Links of the Day - November 23, 2008

The Future of Ephemeral Conversation - By Bruce Schneier

When he becomes president, Barack Obama will have to give up his BlackBerry. Aides are concerned that his unofficial conversations would become part of the presidential record, subject to subpoena and eventually made public as part of the country's historical record

This reality of the information age might be particularly stark for the president, but it's no less true for all of us. Conversation used to be ephemeral. Whether face-to-face or by phone, we could be reasonably sure that what we said disappeared as soon as we said it. Organized crime bosses worried about phone taps and room bugs, but that was the exception. Privacy was just assumed.

This has changed. We chat in e-mail, over SMS and IM, and on social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace, and LiveJournal. We blog and we Twitter. These conversations -- with friends, lovers, colleagues, members of our cabinet -- are not ephemeral; they leave their own electronic trails....

EPIC Alert 15.23

1. Court Upholds New Hampshire Prescription Privacy Law
2. EPIC Complaint Leads to Halt of Stalker Spyware Distribution
3. Google Flu Trends Raises Privacy Concerns
4. Massachusetts to Adopt Data Privacy Regulations
5. Civil Society Participation at the OECD
6. News in Brief
7. EPIC Bookstore: "Protectors of Privacy"