Bye, bye, privacy by proximity. The next generation of social networking looms near: Google’s Friend Connect goes live tonight.

Village Voice Blogs: Top 10 Reasons why NSA Wiretapping is Bad for America.

Apparently, as a result of the USA PATRIOT Act, if you use Gmail,  you violate Canadian and European privacy laws. [via]

Just thought we’d let you know…

I’ve been trying to come up with an interesting approach to discussing Juicy Campus on this blog. I wanted some way to express why the site is simultaneously awesome and horrifying.

Wouldn’t you know - Siva beat me to it. Check out his brief thoughts on Juicy Campus, privacy policy, and reputation management.

Inside Higher Ed: Major FERPA revisions in the works.

In other words: FERPA goes PATRIOT.

Have you used gMail’s archiving software? You might want to read this… [via]

In short: DON’T!

A brief collection of items we almost missed while frantically sifting through the bargain bin of IF related stories this week:

• Network World: India to Blackberry - give it up or get out! (God, it feels like prom all over again.)
• Reuters UK/Ars Technica: Syria and Tim Couch should be friends. Sure, this guy can come, too.
• Zero Paid: It’s hard out there for a pimp activist. Yeah, not so much for pimps these days.
• Bianet: US (big pot) calls Turkey (little kettle) oppressive (black).
• Reuters: Cuba lifts ban on DVD and computer sales. Though not on air conditioners, so watch for legions of Cubans sweating their balls off while catching up on the final two seasons of The Twilight Zone.
• NYT Blogs: The Internet Traffic Challenge: The Policy Dimension.
• HuffPo: Tragic headline, decent article.

That about wraps it up for me. I know I’ve totally ignored the OK Go goes to Washington thing this week, but I’ve got something in the works. In the meantime, pacify yourself by watching their treadmill video on YouTube for like the billionth time.

While you do that, I’m going to go catch up on Lost.

Happy weekending!

The government’s not so much your big brother as your stalker ex…

The ACLU is looking into the unlawfully revived “Total Information Awareness” program. The name pretty much says it all, but basically the NSA has resumed the database mining of Americans’ personal records in search of “suspicious patterns.”

And the civil liberties group’s Surveillance Clock (digital!) moves one minute closer to midnight.

Here you go folks…

Ars Technica: Major cellular carrier giving FBI wide-open access to all calls on its network.

(more…)

Original image here.