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Oh, the double-edged sword of Twitter. It's not nice when it makes PR people and reporters look like asses, as Jennifer Leggio will post tomorrow. But it's a whole new can o' beans when it affects political power. And yup, Twitter did in fact (or not - see below) alter the balance of power in Virginia (the state capital of which is Richmond, Va., for what it's worth) this week, as Talking Points Memo blogs: Yesterday the Virginia GOP came very close to taking control of the state Senate, nearly luring a Democratic Senator to switch parties and put them at a 20-20 tie, which would have been broken by the Republican Lt. Governor. Then Jeff Frederick, a state legislator and the party chairman, ruined it all by Twittering this: Big news coming out of Senate: Apparently one dem is either switching or leaving the dem caucus. Negotiations for power sharing underway. The Dems then read the message, quickly mobilized to talk the renegade out of it, and stopped the GOP coup before it could happen. Here's Frederick's exciting presence on Twitter, featuring such nail-biting updates as: * Had great meeting; dinner @ Bookbinders; now at Lucky Strike/Cap Results party. Tired * Meeting w/ Senator about a bill he wants me to support. And then this intriguing post: Meeting w/ HseMajLdr abt my senate post earlier.He gave me info, which came f/ a Senator who said it was public. That will be a fun meeting. At any rate Frederick pointed to a blog post from conservative Roanoke County, which says the whole Twitter story is b.s., that the Dems already knew about the rogue House member before Frederick ever Tweeted. Even so, the strange power of Twitter is now well-established.

With all the attention Google StreetView's clash with a baby deer evoked, it can be easy to overlook the tool's crime-fighting good side. Not too long ago, StreetView was instrumental in returning a kidnapped Massachusetts girl safely to her home, and just recently, it helped a Swiss police team detect a 1.2-acre marijuana field and nab the gang responsible. As with all things Google, you have to take the bad with the good. And the good can be pretty good, as reported in the Worcester Telegram. When 9-year-old Natalie Maltais was kidnapped by her grandmother and taken to a motel in rural Virginia, Athol police were able to track her down using her cellphone and Google StreetView. The cellphone's GPS data focused on a 300-foot area in Natural Bridge, Va. Using StreetView, the Worcester cops plugged in the coordinates of the area, navigated around a bit and saw a nearby motel that looked promising. When they sent Virginia police to the site, they found the grandmother along with the girl, and returned her safely to her legal guardians. A happy ending. Similarly, the AP yesterday reported that Swiss police used Google Earth to discover the pot field and make several arrests. While working the case, the police used Google Earth to zero in on a suspect's residence, only to stumble upon the field. Although it had been camouflaged by corn planted all along its perimeter, the weed field couldn't hide from Google's Earth's piercing satellite gaze. The find led to the arrest of 16 suspects who have allegedly sold up to 7 tons of hashish and marijuana, with an annual turnover of 3 million to 10 million francs (or $2.5 million to $8.64 million) per year. So yes, while Google can be insensitive at times, especially when it comes to images uploaded by StreetView, it's also a proven force for good in the world. In other words, a tool is only as good (or bad) as the person using it. Google doesn't kill Bambis, people do.

Johns Hopkins is alerting more than 10,000 of its hospital patients that they may have been victims of identity theft. An investigation suggests a former employee who worked in patient registration may have been linked to a scheme to create fake drivers' licenses in Virginia, according to this letter from Baltimore-based Hopkins to the Maryland attorney general's office. Most of the patients are at very low risk, the letter says - they're included because the former employee accessed their records in the course of her work. But a few dozen have already been identified as likely victims, and a few hundred who have Virginia mailing addresses and whose records were accessed by the former employee may also be at risk. Hopkins is offering those patients credit monitoring, fraud resolution and identity-theft reimbursement for certain expenses.

The Army says it's investigating allegations that eight male soldiers took pictures and video of as many as 21 female soldiers in their unit showering at Fort Dix. The photos were allegedly taken last fall, before the 266th Military Police Company of the Virginia Army National Guard shipped out to Iraq in December. Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said Friday the Army is conducting a criminal investigation and that no charges have been filed. Fort Dix spokeswoman Carolee Nisbet says the allegations are disappointing. She said most soldiers who train at the New Jersey installation before being deployed "live up to the Army values." The 266th is now serving in Basra. A spokesman for the Virginia Army National Guard did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

The FBI and Virginia State Police are searching for hackers who demanded that the state pay them a $10 million ransom by Thursday for the return of millions of personal pharmaceutical records they say they stole from the state's prescription drug database. The hackers claim to have accessed 8 million patient records and 35 million prescriptions collected by the Prescription Monitoring Program. "This was an intentional criminal act against the commonwealth by somebody who was trying to harm others," Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) said. "There are breaches that happen by accident or glitches that you try to work out. It's difficult to foil every criminal that may want to do something against you." Although the hackers had threatened to sell the data if they did not receive payment by Thursday, the deadline passed with no immediate sign that they followed through. ad_icon State officials say it is unclear whether the hackers were able to view the patient records, as they have claimed. If the theft is real, it would be the most serious cybercrime the state has faced in recent history.

