On Monday, a Manhattan judge ruled that writer, Occupy Wall Street participant and prankster (and, for the purpose of full disclosure, my good friend) Malcolm Harris will not be able to block a subpoena on his Twitter account, including "any and all user information including email addresses" tied to it because, according to the judge, our tweets are not ours at all.

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Thanks to a law passed without much public debate in March, the FAA must allow law enforcement agencies to operate small drones (i.e., less than 4.4 pounds) at altitudes of less than 400 feet. "The demand is huge," says Catherine Crump, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. Michael Toscano, president of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a trade group, says there are nearly 19,000 law enforcement entities in the United States, of which only 300 now have aerial surveillance capacities.

"Those departments have helicopters which cost about $1,500 an hour to operate," Toscano says. "You can fly these drones for maybe less than $50 hour. A lot of smaller departments can now afford this technology."

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SO 1 enables LAPD officers to file Suspicious Activity Reports on observed behaviors or activities. Where things get murky, however, is how SAR guidelines categorize constitutionally protected, non-criminal and commonplace activities such as using binoculars, snapping photographs and taking notes as indicators of terrorism-related activity. The SARs are coupled with the LAPD's iWatch program, a campaign the police pioneered to encourage regular citizens to report "suspicious" activity, including “a person wearing clothes that are too big or too hot for the weather,” or things that just plain old don’t “look right.”

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A month later, Zuckerberg and Cameron had a follow-up conversation, later posted on YouTube. Cameron, dressed in suit and tie, chatted with Zuckerberg, who wore a blue cotton T-shirt. “Basically, we’ve got a big problem here,” Cameron pointed out to Zuckerberg, describing the U.K.’s financial woes.

Zuckerberg outlined how Facebook could be used as a platform to decrease spending and increase public participation in the political process: “I mean  all these people have great ideas and a lot of energy that they want to bring, and I think for a lot of people it’s just about having an easy and a cheap way for them too to communicate  their ideas.”

“Brilliant,” Cameron said.

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The documents describe in extraordinary detail a secret program intended to catalog life inside Muslim neighborhoods as people immigrated, got jobs, became citizens and started businesses. The documents undercut the NYPD's claim that its officers only follow leads when investigating terrorism.

It started with one group, Moroccans, but the documents show police intended to build intelligence files on other ethnicities.

Undercover officers snapped photographs of restaurants frequented by Moroccans, including one that was noted for serving "religious Muslims." Police documented where Moroccans bought groceries, which hotels they visited and where they prayed. While visiting an apartment used by new Moroccan immigrants, an officer noted in his reports that he saw two Qurans and a calendar from a nearby mosque.

It was called the Moroccan Initiative.

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As he shopped for a children's watch inside the sprawling Mall of America, two security guards approached and began questioning him. Although he was not accused of wrongdoing, the guards filed a confidential report about Kleinerman that was forwarded to local police.

The reason: Guards thought he might pose a threat because he had been looking at them in a suspicious way.

Najam Qureshi, owner of a kiosk that sold items from his native Pakistan, also had his own experience with authorities after his father left a cellphone on a table in the food court.

The consequence: An FBI agent showed up at the family's home, asking if they knew anyone who might want to hurt the United States.

Mall of America officials say their security unit stops and questions on average up to 1,200 people each year. With 4.2 million square feet under one roof, the two-decade-old mall is a monument to suburban shopping and entertainment. Nearly 100,000 people from around the world pass through on a given day.

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The agency says the change is intended to protect travelers' privacy rights while securing commercial air travel. It will be used in 40 airports, including in Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Miami and Newark.

The new software is designed to recognize items on the passenger that could pose a security threat.

The agency plans to eventually use this technology for more machines at more airports.

The whole body imaging machines have sparked outrage among passengers and privacy advocates because they reveal images of naked bodies.

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On the Web:

http://www.tsa.gov/approach/tech/ait/faqs.shtm

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Prime Minister David Cameron called for inquiries into the News of the World's behavior as well as into the failure of the original police inquiry to uncover the latest allegations now emerging.

London's Metropolitan Police, meanwhile, confirmed they were investigating evidence from News International, parent of the tabloid, that some officers illegally accepted payments from the newspaper in return for information.

"It is absolutely disgusting what has taken place," Cameron said, speaking in the House of Commons shortly before the debate opened. However, he said any inquiry into the News of the World would have to wait until the police investigation is concluded.

News International, the British linchpin of Rupert Murdoch's global media empire, was under intense pressure following reports that its tabloid had hacked into the cell phone of missing 13-year-old Milly Dowler in 2002, deleting messages and giving her parents and police false hope that the girl was still alive.

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If a high-schooler uses an off-campus computer to create offensive material that relates to his or her school life -- writing nasty messages about school administrators or fellow students, for instance -- is his or her speech still protected?

On Monday, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that two students -- each of whom had created an unflattering mock MySpace profile for a school official -- had been unfairly disciplined by their respective school districts. In both cases, whatever disruption the students' actions had caused was simply not profound enough to merit school involvement, the court decided. It was a victory for these students, and all others whose online speech is objectionable but not "substantially" disruptive. (For some, of course, the ruling is not so rosy: As Wired notes, the rights of those students who do seriously disrupt school life can still be restricted by administrators).

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Camera coverage of London is so comprehensive that, in this particular man's case, we can follow him from a truly cinematic variety of angles -- and a full minute and a half -- as he wanders further and further from the fancy Savoy Hotel, where he had been attending an awards event.

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Facebook may have just surpassed itself in the creep-stakes. On Tuesday, security firm Sophos issued an alert that Facebook has been activating facial recognition technology on accounts without fully informing users.

