As part of a settlement in a privacy lawsuit filed against Netflix late last year, the video delivery service has called off their $1 million Next Big Thing contest that started the whole problem in the first place.
You might recall that last August Netflix launched their second go-around of their Next Big Thing contest, in [...]

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Here is a select few… more after the jump.

Allie Sin – Stephanie Draheim
Amber Lynn – Laura Adams
Amy Reid – Devin Valencia Feller
Anetta Keys – Aneta Smrhová
Aria Giovanni – Cindy Renee Volk
Asia Carrera – Jessica Andrea Steinhauser
Aurora Snow – Rebecca Claire Kensington
Belladonna – Michelle Anne Sinclair
Bianca Trump [...]

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According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools’ administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to [...]

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This is seriously genius. It can just show you that people don’t realize this stuff.
I’m patiently waiting for the site that filters on “got totally drunk last night and made a mistake. These huge breasts constantly get me into trouble.”

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Two years ago, when the FBI was stymied by a band of armed robbers known as the “Scarecrow Bandits” that had robbed more than 20 Texas banks, it came up with a novel method of locating the thieves.
FBI agents obtained logs from mobile phone companies corresponding to what their cellular towers had recorded at the [...]

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The world’s largest Internet search company and the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.

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A couple in Pittsburgh whose lawsuit claimed that Street View on Google Maps is a reckless invasion of their privacy lost their case.

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Electronic Frontier Foundation staff technologist Peter Eckersley has published some new research showing that individual browsers can be identified to a high degree of accuracy without cookies or other tracking technology. EFF has produced a tool called “Panopticlick” that tests how unique your browser is, and they’re using the results from it to further their [...]

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“Buying You: The Government’s Use of Fourth-Parties to Launder Data about ‘The People’,” a paper by Columbia Law School’s Joshua L. Simmons in the Columbia Business Law Review, describes the way that US government agencies circumvent the fourth amendment and privacy statutes by outsourcing their surveillance to private credit reporting bureaus and other mega-databases. He [...]

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The EFF’s Jennifer Granick is looking for people who’ve had their laptop hard-drives searched at the US border…
In U.S. v. Arnold we fought for a requirement that customs agents have some reason before searching your computer and in our FOIA work on border searches, we have pushed the government to reveal its policies and practices [...]

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A privacy group says the Transportation Security Administration is misleading the public with claims that full-body scanners at airports cannot store or send their graphic images.
The TSA specified in 2008 documents that the machines must have image storage and sending abilities, the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said.
In the documents, obtained by the privacy [...]

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…apropos of bloggers being bullied into parting with their hard drives: check out this nifty doormat, available at Target and Amazon for 18 bucks and some change.
Haha, if you’re gonna violate my 4th amendment rights, you’re gonna have to literally walk on them and photos or video of the mat in front of your door [...]

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TSA special agents served subpoenas to travel bloggers Steve Frischling and Chris Elliott, demanding that they reveal who leaked the security directive to them. The government says the directive was not supposed to be disclosed to the public.
Frischling said he met with two TSA special agents Tuesday night at his Connecticut home for about three [...]

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation has pored over the terms of service for several popular ebook services and devices and come up with “An E-Book Buyer’s Guide to Privacy,” a handy chart that tells you what information about your reading habits you “agree” to send to these companies by simply standing in the vicinity of the [...]

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As people’s personal information from cell phones and computers is used in more and more new software applications, America’s leaders need to deal soon with how to protect people’s privacy in the process.
That’s the theme of a perspective article written by Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Tom Mitchell in tomorrow’s issue of Science magazine.
Personal [...]

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If you’re concerned about Google retaining your personal data, then you must be doing something you shouldn’t be doing. At least that’s the word from Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” Schmidt tells CNBC, sparking howls of [...]

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Cryptome is hosting several ISPs’ pricelists and guidelines for “lawful spying” activities on behalf of law enforcement. Included is Yahoo’s price-guide (hilariously, Yahoo tried to send them a copyright takedown notice to make this go away).
One of the more remarkable elements of Yahoo’s document is the sheer quantity of material that Yahoo retains [...]

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Anyone who’s a regular Google search user will know that the only way to avoid the company tracking your online activities is to log out of Gmail or whatever Google account you use. Not any more.
As of last Friday, even searchers who aren’t logged into Google in any way have their data tracked in the [...]

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Why more Americans are learning to pick locks, bust out of handcuffs, and avoid surveillance.

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CALEA is the terrible US federal law that requires that all switches that carry voice-traffic be built with an easy-to-access remote wiretapping capability so that cops (or bad guys who know cop secrets) can listen in on your voice conversations without cooperation from the phone company. A team of University of Pennsylvania researchers (already notorious [...]

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