On the Media: Facebook's New Social Search:
Facebook has introduced a new search tool called social graph search, which lets users search across the Facebook database by users' interests. Privacy advocates aren't pleased with the new feature, arguing that it makes information about users too easy to find. Bob talks to Tom Scott, who has been given early access to the feature and has been publicizing some of his searches.
Yet another diminution of privacy, merely using computer software to reveal what's already there.
Facebook is Exhibit A proving we have created a whole generation of people who have no respect for their own privacy. More importantly, what does that say about the future of the Fourth Amendment? That scares me.
As H.R. "Bob" Haldeman put it on the Nixon White House tapes, "Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it is hard to put it back in." Once you put something on the Facebook or the Internet, you can't take it back. Even if you delete it, there are websites that can recreate pages at a particular time, and, worse yet, Facebook can provide it by subpoena.
Now, if Facebook would only require a search warrant like Google and Yahoo!. Regretfully, I suspect Mr. Zuckerberg's mentality on this is informed only by his own desire to acquire more information which he knows modern Americans will stupidly give up. We all know it. What does this portend for privacy advocates in the next decade?
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