LISNews: Librarian News

A Very Defiant Duckling Named Ender writes:
"Saying they are worried about Americans' privacy, Pentagon officials announced in a report today that they were changing the name of a projected system to mine databases for information to help catch terrorists to Terrorist Information Awareness from Total Information Awareness."
Ender gives us several views of the story, from the New York Times, the National Law Journal and the Gulf News
(Dateline Dubai). Also an interesting op/ed by Ted Rall.

Surveillance Nation-2 (Part 1) from Technology Review says though we are submitting ourselves to a proliferation of monitoring technologies, a loss of privacy is not inevitable.
They say it will be constrained by the structure of the huge databases necessary to store and manipulate surveillance data—and by the cultural and legal environment in which those databases arise. In fact, the way databases are configured may help foster accountability and usage policies that could regulate the deployment of surveillance.

Sammy writes "Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service has written a rather long look at all the ways we are being watched from all sides, government, corps, and your boss. He finishes with a look at surveillance nightmares that will probably just be bad dreams for a long time. They include Heat-sensitive infrared cameras, Robotics technology, military satellites and face-recognition.
Does anyone care?
"

Jen Young pointed to This CNN Story on America Online in its efforts to protect the identity of one of its 35 million subscribers by asking the court to quash a subpoena calling for the member\'s name in an issue that goes to the heart of the anonymity of the Internet.
They say was the latest in the evolution of privacy laws as they pertain to the Internet and identities of Web surfers, privacy experts said.