A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal published an interview with Google‘s CEO Eric Schmidt. It delved into a number of things like the Verizon deal and Schmidt’s excitement for Minority Report-style “targeted advertisement,” but the folks at the Telegraph noticed a truly interesting quote nestled unto the discussion. Schmidt apparently believes that, as time goes on and we reach a point where every single person has embarrassing information and pictures from their adolescence posted on social media sites online, it will become commonplace for people to automatically change their name once they reach adulthood.

The recap: this February, parents of children in the Lower Merion, Pennsylvania high schools brought suit against the district, claiming that their children had been issued laptops with enabled webcameras without their knowledge, and that the school district had used those cameras to take thousands of pictures without student or parent consent or awareness.

The update: federal prosecutors have announced that they will not be pressing criminal charges against the school district, saying that no evidence of criminal intent was found.

NBC Universal’s Oxygen Media recently conducted a survey, asking 1,605 women versed and immersed in social media about their habits with Facebook, Twitter and other such services. And while you would expect there to be some level of addiction there, the results are actually quite staggering.

Of the over 1,600 women surveyed, 34 percent stated that they check Facebook literally first thing in the morning, before going to brush their teeth.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg graced the stage at All Things D’s D8 Conference last night to talk about the new and hotly debated privacy features as well as Facebook’s overall direction. Joining him on stage were columnists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, who shot questions at the young CEO about instant personalization, opt-in, and whether or not he ever takes off his hoodie.

By interview’s end, Zuckerberg had only gone just far enough to bridge the gap between him and his detractors, but he was consistent in making clear that in his view, Facebook’s mission was and has always been to help people to share information with the world around them.

Four highlights:

There’s a lot of talk these days about Facebook‘s radical steps to redefine what it’s users can expect regarding their privacy. But are all that many people really leaving Facebook?

I haven’t, even after reading all of this stuff. The thought process, which happens at least once with every new development, goes like this: “I should probably leave Facebook. …But what would I replace it with? Well, I’ll just go double check all my privacy settings again.” There isn’t anything else out there that does what Facebook does, with the community that Facebook has.

Danah Boyd has a very interesting article up on Apophenia regarding this feeling. In a nutshell, her point is this: Facebook succeeded in its goal of becoming a utility. But guess what? Utilities get regulated.

Read on...

Facebook is definitely having a time of it these days. Amidst broad criticism from users, officials, and advocates alike regarding their privacy policy — you know, the one that, by default, makes your information public for the roving eyes of third-party businesses and curious exes — the New York Times recently published an interesting piece (with infographics!) giving credence to why this is such a big problem.

As it turns out, Facebook’s Privacy Policy, as of this year, is now longer than the U.S. Constitution without its amendments. 5830 words to be exact, versus the Constitution’s 4543. Comparing that to the just over 1000 words that existed in the policy back in 2005, that’s a 480% increase in complex language that details how your information is seen by the roughly 200 million people who use the site on a daily basis. Seriously?

If you use Gmail and happen to click your way to your Google Buzz tomorrow, it will ask you to review your privacy settings. Don’t panic! This is normal. Or at least it will be tomorrow.

In response to widespread concerns over the privacy of Buzz, Google is going to ask users to review and confirm their privacy settings, so that everyone can see the changes they’ve made to the interface.

Last week we reported on allegations that the Lower Merion School district of Pennsylvania was covertly spying on its students using the embedded webcameras in school-issued laptops.  The surveillance capabilities of the cameras were only discovered when student Blake Robbins was threatened with disciplinary action for “improper behavior at home.”  The evidence against him was a picture, taken without his knowledge, from the webcam of his laptop.

His family’s attorney has come forward and explained exactly what Robbins was doing that was so improper. Turns out, he was eating Mike and Ikes. 

The school district of Lower Merion, Pennsylvania is being sued by parents for allegedly using the embedded webcams of school-issued laptops to invade the privacy of students.

School officials claim that the cameras were intended to be used only in the event that a laptop was lost or stolen, in order to facilitate its location and retrieval.  However, parents and students were never informed that the school district had the ability to remotely activate and use the webcams in the computers.  Michael and Holly Robbins, parents and plaintiffs in the suit, say they found out about the cameras’ functionality when information from their son’s webcam was used as evidence in disciplinary action against him.

The school district has released statements saying that the webcamera tracking software has been deactivated and will not be reactivated without “express written notification to all students and families.”