US Spies Buy Stake in Firm that Monitors Blogs & Tweets

Wired.com:  “America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon.  In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.”

Notes from Digital Hollywood: Industry Solutions to Privacy Issues in Online Behavioral Advertising May Not Satisfy FTC Chiefs

The Digital Media Lawyer Blog:  “A dominant theme at this week’s Digital Hollywood conference is the tension between the need to for truly targeted advertising to online audiences and an individual’s right to privacy. The Internet creates the ability for businesses to gather a marketer’s dream world of data about their customers. This can include identification data (name, address, phone number, email address), demographic data (age, gender, marital status, sexual orientation), financial data (bank and credit card account data), and behavioral data (browsing history, downloading history) and much, much more. If this type of data falls into the wrong hands, it can subject the customer or identify fraud. But even many purely commercial uses can cause embarrassment or harm to the consumer.”

Angry Texts Turn Into Illegal Threats

Law.com:  “Victim advocate’s case illustrates high-tech harassment trend.   In its short lifespan, texting has been blamed for all sorts of societal ills — for distracting drivers on roads, students in school and workers who should be minding their jobs.  But now it appears that text messages are moving, at times, from an occasional annoyance to something more sinister. Texting is becoming the latest way for angry people to harass or threaten others, especially estranged spouses or girl- or boyfriends.”

Bloggers Mugged by Regulators – FTC to Police Book Reviews on Twitter

Wall St. Journal:  “There’s a saying that a neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality. We’ve now learned that bloggers mugged by regulators become economic libertarians.  Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission issued its “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising,” last updated in 1980. These rules historically regulated what celebrity endorsers can say and how advertisers can use research claims.”

Go to Top