Facebook continues its tightrope walk

Long plagued by issues of digital privacy, Facebook continues to navigate the fine line between protecting its users personal data and maintaining a profitable, ad-based business model. This past week, Facebook tried to appease both sides of the argument – those pesky, privacy-demanding users, and the oh-so attractive big-money advertisers.

In a blog post on the site, Facebook’s vice president of communications and public policy, Austin Haugen announced that the company was making its privacy policy open for review and comment – the same way solicited user feedback on its statement on rights and responsibilities in February.

He said, “Our primary goals remain transparency and readability, which is why we've used plain language and included numerous examples to help illustrate our points.”

According to InternetNews.com:

The controversy that set the democratic process in motion at the beginning of the year stemmed from concerns that Facebook was asserting perpetual control over its users' information and content, even after they deleted their account.

In response, Facebook has stated unequivocally that users own their own data, and further fleshed out its position on the ownership issue with the privacy policy released today.

Haugen’s blog post continues on with a detailed and straightforward explanation of how user information is used and the differences between deleting and deactivating an account – and the privacy implications with each – as well as how it collects and leverages user data with its online advertising.

And at the same time, Facebook was standing up for the little guy and offering a shade more transparency, simultaneously, it unveiled a “roadmap” for developers and to create and implement applications to tap into the FB user base.

According to MediaPost: Among the key updates in store, Facebook will enable developers to ask for users' primary email address within applications to facilitate direct contact. At the same time, developers will only be able to send notifications and invitations via email, a user's Facebook Inbox or the News Feed and other activity streams.

But Haugen addressed this in his blog post, saying “Keep in mind that applications will never be given your email address unless you explicitly grant them permission, and like other websites you can always choose to unsubscribe if the service is no longer of value.”

Facebook is certainly chasing a moving target, as the web develops and people become more savvy about internet privacy. But it sounds like they’re continuing to walk the tightrope for now.

Digital Stranger Danger

I’m no Annie Leibovitz, but I know my way around a camera and I make pretty good use of Flickr, one of the leading photo sharing sites on the Web.

As a sharing and networking platform, Flickr is pretty amazing. It’s a great source for feedback and inspiration on your photos – and I’ve even sold a few of my images. But every now and then, it’s a little disconcerting to realize how open all your images are to the reset of the world.

Flickr offers varying levels of privacy and copyright settings, but any fifth grader can figure out how to pull an otherwise “protected” image from the Internet. I’ve even pulled a few for work and school projects. But it wasn’t until Gothamist nabbed a photo of mine that it really hit home.

It really makes you think about what you post on the Web. Especially when it comes to friends, family and colleagues.

We’ve all heard about the hazards of posting photos of yourself from last night’s bender on Facebook. I think we all get the idea of erring on the side of prudence with that sort of thing.

But now as I get older and friends start to get married, I’m starting to see more and more friends posting innocent and sometimes painfully cute photos of their kids online. Thanks for sharing, but have you thought it through?

Yesterday, the New York Times explored the varying points of view on posting kids’ photos online. Mostly, they agreed on one thing – no bathtub photos – but that’s about it.

Many parents view issues of Web privacy are simply a modern reality that they need to accept and live with. One mom said “Hundreds of kids die in swimming pools every year, but we don’t shut down all the pools.”

Still others keep their kids on digital lock-down. A mother, so paranoid about privacy that she wouldn’t even give her name for the Times piece, recently caused an awkward situation with a friend who posted a picture of her son on Facebook.

Maybe there’s a happy medium between the total laissez-faire and witness protection approaches.

According to the Times: Regardless of what danger may come to your children by posting pictures, there is one hazard whose existence no one can question: other parents. And their wrath could be enough to make anyone think twice before posting photos of little Charlie’s fourth birthday party.

I think about my own four-year-old niece. She’s a photogenic little girl who already has a bigger digital footprint than many of my friends. Should we be worried about her online privacy? Maybe.

Are we over-thinking this a bit? According to some, we are. Via the Times:

Prof. David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, says TV shows like the “Dateline NBC” program, “To Catch a Predator,” have falsely inflated the danger of the Internet.

“Research shows that there is virtually no risk of pedophiles coming to get kids because they found them online,” said Stephen Balkam, chief executive of the Family Online Safety Institute. While the debate makes this crime seem common, he said, all the talk is really just “techno-panic.”