In a study that is unlikely to find favor among privacy advocates, researchers from two academic institutions warned that increased efforts to protect the privacy of health data will hamper the adoption of electronic medical records systems. The study, conducted by researchers at MIT and the University of Virginia, said EMR adoption is often slowest in states with strong regulations for safeguarding the privacy of medical records. On average, the number of hospitals deploying EMR systems was up to 30% lower in states where health care providers are forced to comply with strong privacy laws than it was in states with less stringent privacy requirements. That's because privacy rules often made it harder and more expensive for hospitals to exchange and transfer patient information, thereby reducing the value of an EMR system, the study found.

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The US government has now adopted a policy of fostering the adoption of electronic medical records (EMR). The policy is intended to increase the efficiency of the US healthcare system, thereby lowering costs and reducing the incidence of preventable errors. At the same time, through its The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rules, the government has set minimum standards for the security of those records. These two goals-privacy and security of these records, along with their free interchange among medical providers-can easily wind up at odds with each other. A recent study that looked at the role of state privacy laws in EMR adoption suggests that the problem is very real, as state privacy laws seem to inhibit the use of EMR by hospitals located there. The authors, based at MIT and the University of Virginia, line up a variety of data that validate their suggestion that privacy and the use of EMR may require a careful balance. So, for example, they cite some highly publicized lapses when it comes to the maintenance of patient privacy: someone once offered the records of 200,000 patients for sale on Craigslist, while hospitals have seen their own employees attempt to get at the electronic files of famous patients. Perhaps more significantly, the authors suggest that the public, as represented by their legislators, has concerns about the privacy of EMR. They found that states that have passed their own privacy laws to supplement the HIPAA rules tend to have a higher percentage of their populace signed up for the Do Not Call Registry, indicating a corresponding individual-level interest in maintaining privacy. So, they looked at whether these laws had any impact on the adoption of EMR by hospitals located in each state.

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U.S. lawmakers plan to introduce privacy legislation that would limit how Internet service providers can track their users, despite reports that no U.S. ISPs are using such technologies except for legitimate security reasons. Representative Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, and three privacy experts urged lawmakers Thursday at a hearing before the House Energy Commerce subcommittee to pass comprehensive online privacy legislation in the coming months. Advocates of new legislation focused mainly on so-called deep packet inspection (DPI), a form of filtering that network operators can use to examine the content of packets as they travel across the Internet. While DPI can be used to filter spam and identify criminals, the technology raises serious privacy concerns, Boucher said. "Its privacy-intrusion potential is nothing short of frightening," he added. "The thought that a network operator could track a user's every move on the Internet, record the details of every search and read every e-mail ... is alarming."

A former Miss West Virginia has won a $7.2 (NZ$12.6) million verdict against nine internet companies that tried to sell pornographic videos they falsely claimed featured her. A jury in US District Court in Clarksburg on Wednesday ordered each defendants to pay Allison Williams $800,000 for damaging the 2003 beauty queen's reputation and invading her privacy. Williams' attorney is appealing US District Judge Irene M. Kelley's decision to dismiss 28 other defendants in the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Cayman Islands, Canada and South Africa that allegedly took part in distributing the bogus videos. The videos surfaced in the fall of 2004. The videos show a woman that they claim to be, but isn't Williams, engaged in sex in the back of a television news truck.

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The debate on Internet privacy has begun in Congress. I had a chance to sit down recently with Representative Rick Boucher, the long-serving Virginia Democrat, who has just replaced Ed Markey, the Democrat from Massachusetts, as the chairman of the House Subcommittee looking after telecommunications, technology and the Internet. Mr. Boucher is widely regarded as one of the most technologically savvy members of Congress. As he ticked off his top priorities for his panel, most involved the pressing demands of telecommunications regulation. There is a law governing how local TV stations are carried on satellite broadcasters that needs to be renewed. There is the Universal Service Fund, which takes money from most telephone customers to pay for rural service to be improved. And there is the conversion to digital television and the investments in rural broadband to be supervised. But high on his list is a topic that is very much under his discretion: passing a bill to regulate the privacy of Internet users. "Internet users should be able to know what information is collected about them and have the opportunity to opt out," he said. While he hasn't written the bill yet, Mr. Boucher said that he, working with Representative Cliff Stearns, the Florida Republican who is the ranking minority member on the subcommittee, wants to require Web sites to disclose how they collect and use data, and give users the option to opt out of any data collection. That's not a big change from what happens now, at least on most big sites.

