PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

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We Hate Rankings, But We Love Them Too

US News Rankings Law Schools

In an earlier post here [link no longer available], Dave Hoffman adds another quibble about Brian Leiter’s citation rankings of law professors. Several others have voiced criticisms about the rankings, including Mary Dudziak and Brian Tamanaha.

In the comments to Dave’s post, Marty Lederman and Brian Leiter get into a debate about the rankings, with Marty saying that the rankings don’t produce much in the way of surprises. In other words, the rankings tell us what we already know. Brian responds that the rankings do reveal a few suprises, but he agrees that the rankings aren’t giving us any shocking news.

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Facebook Listens and Responds

Facebook 01

I’m quite pleased to learn that Facebook has come to a privacy epiphany. I’ve been blogging a lot lately about the privacy problems with Facebook’s new features — Beacon and Social Ads:

* Facebook’s Beacon: News Feeds All Over Again?

* The Facebook-Fandango Connection: Invasion of Privacy?

* Facebook and the Appropriation of Name or Likeness Tort

* The New Facebook Ads — Starring You: Another Privacy Debacle?

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Yale Law School Conference on Online Reputation

Yale Law School Logo

On December 8, 2007, Yale Law School’s Information Society Project will be holding a conference about online reputation called Reputation Economies in Cyberspace. I’ll be participating in the symposium and will be talking about my book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet. Other participants include Alessandro Acquisti, Michel Bauwens, Danielle Citron, John Clippinger, William McGeveran, Urs Gasser, Rishab A. Ghosh, Ashish Goel, Eric Goldman, Auren Hoffman, Darko Kirovski, Mari Kuraishi, Hassan Masum, Beth Noveck, Vipul Ved Prakash, Bob Sutor, Mozelle Thompson, Rebecca Tushnet, and Jonathan Zittrain.

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Privacy and the 2008 Election

Privacy Attitudes

Is privacy an issue of concern to voters in the 2008 presidential election? Which candidates do voters think will best protect privacy?

These questions are addressed in a new poll by the Ponemon Institute. According to Bob Sullivan’s discussion of the poll in MSNBC’s Red Tape blog:

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New Movie Shot Entirely With Surveillance Cameras

Surveillance Camera

According to a recent Newsweek story, there are 30 million surveillance cameras in the United States. That’s about 1 camera for every 10 Americans.

Next month, an interesting new movie called Look will be released that is filmed entirely with surveillance cameras. From the Newsweek story:

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Facebook’s Beacon: News Feeds All Over Again?

Facebook and Privacy

I recently blogged about Facebook’s Beacon, where it adds information to user profiles of their purchases at participating external websites such as Fandango. Beacon is starting to spark a privacy outcry among Facebook users. From the AP:

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Responses to Blog Reviews of The Future of Reputation: Part II

Future of Reputation

This post responds to more reviews of my new book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet (Yale University Press, Oct. 2007). I posted Part I of my responses to reviews here. This is Part II.

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