Think flashy banner and pop-up ads are limited to the Web? Think again.

Grocery retailer Safeway is testing new in-store shopping cart technology that traces shoppers' steps through its stores and flashes personalized ads at them while they're shopping.

The move underscores a growing trend. As more technology permeates the brick-and-mortar retail world, the kind of sophisticated--some may say intrusive--marketing that's common in the online world could become the norm in supermarkets and other stores.

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"Consumers don't want to be targeted as an individuals," said Don Gilbert, senior vice president of information technology at the National Retail Federation. "You don't want the stores to know that you buy a case of beer every night."

Safeway's pilot test, however, may signal that retailers are quietly moving to make more use of such data. Analysts said other large chains are experimenting with similar technology.

"I think they're getting more blatant about tracking people," said Katherine Albrecht, founder of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, a grassroots organization opposed to shopper cards.

Wired News: Commentary by Lauren Weinstein - Eye on America, Indeed.

The pure concept of public video surveillance cameras may make sense, but the more prevalent they become, the scarier their implications get

CNET NEWS.COM - Freenet keeps file-trading flame burning .

A new version of the Freenet software, a program based around wholly anonymous Net publishing and distribution, is due out Monday after long silence from its mostly volunteer developer community.

Freenet has long been a kind of peer-to-peer promised land, with its developers promising technical features far beyond the simple file-swapping of networks like Napster or Kazaa. Its ambitions have kept it squarely in the development stage for years, with few nontechnical devotees, while simpler rival networks have attracted millions of users.

With Monday's new release, the developers hope to start attracting a wider audience.

"This is the first (release) where we can confidently encourage people to go download the software and comfortably expect it to work for them," said Ian Clarke, the programmer who started the Freenet project nearly four years ago as a Scottish university student. "Before it's always been a bit of a case of having our fingers crossed."

Whatever its immediate impact on users, Freenet is one of the key projects remaining from the heyday of independent peer-to-peer development where volunteer groups continue to push the boundaries of technology.

FreenetProject.org.

After over a year of development, several rewrites of various parts of the code, and dramatic enhancements to every aspect of operation, the First new stable release of Freenet in over 14 months is finally ready. Thanks go to the developers, our patient users, Freesite authors, and everyone else that contributed. In particular, thanks go to Matthew Toseland, without whom this release would still be vaporware.

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - Freenet 0.5 Released.

Slashdot | "Ask Slashdot" - What Software Do Cable Installers Place on Your PC?

[Macro error: Can't evaluate the expression because the name "e" hasn't been defined.] N0S asks: "The cable guy came over to install a cable modem at my Dad's house. As I watched him do his stuff I noticed he was installing something called Broadjump Client Foundation. I know you don't need software for a cable modem to work so I asked if it was necessary. He said he had to do his list of things, and we had to sign that he did his list of things, otherwise he couldn't leave it with us to use. Since I can always remove the software, I agreed, but I noticed while he was flipping through the install, he was clicking 'agree' on every EULA that came up (ed. emphasis added) . Doing a search on Google for 'Broadjump Client Foundation' comes up with some pretty scary stuff as far as what it does, like: 'Builds a database of subscriber demographics and buying behaviors to help evolve and refine marketing efforts.' (ed. emphasis added) Now, how does this affect us? Neither myself or anyone in my family agreed to the software; the cable guy did. And is there anyway to get cable companies to stop doing this as I can imagine since the cable company is a monopoly in this town, that the percentage of people who still have this software on their computers is pretty high."

Technology News from Wired News - Prada's Smart Tags Too Clever?.

The Italian fashion company's use of radio ID tags is designed to improve the shopping experience, but privacy consultants say they pose new privacy risks for consumers.

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Prada shoppers eventually will be able to create "virtual closets" and store information about what they tried on and bought in password-protected Internet accounts. They will also be able to opt for customer cards that detail past purchases and contain notes sales associates may have made on their preferences. Such cards would be readable either by associates' handhelds or at cash registers.

ABCNEWS.com : You Win the Loss of Your Privacy. Software at iWon Web Site Tracks Users Even After Removal

Oct. 23 -- IWon.com offers prize money of up to $1 million to Web surfers who visit the Internet portal site and make it their homepage. But a chance to win money also means that members may be losing something more important: their privacy.

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The instructions at iWon's site advise members to use the add/remove programs function in the Windows operating system software if they wish to uninstall iWon's extra programs.

But after performing the add/remove procedures and rebooting one of TechTV's computers, a software scan still found traces of the aornum program. Aornum had renamed some of its files "ornum" and hid the program deeper on the computer.

Within minutes the program was attempting to send data. Our firewall logged the series of requests, noting aornum.exe as the offending malware.

Especially disturbing is that iWon is a TRUSTe company, meaning it promises to publish a privacy policy and live by its tenets. Nowhere in the iWon privacy policy does it state that the spyware program will hide itself and continue transmission after you attempt to remove it.

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - TCPA and Palladium Technical Analysis.

An anonymous reader writes "After some months reading TCPA specifications and Palladium information released by Microsoft, I've finished a technical article regarding the two; the scope is technically analyzing what we know on TCPA and Palladium so we can have an objective way to judge how could it really affect us if finally done. You can read it in English or Spanish."