Google Sidewiki - Potential for Abuse

Marketers are going to love this! Imagine being able to post information about your product on your competitions's website. I also think this is going to provide people with an ability to propogate disinformation about a product or company and it will show up right next to the victim's website. This could be a great tool as long as there is some control and the owner of a web site has a way to dispute a posting. While these concerns are somewhat addressed in the Content Policy let's hope that Google is able to make people adhere to the policy without becoming cost prohibitive or limiting free speech.

in reference to: Official Google Blog: Help and learn from others as you browse the web: Google Sidewiki (view on Google Sidewiki)

Canadian Privacy Law Blog: The future of privacy on the internet

Canadian Privacy Law Blog: The future of privacy on the internet

Did you know 4.0

Military Recruiters Sharing Information About Your Kids Without Permission

The Department of Defense is maintaining a "Joint Advertising and Market Research Studies" Recruiting Database of over 30 million Americans between 16 and 25 years old. Huge exemptions to federal privacy laws leave it wide open for the DOD to disclose your kid's personal information without your permission! Go to the EPIC website for more information on the DOD Recruiting Database. If that's not enough, recruiters are at your child's school and recruiting your children without your permission. You have to opt out to keep them from actively recruiting your child. At my high school we had a recruiting station in one corner of the library with lots of pamphlets and brochures and once in a while a member of one of distinguished members of our Armed Services would be available to talk to any kid who was interested. I have absolutely no problem with that, What I do have a problem with is situations like the one described on MotherJones.Com. Where a young man was aggressively targeted by recruiters possessing information that he did not give them. I support all of our men and women in our Armed Forces and believe that military experience can be invaluable to many young people, but whatever happened to the old fashioned way of recruiting where interested kids sought out the recruiter? 2 of my own children have or are considering military service but I will be damned if I want some specially trained headhunter armed with insider information strong arming any of my kids into service. Remember, ours is a volunteer military.

Links
http://privacy.org/archives/003140.html
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/few-good-kids
http://epic.org/privacy/student/doddatabase.html