My sense is there’s always going to be danger for kids, and it’s the parents’ responsibility to help navigate and educate according to what’s appropriate for the individual child. Looking back, there was always that one mom who couldn’t let their kid go to the mall without a chaperone – and that one who barely knew where their kid was. It’s the same here – just online.

RIP: GeoCities

A pioneer in the digital age but ultimately a casualty of progress, GeoCities died today in its sleep, surrounded by 12 remaining users, at its home in southern California. It was 15.

Via ComputerWorld: Founded in 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet, what is now Yahoo GeoCities was one of the first services to offer an easy way for early Internet surfers to publish their own Web pages. Whereas most hosting options of the 1990s were expensive, thus limiting their use to more entrepreneurial pursuits, GeoCities' free hosting space became the home for thousands of sites built around thematically oriented "neighborhoods": conservation, fashion, military, sports, finance, travel, and more.

And even though we hear over and over again that anything we put on the web out there forever, it’s not quite the case with GeoCities. It’s simply being deleted. So this leads me to wonder if this is a possibility with all cloud computing properties? Could Gmail simply be deleted?

In April, when the impeding closure was announced, there were only 12 active users of the site. Since then, the Internet Archive has been working to save GeoCities pages for posterity.

Time Warner leaves 64,000 customers vulnerable

It’s pretty impressive that Time Warner Cable manages to provide universally dismal service and yet stays in business. Yay cable monopoly!

From their laughable customer support to the dysfunctional cable boxes, TWC is really one of the most hateable companies. And here’s just one more reason: A “gaping” security hole in their cable modem routers left approximately 64,000 homes wide open to cyber attack.

The hole was discovered by David Chen, who blogs at Chenasaurus, when he was doing work on his friend’s modem.

Chen writes: From within your own network, an intruder can eavesdrop on sensitive data being sent over the Internet and even worse, they can manipulate the DNS address to point trusted sites to malicious servers to perform man-in-the-middle attacks. Someone skilled enough can possibly even modify and install a new firmware onto the router, which can then automatically scan and infect other routers automatically.

He said he called Time Warner to report the problem, to which they said “we are aware of it but we cannot do anything about it.” CNN says there’s a temporary patch in place until the cable company can come up with a permanent solution.

Ummm … Thanks TWC.

According to the AP on RSS

So everyone is always asking how they can stay up-to-date with According to the AP. Well, now you can subscribe to my handy RSS feed. Check it out.

Kanye West is not dead

Several reports today confirmed that Kanye West is not dead. Yay?

While rumors surrounding his death circulated through Facebook and Twitter, fake news sites with reports of the singer’s demise quickly sprouted up, appearing on Web searches and ultimately infecting searchers computers with malware.

According to The Toronto Star: Using search-engine optimization, the hackers pushed Web pages claiming to have information about West's "death" to the top of search engines. When worried fans clicked on the pages, their computers would be infected with fake anti-virus software.

For better or worse, Kanye’s alive (sorry Taylor). Regardless, as Counter Measures blogger Rik Ferguson points out, this showcases how quickly criminals can capitalize on Internet memes. Kinda crazy.

I will not be a statistic! Um, unless theres's a discount ...

A few weeks ago, I posted about a recent study from UPenn and UC Berkley that found nearly 70 of Americans oppose being tracked online by advertisers – among other findings.

This past weekend, NPR’s “On the Media” featured a great interview Joseph Turow, lead author of the study and professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania.

In his conversation with Bob Garfield, Turow sums up his findings:

What the public is concerned about is that the pictures that advertisers draw about you are becoming more and more vivid, and whether or not they have pictures that you would agree with is a really big question. So I think the issue here is how much do people know about what’s going on, and do they have any control over it?

So, for example, if you get an ad, say, from NewYorkTimes.com and it’s tailored to you, it would be great if there were a way that you could know, a) that’s it tailored for you, b) where did they get those data from, c) how does it fit into a larger picture of you that that advertiser or that periodical has? And can you do anything about it?

But what people don’t realize is that advertisers have been doing this for years in the off-line world. Just look at the example of zoned newspaper editions. The NY Times sells a different version of the paper in the North East versus the Mid West. As Garfield points out, the digital world just amplifies the scope of what advertisers can do – analyzing the data “a batrillion ways.”

