some links relatde to data and privacy and surveillance

at the risk of being too dogmatic or (fill in the blank here), here is a very unscientific set of links to a few specific cases of abuse of, mistaken identity or other people directly harmed by aspects of data retention and / or patriot act in us.

in developing our own individual views on the policies etc, we should properly consider a wide range of issues, benefits and consequences.

since we didnt do such a great job of providing specific examples of "good people" suffering negative consequences, i wanted to list some cases here.

the aclu is very involved in fighting the patriot act and has a lot fo information as to why and on what ground they are concerned. they also have a page of 'targets of illegal spying'

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/24287res20060227.html

these cases relate more to spying and surveillance stemming from individual participation or involvement in protests or activist groups or NGOs. One question these cases raise is one that is brought up in the US and that is what about the people who don't realise they are on watch lists. there were an unprecedented number of cases of people being held on account of being a terrorist suspect based on being arab, arab american, muslim, being of a darker complexion in general, having the same or similar name of someone who is wanted, or for far more random and even nonsensical reasons. the list include members of congress, a Catholic nun, a 6 year old, and nelson mandela. this link also has some of those stories:

watching the watch list
http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/watchlistcounter.html

the patriot act and the name articles about its controversy are a good place to start for examples. but we talked also about other kinds of data retention by private companies.

good site for tracking these issues from privacy advocacy perspective. they have interesting privacy tool links and a good overview of some laws and policies:
http://epic.org/

www.privacyinternational.org is also worth looking at for more global perspectives.

an account of many forms of data issues in us
http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs11-pub.htm

since i mentioned racial profiling and police activity, here is an interesting study:
http://www.racialprofilinganalysis.neu.edu/planning/

more a bit later. but hope this is of some use.

other articles on issues related to facebook and google already posted on this site.