The news that made a relatively big splash on Friday was that President Obama is hoping to work out a program to assign all internet-using Americans a unique ID. The initiative will be led by the Commerce Department… [CBS News]

Last week at CES, veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg spoke with Microsoft’s head of Internet Explorer, Dean Hachamovitch, and the biggest topic of discussion (unsurprisingly) was privacy… [Mashable]

And finally, in case we hadn’t made it clear, or you hadn’t noticed on your own – the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which still governs privacy over electronic communications (ie, discourse on the internet, is being far outpaced by the speed of technology/digital [NY Times]

In case you missed it, the anti-Facebook, Diaspora launched its network in Alpha recently, and invited a small number of individuals to be early testers. Obviously this Lifehacker Editor was among those fortunate few and was gracious enough to write a post giving us all a look under the hood via screen shots… [Lifehacker]

It was only a matter of time before Google became the target of litigation once again. Despite dispensing with one case of privacy invasion brought by a Western PA family recently, Google may now be back in the court room, as plaintiffs have filed a class action against the internet giant in Texas, alleging (like other similar suits here and abroad) that its Street View wifi sniffing violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Federal Wiretap Act… [Southeast Texas Record]

But Google is not alone in the courtroom right now, facing privacy violations…several sites, including a popular porn site, Wired, and PerezHilton, have been sued as a result of their user “browser history sniffing”… [ZD Net]

And the reason anyone knew about this “browser history sniffing” was this recent study conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Diego… [UCSD]

Maybe at one point you thought you wanted to add your house/apartment to Foursquare, but later wished you had reconsidered. Luckily, Foursquare now allows you to erase that lapse in judgment (assuming that’s how you look at it) [About Foursquare]

Of course, we’ve said it before and I’m sure we’ll say it again – Google can’t seem to go any appreciable period of time without being sued by someone at this point – this time, a Texas resident is suing Google for scanning non-gmail users’ emails to gmail users in order to serve ads to those gmail users (alleging that this violates the Electronic Communications Privacy Act) [InformationWeek]

And speaking of Google in legal settings – it announced last Friday that it will delete all of the data its street view efforts inadvertently collected in the UK… [LA Times]

One last Google link – here’s what Germany looks like on Street View now that 240,000 Germans have requested that their homes be blurred in order to “safeguard their privacy”… [Gizmodo]

Of course, the other company that consistently finds itself in the crosshairs of the privacy debate is Facebook, and given that it makes so much from behavioral advertising, its Messages product/feature seems potentially poised to be the latest privacy battleground for the social network [Reuters]

Last Friday, AT&T “fixed a privacy loophole” that allowed anyone to have any of 92 million AT&T customers’ service shut off, without even any questions being asked [NBC NY]

And finally, the Better Advertising Project recently secured funding to build a self-regulatory program for the online advertising industry, which seems like it will offer a seal of approval on all ads that meet certain “privacy” specifications [All Things D]

Google’s global privacy counsel said he is surprised by how few users choose to control what ads they see from Google. At some point in the last year, Google gave users just such an ability, but apparently adoption has been weak [The Canadian Press]

But he also said that Google is “building stronger controls to safeguard privacy” [Reuters]

Either way, Google is the target of another class action suit, filed Monday, which alleges that it shares user search histories with 3rd parties. Google said it has yet to receive a copy of the complaint, but in any case, if it does share such search histories, it anonymizes the particular user, stripping out any personally identifiable information [AFP]

After the last week of privacy headlines, the head of the Senate’s Commerce Committee has asked Myspace and Facebook to detail how exactly they safeguard users’ information [WSJ]

An interesting note about Cloud Computing – before it can really become viable, Congress may have to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, since as of right now, all the government needs is a prosecutor or investigator-issued subpoena to “access data stored in the cloud” vs. needing a court order to search a PC’s hard drive [PC World]

The big news today is actually Facebook‘s announcement from yesterday. Among the changes and new features announced at its event are a dashboard that will allow you to manage how apps you have connected with Facebook use your information, and the ability to download your information in a zip file [Business Insider]

In case you want the full run-down on changes/new features straight from the horse’s mouth… [Facebook Blog]

And these changes/new features have somewhat appeased one of Facebook’s vocal critics (although it has yet to fully appease them), the Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF Deeplinks Blog]

Speaking of the EFF, it – along with the Internet Society and the Center for Democracy and Technology – has released a Firefox plugin that alerts you to when a site you have visited before has changed the terms of its privacy policy…pretty slick! [Forbes]

Elsewhere, Intel, Microsoft and eBay have expressed their support for a bill that would strengthen federal privacy protection on the web [WSJ]

