Headlines Under Surveillance: 04.20.09

* The FBI is adopting the practice of collecting DNA samples from those awaiting trials (who have not actually been proven guilty of anything). The practice is already in place in 15 states; New York is one of them, as we've mentioned before. Privacy advocates are up in arms about this, but we must ask this question. Is DNA fundamentally more private than fingerprints, which are collected on a regular basis? If we had consistent commenters, we would ask you to discuss this in the comments. We imagine a not-so-distant-future world where the collection of DNA samples will be as normal as being fingerprinted currently is. [New York Times]

* A woman suing a debt collector for posting to her MySpace page doesn't address privacy issues in her lawsuit. Her complaint accuses the company of violating collection laws and harassing her with abusive tactics. But privacy concerns leapt to our mind. Social networking sites are increasingly being flooded by those with business interests. Our experiment with signing up for Twitter has led to advertisers (e.g., NYCDailyDeals) outnumbering friends "following" us. Corporate beings getting a hold of our e-mail addresses is fine, but when they're actively trolling and interacting with our social networking profiles, it seems like it's crossing a privacy line. [Courthouse News Service via Threat Level/Wired]

* The Electronic Frontier Foundation calls out Obama for adopting Bush's position on secrecy and wiretapping ordinary Americans. [EFF]

* Even less privacy at the airport. Transportation Security Agency officials plan to replace metal detectors in airports with Total Recall-esque whole-body imaging machines. Screeners may be able to see us naked, but at least we won't have to remove our shoes and belts anymore. [Al's Morning Meeting/Poynter]

* Polls opened last week for Facebook users to determine privacy rights on the site. We wonder whether voter participation on Facebook will be healthier than the anemic participation in American elections. [PCWorld]

* Where we'll be found tomorrow: Privacy Rights and Wrongs: Balancing Moral Priorities for the 21st Century at Fordham University. Deep privacy thinker Daniel Solove of GW will be on the dais. [Danger Room/Wired]

Headlines Under Surveillance: 03.31.09

* People are worried about privacy! Or at least they claim they are in this survey. Over 90 percent of TRUSTe survey respondents said online privacy is an important issue to them, but only 28 percent said they were bothered by the tracking of their online behavior for ad-targeting. So what does online privacy mean to them? [New York Times]

* Maybe this is what they are scared of: Electronic Spy Network Focused on Dalai Lama and Embassy Computers. [Threat Level/Wired]

* A judge in Pennsylvania rules that teenage sexting falls within minors' constitutional rights. [Reuters]

* Newsweek Editor and Securing the City author Christopher Dickey (who we saw speak in February) has a self-aggrandizing blog which pointed us to this article on public input being solicited by the NYPD on the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative. [City Limits via The Shadowland Journals]

* Speaking of the LMSI, Brian Lehrer had Ali Winston, the City Limits article author, on his show to talk about the 3,000-security-camera Initiative. [WNYC]

* Yuck. Giving Nudists everywhere a bad name. [St. Petersburg Times]

Headlines Under Surveillance: 03.22.09

We're launching a new feature here at the Not-So Private Parts. A weekly round-up of articles that dealt with privacy issues. Here's the first round-up:

* After an evening spent in New York night court last year, we discovered that anyone charged with a felony has to submit a DNA sample to a NYPD database. (Note: Just charged. Not convicted.) That made us want to write an article on DNA privacy... but Jeffrey Rosen beat us to it: "Genetic Surveillance for All: What if the FBI put the family of everyone who has ever been convicted or arrested into a giant DNA database?" [Slate]

* Tim Berners-Lee is having an Oppenheimer moment. Berners-Lee, one of the original founders of the World Wide Web, has concerns about privacy and snooping online. [AFP]

* Google has rolled out a new advertising program: "interested-based advertising." It uses your cookies (the history of sites you have visited) to choose ads keyed to your interests. Privacy advocates don't like sharing their cookies with the Google monster. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has worked with Google to create a program for those who want to keep their cookies in a private cupboard. [EFF Deeplinks]

* Facebook has changed its template again, much to the dismay of just about everyone. Most people are talking about the annoying layout, but the changes go beyond aesthetics. Facebook made a big change in privacy settings. Facebook used to be a world where you had to have a link to someone in order to view their profile-- either you were a friend, alumni of the same school, or living in the same city. There was no way around that. Now Facebook will allow users to drop any semblance of privacy. [Epicenter/Wired]

* Back in February, a government official on the other side of the Pond said of privacy and security: "Finding out other people's secrets is going to involve breaking everyday moral rules." In a recently published public policy paper, former UK security chief Sir David Omand argues that privacy rights in the UK must be sacrificed for security's sake. [Guardian]