“Social Networking: The Challenges of Privacy and Openness” Video: Via CDT - PolicyBeta.

CDT and TRUSTe recently hosted “Social Networking: The Challenges of Privacy and Openness,” a discussion in their continuing Internet Policy Series. A five-minute video recapping the highlights of the event can be found here.

Held on the Google Campus in Mountain View, CA, on Oct. 7, the discussion was moderated by Fred Vogelstein of Wired Magazine and included a potent lineup of speakers: Chris Conley, Technology and Civil Liberties Fellow at ACLU Northern California; David Glazer, Engineering Director at Google and Board member of OpenSocial Foundation; and Tim Sparapani, Director of Public Policy at Facebook.

The speakers discussed the tensions that exist between privacy and openness in a social networking environment that is primarily intended for people to share information.

The discussion touched on trust between users and social networking sites, new definitions of privacy in the social networking world, the continuing evolution of users’ privacy expectations, and the limitations of giving users granular control of their personal information.

Read Original Article:(Via CDT - PolicyBeta.)

A Misfired Memo Shows Close Tabs on Reporter:

Journalists have an uneasy awareness that public relations professionals keep tabs on them, the better to hone the way they pitch and spin ideas for articles. And while the extent of this practice normally is not aired in public, it was last week when Wired magazine posted a long memo about one of its reporters that had been sent by e-mail to him by Microsoft, accidentally.

In February, during the course of reporting on a video blogging initiative at Microsoft called Channel 9, Fred Vogelstein inadvertently received a 13-page, 5,500-word internal memo from Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, a firm that represents Microsoft. [ Read more ... ]