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Should customers in Internet cafes be monitored? The governments' fear of terrorism stands against user privacy. Up to now no official regimentations for internet cafes in the EU exist, Scotland Yard now advises administrators of public web spaces to regularly control their customers' activities.

This blog by Dan Yoder counts 10 reasons why you should can your Facebook account. The main reasons for this boycott are related issues of privacy and how they treat the information of members, for example not providing complete information on how they use your information.

facebook fixed the bug that allow users to view the instant message from their friend. Privacy issued rised again for Facebook.

This article examines Facebook and provides a satirical comparison of Facebook's privacy snafus to natural disasters.

site promotes an exodus from Facebook due to privacy conerns

There has been some controversy about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's comments in an online chat from 2006 that surfaced recently. He told a friend that Facebook users were dumb for trusting him and submitting private, personal information on his then-fledgling website. An initiative by four young programmers to counteract the negative effects that Facebook has had on privacy and the ability of users to control the data they put online is Diaspora. It is a decentralised, open source social network that wants to compete with centralised social networks that allow "spying for free". It will be interesting to see whether the initiative really takes off as a viable alternative to Facebook.

Open Letter from Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook's new privacy setting

Google and Facebook are both fired under privacy issue. One thing about the Internet is its border less feature, but when it comes to regualtion, this becomes a big problem. American based companies should or should not follow local ligislations? Which country can take the responsible for indivisual interllectual property or private information internationally?

US court rules that tracking once in public is public information but tracking over time in public is accumulating information usually unavailable to 'the public' therefore requiring a search warrant.

The internet: a land without "social or cultural or primitive race memory". What are the implications when entire generations voluntarily forfeit their right to privacy?

Google thought they were jumping on the social networking bandwagon with this but it seems to have backfired! Talks of privacy issues puts google in a bad position with their users.

This article discusses who is held resposible for cyberbullying. Three executives from Google have been convicted of privacy violation, and have been accused of not acting swiftly enough to take down an online video of an autistic boy being beating by teen bullies. There are many issues that arise from this topic, for example, how far does accountability stretch, does it stem from the original poster, to the Internet Service Provider, the company hosting the content.It brings to question who do we hold responsible, and under which jurisdiction and set of laws do we use. Should there be a screening process to prevent such videos from being posted online?

This article discusses how a simulated war game called "Cyber ShockWave" can turn any electronic item, for example, cell phone or computer can be "weapons" used to shut down the Internet during terrorist attack. The notion of privacy and civil liberties, should expect to be ceased for Americans during a crisis of that level. During this mock scenario, it was revealed that "[The United States] don't have the authority in this nation as a government to quarantine people's cellphones." Which during a state of emergency brings to question if Internet carriers should allow their networks to be monitored. How secure is online security, and who is the enemy, becomes difficult to discern, as any threat to national security arises.

The founder and Chief Executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, announced at a recent conference that Facebook's Open Graph project will soon enable an even greater degree of personalisation as people surf the net. I think this probably has implications for user experience, in terms of viewing popular sites through the prism of social networking - and it gives sites more authority to store data about individuals. Because Facebook seems to be so pervasive nowadays, it seems like we won't have much say in the matter...

Allison, that's a great point, I've tried to quit using the site but I stop when I realise that I won't know about upcoming social events - unfortunately its the primary means of communication used by some friends!

Yes and I think Facebook take full advantage! A lot of my friends have been posting notes on FB about changing privacy settings now that the new features have come in. So, people are trying to resist but in a more subtle way than dropping out of FB altogether.

GoDaddy.com, the world's largest domain name registration company is taking similar action to Google by deciding to not conduct further business in China. This decision is a reaction to China now demanding that applicants of domain names are to provide additional personal information, including a full colour head shot photograph. While China maintains forcing applicants to register extensive personal information will curb the creation of unsavoury sites (namely pornography) everyone else outside of the Chinese government believes such detailed personal information will equip the government to target any individual (to what extent - who knows) displaying any content that the government does not support. Is this an invasion of privacy? Should people be able to exercise multiple personas on the internet, or should you be who you are? If a government is to collect such information who will ensure the information it collects isn't abused? Do we answer these questions differently when thinking of China i.e. what would the answers be if Australia was to introduce such a law? At the very least, it's a relief to see companies realising that China is compromising the values of the internet and are reacting suitably by taking their services out of the country. More need to participate in the retalliation.

An insightful episode- which speaks about the cyber-crime/espionage and privacy issues which have been linked back to China.

What happens when an institution that is supposed to be safe, violates your personal rights? This article discusses how a high school in Philadelphia installed software on their lap tops that would capture photos of the user of the lap top. Though the software was intended for recovery measures of stolen lap tops, it appears that the software goes beyond photos taken from the software contained images of chats, and content that the user was viewing, to the users themselves dressing., as it spies upon the user's interactions with peers. This brings to question whether or not to trust institutional technology, and whether or not they should stipulate that some software installed may violate the users right to privacy.