From TED Blog: “The founder of 4chan, a controversial, uncensored online imageboard, describes its subculture, some of the Internet "memes" it has launched, and the incident in which its users managed a very public, precision hack of a mainstream media website. The talk raises questions about the power — and price — of anonymity.”

Privacyrevolution.Org informs: Choose Privacy Week is a new initiative that invites library users into a national conversation about privacy rights in a digital age. The campaign gives libraries the tools they need to educate and engage users, and gives citizens the resources to think critically and make more informed choices about their privacy.

The first-ever Choose Privacy Week will take place May 2-8, 2010 and is a new program created by the American Library Association to help librarians organize events in their communities about the role that privacy plays in their lives, why privacy is important, and how their privacy can be compromised on a daily basis.

Join the revolution here and find some great tools and resource materials.

Choose Privacy Week Video from 20K Films on Vimeo.

Choose Privacy Week Trailer from 20K Films on Vimeo.

Dr. Danah Boyd gave a  keynote at the WWW Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. 

She spoke about methodological and ethical issues involved in the study of Big Data, focusing heavily on privacy issues in light of public data.  The first third focuses on four important arguments:

• Bigger Data are Not Always Better Data;
• Not All Data are Created Equal;
• What and Why are Different Questions;
• Be Careful of Your Interpretations.

She argues :  “Just because data is accessible doesn’t mean that using it is ethical,” providing a series of different ways of looking at how people think about privacy and publicity.  I conclude by critiquing Facebook’s approach to privacy, from News Feed to Social Plugins/Instant Personalizer.

Read the full report Privacy and Publicity in the Context of Big Data

Google and Facebook almost hint the death of the privacy dead, but is it really and if it is dead then why are they talking about is. Bruce Schneier on Forbes talks about this Google And Facebook’s Privacy Illusion:

In January Facebook Chief Executive, Mark Zuckerberg, declared the age of privacy to be over. A month earlier, Google Chief Eric Schmidt expressed a similar sentiment. Add Scott McNealy’s and Larry Ellison’s comments from a few years earlier, and you’ve got a whole lot of tech CEOs proclaiming the death of privacy–especially when it comes to young people.

It’s just not true. People, including the younger generation, still care about privacy. Yes, they’re far more public on the Internet than their parents: writing personal details on Facebook, posting embarrassing photos on Flickr and having intimate conversations on Twitter. But they take steps to protect their privacy and vociferously complain when they feel it violated. They’re not technically sophisticated about privacy and make mistakes all the time, but that’s mostly the fault of companies and Web sites that try to manipulate them for financial gain.

Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and the Chief Security Technology Officer of BT. You can read more of his writing at www.schneier.com. Recently he gave a talk on on "Security, Privacy, and the Generation Gap", the video of which is available here.