Recently, it was reported that President Obama may be considering Google CEO Eric Schmidt to succeed current Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. But as this position would make him a voice in the governmental online privacy debate, Consumer Watchdog – a privacy-focused non-profit – cautions against this move…likening it to making Bernie Madoff head of the SEC… [Press Release]

And while we’re talking about government’s role in shaping digital privacy policy – don’t listen to those who will try to scare you into thinking “Do Not Track” is bad for the market… [eWeek]

Like we said yesterday, no company is immune to the current privacy scrutiny going on in this country, and perhaps looking to seize on the current climate, a class action suit was just filed against Netflix for “retaining data about users’ movie rental history and recommendations” after users have canceled their accounts… [MediaPost]

Just in case you hadn’t already noticed, the government is taking online privacy very seriously lately. So much so that the White House has created a subcommittee to advise it on the issue [Washington Post]

Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that the Electronic Privacy Information Center recently graded the Obama Administration a C in consumer privacy…although it gave the administration a B in cybersecurity [CMIO]

And a somewhat long saga finally ends in North Carolina, as a judge ruled yesterday that Amazon does NOT have to turn over customer records for North Carolina customers who made purchases through Amazon.com between 2003 and 2010 [CNET]

Remember that Firefox extension we mentioned yesterday that allowed anyone to access your social networking presences through insecure wi-fi networks? Apparently it’s been downloaded 104,000 times already, in just 24 hours… [TechCrunch]

And iPhone owners – if you think putting a password on your phone will keep unauthorized users out, you might want to read this… [Wired]

Augmented Reality apps are all fun and games, but have we stopped to think about the privacy implications? Personally, I don’t think having an augmented reality app that shows you where sexual offenders live is an invasion of privacy, considering there is a public registration for those individuals, but I can see where they’re going with this… [GigaOm]

Finally, today in Eric Schmidt-isms – Google’s CEO said in a CNN interview that if people don’t want to be captured by Google Street View, they can just move. Probably not the daftest move, but maybe a little more harmless than it seems… [Search Engine Watch]

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]

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]

Consumer Watchdog is pulling no punches in an apparent offensive against Google and CEO Eric Schmidt. The privacy group is broadcasting a video ad in Times Square showing Schmidt giving children full body scans using “Google Analytics“… [AFP]

But ironically, Consumer Watchdog uses Google Analytics to track its own web stats [Business Insider]

Either way, all of this bad privacy press has obviously had an effect on Google, as it plans on simplifying its privacy policy effective October 3 [PC Mag]

Not to mention, it settled a privacy lawsuit regarding Google Buzz (marking probably the biggest effect Buzz has had on anyone to date) [Reuters]

Internet privacy may now be seeping into the political sphere on a state level now, as it has become a major issue in California’s upcoming governor’s race [Press Release]

In our lone non-Google privacy story of the day – You may have heard me mention it in the context of Facebook privacy, if you’ve been following Privacy Net and the Digital Breakfast for the last few months – there is an innate tension between maintaining users’ privacy and a business’ profits. Businesses obviously want to analyze collected information about customers/web users in general to offer customers deals tailored to their interests/proclivities. But at least partially due to media coverage over the last couple of months, users have become sensitive to how businesses and organizations use their information. One thing businesses and even law enforcement organizations have begun using is analytics software. For businesses, this software combs a business’ customer information (past purchases and website browsing activity) and identifies certain customers by certain behaviors that allows the business to better tailor its marketing efforts (and in turn leads to less need for financial investment in marketing). For police officers in New York and Memphis, it means using the software to try and predict “where criminals will strike next.” Either way, while it’s exciting to know the technological capabilities, I’d like to think there is a line, and wouldn’t mind if someone in a position of authority defined what kind of exploitation crosses it.  [CNBC]

As we get further and further into the modern era, it seems less and less likely that anonymity will remain an option on the web. In a recent interview that we noted here, Google CEO Eric Schmidt posited that there will come a day when all children will be automatically entitled to change their name once they become an adult, in order to shed any youthful web transgressions they may have had. Of course, I’m not sure that’d be either necessary or appropriate – after all, there’s something to be said for teaching responsibility and discretion, many “youthful transgressions” on the web are easily deleteable, and I’m not sure any sound-minded adult would hold something someone said or did on the web as a child against them as an adult. Nevertheless, it does highlight the way things are going, and who knows, Schmidt may be right in the long run. [Huffington Post]

On a similar plane, a Manhattan woman has asked a court to compel Google/YouTube to reveal the identity of an anonymous user who posted unauthorized movie clips of her on YouTube and “impugned her sexual mores in comments made under pseudonyms on a Columbia Business School website.” As for the YouTube issue, I’m not sure there’s really much there. She may have some type of misappropriation claim for using her likeness without her authorization, but I’m not sure that’s altogether a very strong leg for her to stand on (after all, if every actor/actress sued anonymous users for posting clips of movies they appeared in, the courts would have quite a docket). As for the allegedly defamatory posts on Columbia Business School’s website, apparently Columbia doesn’t actually know the identity of the poster – presumably because it allows users to post without registering and the user simply used his/her Google ID. Either way, Google is resisting her request, as it has done in the past, in order to protect its user’s anonymity (kind of funny, in light of Schmidt’s comments). [AP]

