Facebook Hit With More Privacy Lawsuits

Facebook has been hit with two new potential class-action lawsuits stemming from recent re visions to its privacy settings.
The cases, filed recently in federal district court in San Jose, Calif. on behalf of nine Facebook users, allege that the new settings are “confusing and materially deceptive” and lessened their privacy.

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Google expands tracking to logged out users

Now, everyone has their activities tracked in the name of a better service

Anyone who’s a regular Google search user will know that the only way to avoid the company tracking your online activities is to log out of Gmail or whatever Google account you use. Not any more.

As of last Friday, even searchers who aren’t logged into Google in any way have their data tracked in the name of providing a ‘better service’.

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Google CEO says privacy doesn’t matter. Google blacklists CNet for violating CEO’s privacy.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt says privacy isn’t important, and if you want to keep something private, “maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place” (in other words, “innocent people have nothing to hide.”)

Bruce Schneier calls bullshit with eloquence: “For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that — either now or in the uncertain future — patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.”

But JWZ has the kicker, when he reminds us that Eric Schmidt’s Google blackballed CNet’s reporters after CNet published personal information about Schmidt’s private life:

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