TWEET to Win 2 tickets to SIFF-Kirkland showing of 'We Are Legion' @BeatTheChip

"Should the American government provide online-identity services?" - The Economist

SEE ALSO:

• The Practice of Law in the Era of 'Big Data'
• The Government Internet ID Proposal’s Pros and Cons

REDUX:Real ID update, Bill to prohibit Kill Switch, Patriot Act Recap & more

REAL ID UPDATE: Border states Texas, New Mexico and other southwestern states are actively increasing public discourse on terms of immigration policy and whether or not federal legislation will perform or deliver terms of relief promised to put limits on undocumented migrants seeking work.  North Carolina seems to be reinforcing terms to reduce federal spending on Real ID; while a Youngstown, NC legislator seeks to move legislation prohibitive of federalizing local drivers licenses.  A Real ID compliant discourse is stirring Nevada two years after the state passed a local resolution requesting that the federal law be repealed.   States are expected to be federally compliant with the law by May 11th, 2011.  More opinion here and here.

D.I.Y. Accountability: Send a message to Google and Facebook: Protect Our Privacy!

Here's second life for news that matters:

US Bill Would Prohibit Internet 'kill Switch'

Decentralizing the Internet So Big Brother Can't Find You

FBI pushes for surveillance backdoors in Web 2.0 tools

Patriot Act Extension Lands on Obama’s Desk

SENDING OUT AN S.O.S....Clinton delivers speech to support nonviolent dissent on the web, as Ray McGovern arrested, brutalized. Analysis of the content of Clinton's speech here.

DISCUSSION: The Internet and Social Media: Tools of Freedom or Tools of Oppression?

TSA agents admit to stealing $160,000 from bags at JFK Airport

HBGary -Anonymous- WIKILEAKS : @arstechnica @ggreenwald

• More facts emerge about the leaked smear campaigns
• Spy games: Inside the convoluted plot to bring down WikiLeaks
• Inside the story of the HBGary hacks

WHAT DO YOU THINK?  Do-Not-Track bill facing criticism 
Add comments! RE: DoNotTrack

SpyTweets and Intel corporate monitoring of Blogs

CIA Targeting BlogJourno? Yep.

Wired.com>> Freedom's Phoenix

America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.

Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn’t touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords.

“That’s kind of the basic step — get in and monitor,” says company senior vice president Blake Cahill.

Then Visible “scores” each post, labeling it as positive or negative, mixed or neutral. It examines how influential a conversation or an author is. (”Trying to determine who really matters,” as Cahill puts it.) Finally, Visible gives users a chance to tag posts, forward them to colleagues and allow them to response through a web interface.

In-Q-Tel says it wants Visible to keep track of foreign social media, and give spooks “early-warning detection on how issues are playing internationally,” spokesperson Donald Tighe tells Danger Room.

Of course, such a tool can also be pointed inward, at domestic bloggers or tweeters. Visible already keeps tabs on web 2.0 sites for Dell, AT&T and Verizon. For Microsoft, the company is monitoring the buzz on its Windows 7 rollout. For Spam-maker Hormel, Visible is tracking animal-right activists’ online campaigns against the company.

“Anything that is out in the open is fair game for collection,” says Steven Aftergood, who tracks intelligence issues at the Federation of American Scientists. But “even if information is openly gathered by intelligence agencies it would still be problematic if it were used for unauthorized domestic investigations or operations. Intelligence agencies or employees might be tempted to use the tools at their disposal to compile information on political figures, critics, journalists or others, and to exploit such information for political advantage. That is not permissible even if all of the information in question is technically ‘open source.’” :::MORE HERE:::