In December the social media leviathan announced the technology, which is designed to learn  faces as they are tagged in photos. The site then makes tagging suggestions if it recognizes your face on your friends' photos in the future. Users are by default opted in to the Tag Suggestion tool and have to choose to opt out. The technology is not new -- and has been in the U.S. for months -- but the fact that it has been gradually rolled out to accounts across the world for months without users getting full warning has perturbed critics.

According to I.T. news site the Register, Facebook responded to Sophos' warning, admitting:

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I was not a popular child in elementary, junior high or high school. In fact, I was mercilessly taunted from fifth through ninth grades, and only eventually learned that the way to make it better was to be more invisible (read: less myself).

I always thought it came from being a non-Mormon in my small all-Mormon hometown in Idaho.

I left Idaho and everyone in it behind when I moved away to college. I maintain absolutely no contact with anyone there. I shook off the dust, and with the help of cosmetics, fashion and some confidence, I live a happy, shiny new life, and have for 20 years.

Enter social media. Now, I can easily find anyone from that hometown on Facebook and see all that they are up to. And if I used my real name on Facebook, they could find me too. Silly as this sounds, this chills me to the bone. Looking at Facebook is, for me, like going to a high school reunion every day. (And no, I have not gone to any real reunions.)

I don't want to be found. I don't want to reconnect.

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But the victory for security is one often achieved unfairly. The debate is being skewed by several flawed pro-security arguments. These arguments improperly tip the scales to the security side of the balance. Let’s analyze some of these arguments, the reasons they are flawed, and the pernicious effects they have.

The All-or-Nothing Fallacy
Many people contend that "we must give up some of our privacy in order to be more secure." In polls, people are asked whether the government should conduct surveillance if it will help in catching terrorists. Many people readily say yes.

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When I wrote earlier this week about Jane Mayer's New Yorker article on the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers, the passage I hailed as "the single paragraph that best conveys the prime, enduring impact of the Obama presidency" included this observation from Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin:  "We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state."  There are three events -- all incredibly from the last 24 hours -- which not only prove how true that is, but vividly highlight how it functions and why it is so odious.

First, consider what Democrats and Republicans just jointly did with regard to the Patriot Act, the very naming of which once sent progressives into spasms of vocal protest and which long served as the symbolic shorthand for Bush/Cheney post-9/11 radicalism:

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It's getting a lot of coverage across the pond and, unsurprisingly, stirring up some controversy. The Guardian's Sunny Hundul criticized the Evening Standard's coverage of the site, which he argued was all too flippant and embraced an unfair double standard. He asked, "If the sexes had been reversed, would it have been seen so benign? Probably not." Gail Dines and Wendy J Murphy also targeted the site in a recent Op-Ed:

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The euro100,000 ($141,300) penalty -- the largest ever by French body CNIL -- sanctions Google for collecting personal data from Wi-Fi networks -- including e-mails, web browsing histories and online banking details -- from 2007 to 2010 through its roaming camera-mounted cars and bicycles.

The fine is the first against Google over the data-gathering, which more than 30 countries have complained about. At least two other European countries are considering fines, while some others have ruled against penalizing Google.

Google Inc. has apologized and says it will delete the data.

"As we have said before, we are profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks," Google's Global Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer said in an e-mailed statement. "As soon as we realized what had happened, we stopped collecting all Wi-Fi data from our Street View cars and immediately informed the authorities."

Google has two months to appeal the fine. It hasn't yet decided whether it will, a company spokesman said.

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But that's exactly what happened when Etsy.com, an Internet craft fair service, introduced a Facebook-style social networking system called People Search last week to help buyers and sellers connect with each other and become friends (?). Here's the official announcement from the site's forums:

With this new People Search tool, we're expanding on the search tool that's available in Your Circle and making it available across the whole site. Now you can search through ALL Etsy members and filter by Sellers or Non-Sellers. You even have the option to add someone to your Circle right then and there! People Search will be replacing Sellers Search in the site header search dropdown.

We're carrying over all of the privacy settings from Sellers Search so you can still hide your real name from search in your Profile.

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The ACLU recently sent a letter to the Maryland Department of Corrections in reference to a blanket policy requiring applicants to submit social media log-ins and passwords for routine background checks, reports the Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal. The letter details the experience of Officer Robert Collins, a seven-year veteran of the department, who spoke out about the new policy after applying for a new position. In a statement for ACLU Maryland, Collins described his employer's request and his reaction:

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"My kids all grew up around the office and were all exposed to computers," said Dr. Edward Zuckerberg, a dentist. "There are advantages to being exposed to computers early on. That certainly enriched Mark's interest in technology."

Zuckerberg said he computerized his offices in 1985. His son Mark Zuckerberg, cofounder and CEO of Facebook, was born in 1984 and was raised in the house where his father's dental offices are located in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., in suburban Westchester.

The dentist spoke for an hour on Westchester station WVOX in an interview with Paul Feiner, supervisor of Greenburgh. Dobbs Ferry is a village in the town of Greenburgh.

The dentist said his own computer science background was "limited" -- he majored in biology in college -- but he said he's "always been technologically oriented in the office" and "always had the latest high-tech toys," including an early Atari 800.

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Their hearts are in the right place. Parts of the Internet are cesspools of slimy speech, where anonymous cowards hide behind virtual bushes and say outrageous, untrue things about others. I've been attacked in this way, and I don't like it.

So of course anyone with a conscience wants to encourage accountability and responsibility in speech. But the key word there is "encourage," not "force." It's essential to preserve anonymity, and to appreciate why it’s vital. Anonymity protects whistle-blowers and others for whom speech can be unfairly dangerous.

If Fish's description of the book is accurate, the authors are offering a cure that is much more dangerous than the disease: They would require Internet sites to take legal responsibility for what other people post on their sites.

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