The funny thing though, is that supermarkets have more data on you than most websites according to Turow. It’s not just a loyalty play, but every time you use a discount card they grab a little more data about your purchase behavior in exchange for a few pennies. And as megastores grow in popularity, many more of us consolidate our shopping experience in one place. Now Wal-Mart can track how you buys groceries, clothing, prescriptions and even how you bank . But still we shop, swiping our club cards and dropping bits of data along the way.

Worth it? Maybe. Duane Reade gives me $5 back for every $100 I spend (which happens way too often). I’m OK if they know what kind of toothpaste I use as long as I get a little something out of the deal.

So the question we come back to is: How much is your privacy worth? A few cents off deodorant, a little extra browser functionality?

As we get savvier about online (and off-line) data collection, it’s a question we’re going to face more and more. For me, like any good communications person, my answer is “it depends.” It depends on how the data is collected – are they just taking it, or did they ask my permission? It depends on what it’s used for – obviously I know it’s used to market at me, but my data be given out? And it depends on what’s in it for me – don’t just take data from me, but give me something back.

Time will tell, but as we move further into the digital future people will become more savvy and less sensitive about data collection and what they allow be collected. We’ll see.

Scandalized by the Web ... or ... Shooting Yourself in the Foot

Sometimes maintaining your online privacy is a matter of defending yourself against aggressive online marketers or unethical insurance companies. And sometimes it's just a matter of using some common sense.

Via Switched: In the age of social media, college athletes have it rough. Unlike the pros, these undergrads aren't getting paid millions, but they're under just as much scrutiny. Sometimes, they just can't handle the pressure, and with help from a cell phone, their mistakes get plastered across the Web. Of course, scandals are like catnip to us here at Switched, so we dug up a few of the more embarrassing examples of recent memory.

Read the full story here.

Twitter Enters Unchartered Territory

OK, so I’m not a gamer by any stretch. My gaming development basically stopped with Super Mario 3. Nevertheless, there’s a PS3 in my apartment, which threatens to take over my life.

We just got Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, a ridiculously engaging action-adventure sequel to the 2007 issue of Uncharted: Drakes Fortune. Even if you have the faintest interest in video games, you owe it to yourself to check this out.

Putting the game itself aside for a second, what really stands out to me is the Twitter integration. According to CVG.com, Uncharted 2 is the first PlayStation 3 game to link directly to the microblogging utility.

As players progress through the game, they unlock various clues, pick up trophies and hit key milestones. With the Twitter integration, the PS3 can automatically tweet your progress throughout the game – or even alert followers that you’ve entered multi-player mode, cuing them to join the game.

It’s a neat concept, but not without its downside. CVG.com predicted it would become a “major annoyance” with game-related tweets and Naughty Dog, the game’s developer temporarily suspended the Twitter services when its reviewers were flooded with tweets before the game even publicly launched.

Despite the volume of tweets, integrating automatic Twitter updates into your daily life has its own hazards. With the personal and professional lines blurring, colleagues and friends may be following your Twitter feed. Call off sick to play Uncharted, and you’re busted. You’re not going to find me tweeting progress as I explore the jungles of Borneo looking for Marco Polo’s lost ships. Just saying.

Even while three quarters of Americans object to online tracking by advertisers, we seem to be increasingly open to tracking ourselves at every minute of the day. Uncharted is just one example, but it’s a reminder that everyone around us has more visibility into our daily lives – not matter how much you try to control it.

Either way, as the business of social media finds its way, this could be worth a second look as an interesting way to monetize utilities like Twitter and Facebook – something both sites have struggled with for a while. But that’s a post for another time …

Paparazzi take a blow from the Terminator

In a land where the online and offline worlds collide – and the lines between public, private, reality and fantasy have been blurred into oblivion – there has been an important step forward to protecting privacy both online and off.

Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a groundbreaking anti-paparazzi law that allows civil suits to be filed against media outlets who publish photos that were illegally taken.

According to the AP: The amendment permits lawsuits against media outlets that pay for and make first use of material they knew was improperly obtained.

Celebrity-focused magazines, TV shows and websites like US Weekly, TMZ and PerezHilton often pay millions of dollars for exclusive photos.

Until now, photographers have been restricted (with questionable success) on what was fair game and how they could get their shot. But this is the first time that media outlets have been targeted by legislation.

