. A receiver attached to a hard drive in a backpack could capture that information and then send it to another device that uploads everything to a web site in real time. … Even though his project is still in its early stages, Spence says many people have already told him they wouldn’t be comfortable being filmed. “People are more scared of a center-left documentary maker with an eye than the 400 ways they are filmed every day at the school, the subway, the mall,” he says. He hopes he will help get people thinking about privacy, how surveillance cameras and the footage they record are being used and accessed.'” Spence runs a blog for the ‘Eyeborg Project,’ as he calls it, and has recently posted a video about the progress they’re making.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

narramissic writes “Having already abandoned ebooks once, Barnes & Noble is jumping back into ebooks with the purchase this week of ebook seller Fictionwise. Why is the format suddenly hot? Look no further than the top 10 Fictionwise bestsellers, says blogger Peter Smith. Once again it seems like ‘porn is blazing a path to a new media format. Of the top 10 bestsellers under the ‘Multiformat’ category, nine are tagged ‘erotica’ and the last is ‘dark fantasy.’ Need more proof that folks (let’s take a leap and call them women) who read ‘bodice rippers’ like the privacy of ebooks? Author Samantha Lucas (who writes for publishers like Cobblestone Press and Siren Publishing) tells Smith that she sells almost all of her novels in ebook format.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

onehitwonder writes in with a CIO opinion piece arguing that potential employees need to stand up to employers who snoop the Web for insights into their after-work activities, often disqualifying them as a result. “Employers are increasingly trolling the web for information about prospective employees that they can use in their hiring decisions. Consequently, career experts advise job seekers to not post any photos, opinions or information on blogs and social networking websites (like Slashdot) that a potential employer might find remotely off-putting. Instead of cautioning job seekers to censor their activity online, we job seekers and defenders of our civil liberties should tell employers to stop snooping and to stop judging our behavior outside of work, writes CIO.com Senior Online Editor Meridith Levinson. By basing professional hiring decisions on candidates’ personal lives and beliefs, employers are effectively legislating people’s behavior, and they’re creating an online environment where people can’t express their true beliefs, state their unvarnished opinions, be themselves, and that runs contrary to the free, communal ethos of the Web. Employers that exploit the Web to snoop into and judge people’s personal lives infringe on everyone’s privacy, and their actions verge on discrimination.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that in an apparent response to privacy complaints, the White House has quietly moved off of YouTube as a method for serving the President’s weekly video address. Choosing instead to use a Flash-based solution and Akamai’s content delivery network, this comes just days after YouTube began to roll out their own new policies regarding privacy of visitors.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bruce Schneier recently wrote another essay on privacy for the BBC concentrating on how data seems to be the “pollution of the information age” and where this seems to be leading. “We’re not going to stop the march of technology, just as we cannot un-invent the automobile or the coal furnace. We spent the industrial age relying on fossil fuels that polluted our air and transformed our climate. Now we are working to address the consequences. (While still using said fossil fuels, of course.) This time around, maybe we can be a little more proactive. Just as we look back at the beginning of the previous century and shake our heads at how people could ignore the pollution they caused, future generations will look back at us – living in the early decades of the information age – and judge our solutions to the proliferation of data.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.