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Photos, addresses, family ties, court documents, details from MySpace profiles -- the moment information is published online, it can be copied and re-posted, and often is.

There is no simple technology solution to protect children from bullying, pornography, sexual predation and other online threats, a new study says. The highly anticipated report -- results of a year-long study ordered by 49 state attorneys general -- found that "a combination of technologies, in concert with parental oversight, education, social services, law enforcement, and sound policies by social-network sites and service providers, may assist in addressing specific problems that minors face online," according to a draft of the report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The report also found that the risks that minors face on the Web -- notably bullying and harassment by peers -- aren't very different from those they face in the real world. The report is scheduled to be issued Wednesday by the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, led by Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Task-force members included representatives of several top Internet and security companies, including News Corp.'s MySpace, Google Inc., Time Warner Inc.'s AOL and Facebook Inc. (News Corp. also publishes the Journal.) The 278-page report is a boon for the Web companies, which have long argued that technology isn't the sole solution to the dangers kids face online. It is a disappointment for those in favor of stricter technological controls, such as age-verification and filtering tools.

One of my predictions for last year was that privacy would be a growing concern among mainstream users. I didn't repeat that prediction this year, but perhaps I should have. The reason? Apparently, younger web users seem to care more about privacy controls. Or at least, they use them more. According to Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly, more teenagers than adults use privacy controls on the social network, at a rate of 60% to about 25-30%. That's surprising given the conventional wisdom that younger Internet users tend not to care about the privacy of their data. A recent study from Computer Associates confirms that many teens are at least somewhat concerned with online privacy. That study showed that 79% of teens aged 13-17 who are members of a social networking site like MySpace or Facebook protect their profiles from the general Internet in some way (i.e., only allow friends or friends of friends to view their information). Profiles on Facebook, of course, are automatically protected from viewing by the Internet at large, but protecting them from the rest of your network requires additional steps. That teens are more likely to utilize Facebook's granular privacy controls points to one of two things that lead to the same conclusion: 1. Teens care more about online privacy than adults, or, 2. Teens are simply more aware of social networking privacy controls than adults.

Privacy is Dead. Long Live Privacy? at the 2007 Battle of Ideas conference hosted by the Institute of Ideas.New technology seems to have changed the meaning of privacy, affording individuals the possibility of sharing details of their hitherto private lives in unprecedented ways, from personal blogs to picture sharing and even 'social bookmarking'. For many of us, divulging intimate details of our private lives via social networking websites like MySpace and Facebook has become the norm. But information and communication technologies have also facilitated surveillance and data gathering by government and big businesses. While in some contexts we seem so ready to give up our privacy, in others we seem increasingly anxious to protect it.To what extent are new technologies responsible for the death of privacy? Are privacy concerns simply technophobic, or are we right to worry about a loss of control over personal information? Have new technologies and our enthusiastic adoption of them actually transformed our notions of public and private, and blown apart the wall dividing the two? Why do we worry about Tesco monitoring what we buy, when, according to Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy: 'You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it'? - IoI

How will Barack Obama's administration affect IT spending in the trenches, where technology decision makers are dealing with strapped budgets and a shaky economy? President Barack Obama's official campaign Web site is a model of how 21st century technology tools can boost a candidate's popularity, building significant buzz via blogs, IM applications and e-merchandising. And Obama's campaign wasn't confined to his own site either, because he chose to expand his presence on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Eons and BlackPlanet. His images and words also constantly popped up at outlets such as Flickr, Digg and YouTube. All these efforts made Obama an accessible, immediate and appealing figure to both younger voters and older ones who regularly connect to the Internet. Ultimately, they energized his campaign and helped secure a decisive victory for the nation's first African-American president. Certainly, Obama enters the White House with a reputation as one of the most-if not the most-tech-savvy chief executives ever. For starters, he's created the position of a federal chief technology officer to oversee the future of information technology for government agencies.