And in a third story involving Google – the company made its Street View opt-out service live for German residents yesterday. As you’ll remember, Germany was so concerned with Google invading its citizens privacy that it required Google to provide additional controls such as this opt-out feature in exchange for allowing Google to map its land using Street View. German users now have until September 15 to request that their property be omitted from Street View. However, on a somewhat similar note, why not allow users to opt out of search altogether – whether it be Street View or just Google’s search engine? It might be subject to abuse, but allowing users to request that Google not index certain pages on the web that contain harmful material about them would be a nice option. [TechCrunch]

Hey, we’ve already got three, why not one more, right…

Elsewhere in Google Street View – in case you missed it yesterday, Spain sued Google over its Street View data collection in order to investigate into whether the company unlawfully (under Spain’s laws) collected personal information from Spanish citizens. Apparently a Spanish judge issued Google a summons a month ago, but it was just made public yesterday, and the complaint was filed by the Spanish Association of Internet Users (Apandencia). [Privacy Net]

As a Google “patron” (if you will), what’s in store for you in the future? – “Because of the info Google has collected about you, ‘we know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are.’ Google also knows, to within a foot, where you are. Mr. Schmidt leaves it to a listener to imagine the possibilities: If you need milk and there’s a place nearby to get milk, Google will remind you to get milk. It will tell you a store ahead has a collection of horse-racing posters, that a 19th-century murder you’ve been reading about took place on the next block.” The Wall Street Journal got that tidbit and a whole lot more from Google CEO Eric Schmidt in a recent interview, which also touched on the topics of behavioral advertising and of course, privacy in the context of regulation/non-regulation and the need for us to shift our thinking on the issue. [WSJ]

How governments are “creatively” employing satellite “eyes-in-the-sky,” and the natural privacy implications carried with such technological employment. Recently, we mentioned the Long Island town that used satellite imagery to find over 150 unpermitted pools. Along those same lines, how are other governments using the same type of technology and where do we draw the line in the context of our 4th Amendment rights against illegal searches/seizures? [AP]

Disney, Warner Brothers Records, Demand Media, and others are the targets of a new class-action lawsuit alleging that the companies unlawfully tracked their website users’ (“including children”) activity across the web. The suit asserts that the companies were “Clearspring Flash Cookie Affiliates,” employing flash cookies, which as previously mentioned on Privacy Net “re-spawn” after a user has deleted his/her cookies, to track user activity, and that the web site owners (Disney, etc.) knew the technology tracked users’ activity on sites outside of their own and those of their affiliates. The information collected about users through their activity allegedly included personal characteristics such as “gender, age, race, number of children, education level, geographic location, and household income.” [CNET]

Fears about online privacy are “often misplaced” in that they can, for example, be born out of something relatively innocuous while something much more threatening goes largely unnoticed. An example – Google Street View – instead of worrying about the company collecting data through UNSECURED wireless networks, users would probably be more apt to worry about all of the information they’re voluntarily giving Google like their search history and the contents of all their Gmail messages. Personally, I’m not so worried about either of those, but the point is well stated – people can make a mountain out of a mole hole. However, at the same time, they may be completely ignoring a legitimate mountain. [San Jose Mercury News]

Pursuant to its recent discussions with several Middle Eastern governments, RIM has posted a set of four “principles” that guide it in interacting with any “carrier” to give that “carrier” “lawful” access, which includes that “capabilities be limited to the strict context of lawful access and national security requirements as governed by the country’s judicial oversight and rules of law,” that it will make no country-specific exceptions to its lawful access requirements, and that the “carrier” have no greater access to RIM device users’ information than it would have to other device manufacturers’ users.  [RIM]

And don’t forget, broadcasting your location to other people can open you up to those who would use this information for ill ends. You know, like robbing you, etc. It’s not about not sharing; it’s about being smart about what you share and how you share it. [ZD Net]

So Mark Zuckerberg spoke at All Things D‘s D8 this week and the results were, well, entertaining maybe is the best word for it? [PC World]

“A Simple Way to Protect Your Online Privacy”…unfortunately, it’s not tho share information in the first place…great, thanks for the advice [InformationWeek]

Apparently, privacy advocates asked the FTC to probe Google on the privacy implications of its Invite Media acquisition [Media Post]

In other Google news – it has agreed to turn over the Street View data it “accidentally” collected to Germany, Spain and France [NY Times]

Google CEO Eric Schmidt even admits “we screwed up”… [Telegraph (UK)]

And finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for – you can now “like” privacy on Facebook…how cute [Mashable]

Seems like this guy got the impression that Google‘s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt share the “What privacy problem?” mentality… [BBC]

Too bad a few Congressmen don’t seem to feel the same as Google’s bigwigs and have asked the FTC if they’re looking into the Street View privacy lapse [Washington Post]

And because we couldn’t really go a day without some Facebook link — Mark Zuckerberg overruled employees who think information posted on Facebook should be more private by default, and we could know what the results of last week’s all hands meeting will be by the end of this week [WSJ]