... Polls suggest that the public is gravely concerned: a 1999 Wall Street Journal-NBC survey, for instance, indicated that privacy is the issue that concerns Americans most about the twenty-first century, ahead of overpopulation, racial tensions, and global warming. Politicians can't talk enough about privacy, and are rushing to pass laws to protect it. Increasingly, business and technology are seen as the culprits. "Over the next 50 years," the journalist Simson Garfinkel writes in Database Nation, "we will see new kinds of threats to privacy that don't find their roots in totalitarianism, but in capitalism, the free market, advanced technology, and the unbridled exchange of electronic information."

There's a general sense, too, that businesses in the modern free market are indifferent to the threats their new technologies pose to privacy. That sense seemed powerfully confirmed in early 1999, when Scott McNealy, the chief executive officer of Sun Microsystems, was asked whether privacy safeguards had been built into a new computer-networking system that Sun had just released. McNealy responded that consumer-privacy issues were nothing but a "red herring," and went on to make a remark that still resonates. "You have zero privacy anyway," he snapped. "Get over it."

Interesting read, with lots of pointers to books on the subject (Atlantic is an Amazon associate, so they probably make money if you use their links). The article is four pages long and the page links are subtle.

The Atlantic | Mar 2001 | Web-Only Sidebar | Open Secrets . An e-mail interview with Steven Levy, the author of Crypto: When the Code Rebels Beat the Government--Saving Privacy in the Digital Age

ZDNet - AOL sides with anonymous posters.

AOL Time Warner Inc. wants to stop being a tattletale -- and help chill the rash of defamation lawsuits against people who post anonymous messages on the Internet.

In a legal filing, the Dulles, Va., media giant blasts these lawsuits as an abuse of the legal system and says they threaten to curtail free speech on the Internet. AOL provides Internet access to more than 26 million subscribers, who account for a significant volume of online postings.

This sounds good. But considering AOL's history of releasing information at the drop of a hat, I'll need to see them fight more than a few subpoenas before I take their statement seriously. A paragraph later in the article gives a possible clue as to AOL's real motivation. Money, theirs

... Last year, for example, AOL received nearly 475 subpoenas, a 40% increase over 1999. AOL won't say how much effort--time or money--is involved in tracking down the posters and answering these subpoenas. However, complying with these court orders keep the "handful" of AOL lawyers and legal assistants who handle these matters busy, says AOL spokesman Jim Whitney.

[ ... ]

AOL has come under criticism for disclosing its customers' private information in the past. In 1998, it acknowledged violating its privacy policies by releasing information showing that a customer being investigated by the U.S. Navy was homosexual. AOL settled with the navy officer for an undisclosed amount.

CNET NEWS.COM - New tools hatch for sniffing out Web bugs.

A handful of companies are arming Web surfers with tools for finding and repelling so-called Web bugs--invisible pieces of code that can be used for everything from secretly tracking people's Web travels to pilfering computer files.

Many site operators and Net advertising companies place Web bugs on their pages to collect information, such as which pages are being read most often. Too small for readers to see, the bugs also can be used in more invasive ways, capturing a visitor's Internet Protocol address or installing pernicious files, for example.

Technology News from Wired News - Threat in the Hand of Your Palm.

Keep your Palm in your pocket. With just a single stroke of a stylus, anyone can launch a program that allows him or her to access, change or make a copy of any data that is stored on any Palm device.

Palm acknowledged on Friday that the password-protection feature in Palm Desktop 4.0 software could easily be disabled.

Newsbytes - Marketers Tout Consumer Privacy.

Madison Avenue has discovered what consumers knew all along: We don't want others peering into our private lives. Concern about the loss of personal privacy beat health care, crime or taxes in a recent Harris poll.

That's why some companies have hired chief privacy officers. Even the Direct Marketing Association trade group now touts itself as privacy-concerned.

''The critical question: Is this about privacy protection or public relations?'' asks Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group.

Washington Post - On Reflection, a Puzzling Ad Campaign. EarthLink's Restroom Mirrors Tout Online Privacy -- or Try To

[ ... ]

In this month's campaign, EarthLink is taking its anti-AOL message a step further, attempting to convey the notion that, unlike EarthLink, AOL does not protect its users' privacy on the Internet.

"AOL sells your information, AOL bombards you with pop-up ads," said Claudia Caplan, EarthLink's vice president of brand marketing. "Their customer is really their advertisers and they sell you to the advertiser."