According to MTV, Schwarzenegger signed a bill in 2005 that tripled the damages celebrities could seek from overly aggressive paparazzi.

But I question how effective this will be. The law, which takes effect in January 2010 will fine violator publications up to $50,000 – which may just be seen as the cost of doing business. When you’re already paying $5,000,000 million for a single image, what’s another 0.01%?

According to the AP (me), it’s a blow to the paparazzi/entertainment industry – but not one that will leave a mark for very long.

NYT: Medical Records No Safer than Movie Rental Info

What do Netflix and your health insurer have in common? More than you might think, according to an article in yesterday’s New York Times.

For starters, both collect personal data about, like your name, address, phone number, credit information, payment history, purchase behavior and preferences.

And both strip personally identifiable information from these records, which are then sold to researchers and marketers to ultimately better understand and target you as a consumer.

While that may be a little creepy, it’s nothing out of the ordinary and totally legal. But, according to researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, it is possible to re-identify individuals associated with the data based on otherwise innocuous information we all leave around the web – like chat logs, Twitter feeds, online comments and blogs.

Similar to a scam artist rummaging through your trash for bank statements you thought you destroyed, researchers say that your online footprint can aid in re-identifying information that is otherwise scrambled and scrubbed.

And while it might just be a little embarrassing for your Netflix history to get out (What do you mean you rented Another Gay Movie?), health records carry heavier implications and could cause irreparable “social, professional and financial harm,” according to the Times.

The scary thing is that there’s really nothing protecting the consumer at this point. If companies scramble and de-personalize your data, they’re in the clear to use it however they want. And it’s big business.

According to George Hill, an analyst at Leerink Swann, a health care investment bank, the clinical information market represents $8-10 billion in sales annually.

Yet while there are no safeguards to prevent reverse-identification of consumer data, the risk is evident.

According to the times: In 1997, for example, a researcher identified the medical records of William Weld, then the governor of Massachusetts, by correlating birthdays, ZIP codes and gender in voter registration rolls and information published by the state’s government insurance commission.

In the Times article, Dr. Deborah Peel, director of a Texas-based watchdog group, likened consumer risk to the Paris Hilton Sex Tape: “Once personal health data gets out there … it is going to be out there forever.”

A Just Death: Act To Prevent Predatory Marketing Practices against Minors

Claiming that it violated the First Amendment, companies like Yahoo!, AOL, eBay (disclosure: client), and News Corp. as well as the Association of National Advertisers, the Motion Picture Association of America and the civil liberties advocacy group Center for Democracy & Technology, yesterday convinced the Maine legislature to repeal an act designed to protect minors from aggressive data collection.

What sounded like a great idea to protect children was doomed from the start though. According to the Wall Street Journal, Maine’s attorney general decided not to enforce the law even before it was scheduled to go into effect, with the understanding that minors under 13 were already protected by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

While applauding the law’s intent, the committee determined that the “Act To Prevent Predatory Marketing Practices against Minors” was too broad and limiting – and could affect whether major companies do business in the state.

According to MediaPost, the law “prohibits companies from knowingly collecting personal information or health-related information from minors under 18 without their parents' consent.”

In theory that’s great, but there are some major pitfalls.

According to the WSJ:

In the complaint, the Maine Independent Colleges Association, for example, protested that the law would prevent Maine colleges from sending marketing materials to minors who requested information without first obtaining parental consent.

And according to MediaPost:

[Opponents] argued that the law could result in companies like Something Fishy -- which offers an online forum where teens discuss eating disorders. Something Fishy appears to violate the Maine law because it allows minors under 18 to register and participate without parental permission.

According to the AP (me), Maine’s lawmakers got it right on this one. But again, this showcases how society needs to keep an open mind to all sides as we move ahead in the digital future.

Photo via MediaPost

PMs call for Increased Internet Privacy

Last week, I posted about a recent move by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) to introduce legislation that would provide Americans with greater online privacy protections.

In a similar move, according to ComputerWeekly, Britain’s Prime Ministers called yesterday for a “Green Paper” to offer their citizens enhanced privacy protection both on and offline.

Across borders, governments are recognizing that privacy protection is a real and growing issue, as the global society moves increasingly online. Cloud computing as well as advertising vehicles like Facebook’s Beacon and Google Wave are just a few examples of how we are handing over our personal information – knowingly and unknowingly – to advertisers.