Some consumers say they like the way Internet retailers will suggest new purchases to them based on what they've bought previously. Others feel creeped out when a banner ad seems to know a bit too much about their Web surfing habits. It's called behavioral advertising, and it's central to the business success of all manner of Internet commerce, from bookstores to newspapers. The practice needs regulation, says Rep. Rick Boucher , the Virginia Democrat who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet. Boucher says legislation to protect consumer privacy online will spur people to surf more. But Internet advertising companies are not happy about regulation, especially because Boucher's plan would require, in some cases, that consumers agree in advance before their surfing habits could be tracked. Such an approach "would really be a sea change in the U.S. regulatory framework," says Mike Zaneis, vice president for public policy at the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Virtually all consumer protection laws, he says, permit people to opt out of solicitation, for instance, with a "do not call" registry. For the Internet, Congress has done almost nothing. "To suddenly move toward a draconian opt-in standard," he says, "would really be damaging not just to businesses but consumers." Zaneis, whose group includes such news heavyweights as the New York Times Co. and Conde Nast Publications, says now is not the time to upend Internet companies' business models, right when the economy is in the tank and print advertising is drying up. He argues further that new Web browsers make the issue moot by giving consumers the ability to easily block the electronic "cookies" that track their online movements. The issue promises to be a lobbying extravaganza. Last year, when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was developing self-regulatory guidelines for Web companies engaging in behavioral advertising, it

Top attorneys for Microsoft and Google today reiterated their companies' support for tougher government rules to protect consumer privacy. But when it comes to the details, some watchdog groups say they are concerned that Web firms will continue to fight against specific provisions that would limit the ways they can collect and use people's information to serve more targeted ads. Today's panel discussion, held here at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, revisited a longstanding policy debate over the government's role in online privacy. The talk ran along some familiar plotlines, with Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy thundering about the detailed personal profiles being assembled by advertising companies who are using neuroscience to manipulate consumer behavior, while industry representatives assured the audience that their data-collection practices are benign, not to mention essential to providing free content and services on the Internet. But this wasn't just an idle debate. Rep. Rick Boucher, the Virginia Democrat who chairs a House subcommittee on the Internet, is developing legislation that could seek to impose sweeping restrictions on behavioral targeting. A few blocks up Pennsylvania Avenue at the Federal Trade Commission, the principal regulatory agency with authority over online advertising, newly minted Chairman Jon Leibowitz has spoken often about the need for industry to get serious about privacy. "The FTC's central concern here is transparency, consumer control," said Jessica Rich, assistant director of the agency's privacy and identity protection division. "We don't think consumers really know what's happening with their data."

Advertisers are your friend, and the government is here to help. If consumers don't take responsibility for their data, then all the regulation in the World won't matter.

Hunch.com helps users search for answers -- but first, it performs a detailed search on the users themselves. Launching today after a year in development, Hunch aims to supply users with computer-generated advice on thousands of lifestyle and consumer questions: What kind of dog should I buy? What should I get dad for Father's Day? Which book by George Orwell would I like? Most important, though, Hunch is not a search engine. Rather than scouring the open Web for information, as Google, Microsoft's new Bing and scores of others do, or collating written opinions, as Amazon.com does, Hunch computes answers by comparing what it knows about you to what it knows about people like you. "Ultimately, what we're doing is providing a kind of shortcut through human expert systems," said Hunch founder Caterina Fake, who also started Flickr.com, the popular photo-sharing site that was acquired by Yahoo in 2005. By first inviting users to answer as many as 1,500 questions about themselves -- an addictive kind of personality test that involves such diverse questions as political orientation, relationship status and whether you believe in UFOs and keep your closet organized -- Hunch looks to assemble a demographic profile whose depth could rival anything in the commercial universe. The New York company also believes that users stand to benefit from this kind of large-scale data farming -- not just from getting better answers, but also from discovering the many microdemographics to which they belong. Hunch also says it will not sell user data to marketers. But this promise, written into the site's privacy policy, is not precisely a legal contract, said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a new-media scholar at the University of Virginia, and the difference leaves the data it collects in a fuzzy domain.

A law designed to keep college students' grades private often is used for a much different purpose -- to shield universities from potentially embarrassing situations. Some critics say a number of schools are deliberately misreading the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act in order to keep scandals and other unflattering news from hitting the media. "Some schools have good-faith misunderstandings of the law, but there are others that simply see this as a handy excuse to hide behind," says Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, which provides student journalists with legal help. Legal experts say part of the problem is that the law is loosely defined. In addition, the potential consequences of violating the law -- namely, that schools would lose their federal funding -- prompt university officials to be conservative in their decisions about releasing information. Those complaints rankle advocates of student privacy, who say that, if anything, the three-decade-old law should be expanded. "Most of these kids are adults, and they should be able to make their own decisions," says Daren Bakst, president of the Council on Law in Higher Education. Congress already reworked the law to clarify when universities can disclose student information, especially involving health and safety matters. Those changes, adopted in January, followed the 2007 shooting rampage at Virginia Tech by a mentally troubled student.