Recapping some of Google CEO Eric Schmidt‘s “faux pas” as the company’s spokesman, including this gem when speaking about privacy – “We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about” [Fast Company]

And finally, this week in privacy litigation – potential class action suits have been filed in Georgia against Yahoo!, Comcast and Windstream for violating federal wiretap and computer privacy laws [Law.com]

So, I’m sure you remember the Times Square [electronic] billboard war waging between Google and Consumer Watchdog…well, Consumer Watchdog has a new ad in which it calls Google “chicken” for failing to respond to its challenge to debate “measures to protect consumers’ online privacy” [Press Release]

Android owners, never fear – TaintDroid is here…to show you exactly how much data your Android apps are/were sending off to remote servers. Turns out, 20 of the 30 apps surveyed were “misusing personal data”… [Fast Company]

Yesterday, someone posted a leaked GOP memo to Scribd that expresses concern over industry players like Google and Microsoft’s “conflict of interest” in discussing reformation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act [Forbes]

Well, the UK law firm ACS:Law has been prominently featured in privacy headlines for the past couple of days, now it’s the UK’s turn itself, it seems. The European Commission is suing the UK for “breaking EU rules on safeguarding privacy” [UK Press Association]

The University of Florida announced yesterday that it had a little privacy problem that resulted in 300 former students’ names, addresses (as of 2003 when they were enrolled in a computer science class) and social security numbers being revealed…eek… [Gainesville Sun]

Today in the “world’s most obvious headlines” department – “Wiretapping the Internet Must Be Balanced with Privacy Concerns” [San Jose Mercury News]

The Wall Street Journal talks to the authors of the “Web Analytics Code of Ethics” about privacy, and tracking behaviors in particular, online [WSJ]

Not totally PRIVACY related, but good information to know – “What to Do If Hackers Steal Your Online Accounts” [NY Times]

Head of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy stressed yesterday that updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act will be a priority for the committee in the near future [PC World]

The FTC has settled charges against a company called US Search that compiled publicly available data about people, placed it on the web and then charged them $10/year to block others from viewing it (although apparently it didn’t even do that in certain circumstances)…until it shut down back in March [WSJ]

Update on Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart‘s Facebook eval – she has cleared Facebook for takeoff…er, continuation…as she announced yesterday that the social network had reshaped its privacy controls satisfactorily and is not violating any Canadian privacy laws at this point …though she did say some areas still needed improvement [Press Release]

Google CEO Eric Schmidt went on The Colbert Report last night to address the stir caused by his comment that all kids will be entitled to change their identities upon reaching adulthood at some point in the future – he said, “it was a joke” [NY Times]

Missed this yesterday, but the FTC posted a list of companies that have used “unfair, false, deceptive or misleading claims about consumer privacy,” which included Twitter, Microsoft, CVS, and Petco [BNET]

So that Facebook user data we mentioned yesterday, that got lifted and posted at The Pirate Bay…apparently it was data from 170 million users, not just 100 million… [CNET]

AND it wasn’t just downloaded by individual users but also corporations (or at the very least, employees of corporations) including Apple, Disney, HP, IBM, Proctor and Gamble, Sony, and a lot of other major players [Gizmodo]

I can’t imagine they WON’T roll all these lawsuits against Google into one class action suit, but a panel of federal judges is deciding whether or not to do that, and if they do, where to litigate [AP]

In seeking to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, is the White House trying to make it easier for the FBI to access our private communications and data? [AP]

And what does this Google – CIA investment in a company called Recorded Future – which “scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come” – mean to OUR future? [Wired]

Today’s survey says…users are more worried about their privacy when it comes to ads than identity theft [eMarketer]

In case you missed up, the government updated its cookie policy last Friday… [O'Reilly Radar]

An expert testifying before a Congress subcommittee last week said the Electronic Communications Privacy Act needs to be updated, specifically to address “location-aware” technologies…duh, dude [Engadget]

Apple‘s latest version of its privacy policy isn’t just causing a stir here in the US…Germany’s also not pleased [Reuters]

Apparently the newest version of Windows Live Messenger has some privacy problems…obviously this is the first I’ve heard of it because up until yesterday, I didn’t even know Windows Messenger still existed [InfoWorld]

According to some recent study from some institution of higher education I’ve never heard of, social networks leak your location information… [ComputerWorld]

Um, so FaceTime video calling on the iPhone 4 is cool and all, but I’m not sure how to feel about the fact that apparently anyone can “pick up” a FaceTime video call…eek! [San Francisco Chronicle]