In yesterday’s Green Paper request, the MPs went a step further to say that the ISP – internet service providers – should bear more of the responsibility for safeguarding their users privacy and online security.

Like Rep. Boucher’s vision, PMs said that consumers should explicitly opt in to targeted online advertising.

MP Derek Wyatt, chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Communications group (apComms), predicted that Internet privacy would become a “very big” issue over the next five years, especially if nothing is done now.

Not really groundbreaking insight from the MP, but it does subtly highlight that right now there is a lot of talk without much action.

And we're back...

Ok, so I took a quick birthday hiatus from posting, and then work went nuts. But now we're back on a regular posting schedule.

Thanks for hanging in there!

Cloud Computing: A cautionary tale

It was revealed last week that hackers had stolen sensitive account information from a major online payroll processing company to directly target its customers.

PayChoice, a company that provides online payroll tools to over 125,000 organizations and back-end support to 250 other payroll companies, was breached. Hackers emailed PayChoices customers directly with detailed information about their accounts to coerce them into giving up their passwords.

According to the Washington Post: Unlike typical so-called "phishing" scams -- which are sent indiscriminately to large numbers of people in the hopes that some percentage of recipients are customers of the targeted institution -- this attack addressed PayChoice customers by name in the body of the message. The missives also included reference to each recipient's onlineemployer.com user name and a portion of his or her password for the site.

PayChoice is taking appropriate steps to understand what happened and to correct any issues caused. Nevertheless, this serves as a cautionary tale as we move further down the road to decentralized cloud computing.

Into Thin Air

It’s amazing how much trouble a click of a mouse can cause. In one click, you can send that poorly considered blazing email, or submit an ill-advised comment to a blog. Through that one click, you’re creating an indelible online record that can be tracked back to you forever.

I think we’ve all probably been there. You’ve pounded out that angry email and hit send – only to think about the consequences hours or days later. You think to yourself, maybe I shouldn’t have called him a **** or brought so-and-so into this. Did he read the email yet? I wonder if I can hack his computer and delete it before anyone notices. And then, all you want to do is disappear… or better yet, have the email vanish.

Well, we’re getting close. Researchers at the University of Washington recently introduced Vanish, an open source program that allows users to completely destroy online text – like email, documents, posts, etc.

As we move further toward Web 3.0 and the use of cloud computing, private information is scattered around the Internet. Vanish allows us to regain a bit of control over any text entered into a web browser. InformationWeek describes it better than I can:

Vanish allows users to specify that all copies of any text-based data they're creating disappear in a certain amount of time. The software takes advantage of the same peer-to-peer networks that allow people to share music files online. It encrypts data, breaks the encryption key into pieces and scatters them on machines across the network. Since machines are constantly joining and leaving peer-to-peer networks, pieces of the key disappear and it can't be reconstructed.

Pretty neat. But Vanish is in its infancy and comes with some limitations. The biggest, I think, is that both the sender and the recipient must be using the program for it to work. So you still can’t quietly retract that drunken email you sent your ex last weekend. Not yet at least.

Certainly, this isn’t a sure-fire tool either. Vanish’s developers stress that it is a prototype and warn that bugs and nuances are still being worked out. So users beware.

And just because the online file may be destroyed, does not necessarily mean the text is truly gone. Copy/paste remains one of the oldest tricks in the digital book, and can thwart all the peer-to-peer document destruction software in the world. And a few steps beyond that, developers at the Universities of Texas at Austin, Princeton and Michigan have created Unvanish – basically the yin to Vanish’s yang – proving that it is possible (although difficult) to reconstruct destroyed content.

So while developers battle it out, of course Google has at least a partial solution to our dilemma of a hastily sent dilemma: Mail Goggles, which is active late Fridays and Saturdays by default, forces the sender to answer five timed math problems to ensure they’re of the right frame of mind to be sending a late-night message.

How much should the Government Control the Internet?

Last week, the Associated Press explored the issue of how much the U.S. Government should control the Internet.

Similar to how planes were ordered grounded after 9/11, should the President be able to hit the kill-switch on the Internet if there is a catastrophic online attack?

According to the AP (lol), “At least 18 bills have been introduced as Congress works carefully to give federal authorities the power to protect the country in the event of a massive cyberattack. Lawmakers do not want to violate personal and corporate privacy or squelching innovation. All involved acknowledge it isn't going to be easy.”

Online Privacy as a Generational Issue

Despite what many people will tell you, more often we’re finding that online privacy is not a generational issue.

Yesterday, I posted about a recent Annenberg-Berkley study that revealed more than half of people 18-24 object to targeted online advertising.

Today, I will point you to a great article from Wired’s GeekDad, further exploring the generational issue:

According to the Pew Internet and American Life project, both teens and adults actively manage their information online - 60% of adults and 66% of teens restrict access to information in their profile. According to the Pew study, only 6% of teens make their first and last name publicly accessible on social networks- a very telling statistic. We want our cake, and we want to eat it too- we want to share our content online, and we want to control who we share it with.

Rather than an all-or-nothing public or private paradigm, we expect to be able to choose levels of privacy and levels of exposure to the public. Most teens restrict access to their online profiles and do not think that sharing their information with a specific set of people means that the information is in the public domain. This allows them to both gain the benefits of sharing and communicating online, but also protecting their privacy and remain empowered in their choices about their own information.

Study: Americans Object to Online Tracking Government: OK, we’re on it

Nearly 70 percent of Americans object being tracked online by advertisers, according to a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkley.

According to the New York Times, this represents the first independent study on behavioral advertising – and the results were impressive:

(Via NYT): Tailored ads in general did not appeal to 66 percent of respondents. Then the respondents were told about different ways companies tailor ads: by following what someone does on the company’s site, on other sites and in offline places like stores.

The respondents’ aversion to tailored ads increased once they learned about targeting methods. In addition to the original 66 percent that said tailored ads were “not O.K.,” an additional 7 percent said such ads were not O.K. when they were tracked on the site. An additional 18 percent said it was not O.K. when they were tracked via other Web sites, and an additional 20 percent said it was not O.K. when they were tracked offline.

The study also uncovered interesting data on teens. While heavy use of social networking sites like Facebook have been leveraged as evidence of that age group’s acceptance of advertising, more than half of respondents ages 18-24 objected to “tailored advertising.”

And the covernment is apparently listening. According to ClickZ, legislation governing online advertising and privacy could be introduced before Congress adjourns for its winter break.

Drafted by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va), chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, the legislation will include a range of pro-consumer policies that revolve mostly around transparency and choice in how users’ information is collected, used and distributed.

Rep. Boucher outlines his views in much more detail in a recent article in The Hill:

Broadband networks are a primary driver of the national economy, and it is fundamentally in the nation’s interest to encourage their expanded use. One clear way Congress can promote greater use of the Internet for access to information, e-commerce and entertainment is to assure Internet users a high degree of privacy protection, including transparency about the collection, use and sharing of information about them and to give them control over that collection, use and sharing.

Industry is to be commended for its recent advancement of self-regulatory principles. However, while proactive, these entirely voluntary principles do not go far enough, and there is no guarantee that every company that collects information from the Internet-using public will abide by them.

Again, this illustrates how the law is always a few steps behind technology – but it is heartening to see online consumer protection receiving appropriate attention, even though most consumers are largely clueless about issues surrounding privacy.

Image: Annenberg-Berkley Report, via New York Times

Google Execs Face Jail in Italy

Apparently, Google isn’t watching you as closely as some people would like.

Two senior executives from the search giant could face up to three years in prison if they’re convicted for violating Italian privacy laws.

According to the BBC, the charges stem from a 2006 YouTube posting that shows an Italian primary school student with Downs Syndrome being bullied by four classmates with at least a dozen others looking on.

The video was posted just before Google acquired the video-hosting site, but Italian officials argue that there were inadequate content filters in place to remove the post and that the video itself violates Italian law since it was uploaded without the consent of everyone involved.

Google, of course, maintains that it has broken no laws. The video was up for several months, but Google says it was removed after they received complaints. They also maintain that no laws were broken, as the video was hosted in the U.S., where privacy laws are much more relaxed.

Some people are looking at this as an opportunity to take a (potentially, but not yet) high-profile anti-American or anti-Google stance. Whether or not that's the case this underscores at least one thing: We are living in a global society where technology is outpacing the law and we need to coordinate and cooperate across boarders with a modicum of reasonability (hello Italian courts) and responsibility (looking at you, Google).

A decision is expected in December.