“According to complaints from many residents, Google’s English language search engine has spread large amounts of vulgar content that is lascivious and pornographic, seriously violating China’s relevant laws and regulations,” foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a regularly scheduled news conference. “I’d like to stress that google.com, as an Internet enterprise providing services in China, should earnestly abide by Chinese laws and regulations.”

The disruption of Google (GOOG) services follows a widely criticized mandate from Beijing requiring all computers sold in the country to include Green Dam, an application designed to prevent citizens from viewing “offensive” content, which in the Chinese government’s case includes all manner of material. From a report by the Open Net Initiative, an academic consortium dedicated to the study of censorship and surveillance:

The version of the Green Dam software that we tested, when operating under its default settings, is far more intrusive than any other content control software we have reviewed. Not only does it block access to a wide range of web sites based on keywords and image processing, including porn, gaming, gay content, religious sites and political themes, it actively monitors individual computer behavior, such that a wide range of programs including word processing and email can be suddenly terminated if content algorithm detects inappropriate speech. The program installs components deep into the kernel of the computer operating system in order to enable this application layer monitoring. The operation of the software is highly unpredictable and disrupts computer activity far beyond the blocking of websites.

…The deeply intrusive nature of the software opens up several possibilities for use other than filtering material harmful to minors. With minor changes introduced through the auto-update feature, the architecture could be used for monitoring personal communications and Internet browsing behavior. Log files are currently recorded locally on the machine, including events and keywords that trigger filtering. The auto-update feature can used to change the scope and targeting of filtering without any notification to users.

Or at least they’d like to give that impression.

Said Udi Mokady, co-founder and CEO of Cyber-Ark: “You can install the best security systems in the world, but if your staff do not respect the information they are entrusted with, then the information will definitely go astray–just as the findings of this survey have illustrated.”

Seems there’s a little bit of BOFH (Bastard Operator From Hell) in all system administrators …

It’s taken nearly a year, but the inevitable class-action fallout from Facebook’s ill-starred Beacon advertising system has finally begun. Filed in California, the suit claims Facebook and its ad partners violated online privacy and computer fraud laws by collecting and publicly disclosing information about users’ online activities without proper consent. Facebook’s “Beacon” advertisements, as you may recall, transformed member transactions on third-party partner sites into product/service endorsements and inserted them into their friends’ “news feeds.” Facebook members, or should I say “fansumers,” were automatically opted-in to the program. Worse, Beacon collected information about member actions on affiliate sites even if they’d opted out of the service and logged off from Facebook. As the suit notes, “By the time any user was notified that Facebook was (at a minimum) an observing party to the transaction, and that Facebook was asking for an approval to publicly broadcast identifying information regarding the event, personally identifying information had already been communicated to Facebook.”

Given that, it’s surprising this suit, which demands the deletion of any ill-gotten data and some form of restitution, wasn’t filed earlier. Certainly, it seems a sure thing after Facebook’s acknowledgment of these issues.

[Image credit: FSJ]

In written testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Steven McDevitt, a former information technology specialist at the White House, explained that the administration began migrating its email to Exchange without having an adequate records-management solution in place. Worse, its email-retention process was as laughably primitive as it was insecure. To quote McDevitt:

The initial email-retention process involved a manual process of copying messages from the Exchange journals to .pst files for storage and retention.”

The White House refers to this process as “journaling,” which is most likely a euphemism for “interns handled our email backups.” And, in this case, without the proper access and logging controls to prevent tampering or even note that it had occurred.

All of this is quite troubling, to say the least. But not to worry–the White House is at this very moment developing a new archiving system. Too bad it’s unlikely to go live before the end of this administration.

That’s a good question to ask in light of FBI Director Robert Mueller’s call for “omnibus” Internet surveillance. In testimony to the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives on Wednesday, Mueller suggested legislation be passed that would give the bureau the right to monitor the Internet at the backbone level.

Said Mueller: “I think legislation has to be developed that balances on one hand, the privacy rights of the individual who are receiving the information, but on the other hand, given the technology, the necessity of having some omnibus search capability utilizing filters that would identify the illegal activity as it comes through and give us the ability to preempt that illegal activity where it comes through a choke point as opposed to the point where it is diffuse on the Internet.”

Shades of Carnivore, right? The “choke point” to which Mueller alludes is presumably the National Security Agency, which has been probing the data passing through the Internet backbone like some Orwellian spinal surgeon. Which is a little frightening. Because the packets of data being passed back and forth over the Internet don’t come prelabeled. There’s no “ILLEGAL ACTIVITY” designation. It’s just activity, and Mueller would apparently like permission to survey it all.

While respecting the privacy rights of the individual, of course. Thoughtful.

Yet it’s being bandied about by Democratic State Assemblyman Charles Calderon, whose Assembly Bill 1956 would expand the state’s sales tax to digital goods–music downloads, e-books, pornography and what-not. “The notion of taxing tangible, physical property is really an industrial-era construct when we made widgets and sold widgets,” Calderon argues. “Now it’s not about widgets, it’s about information, and selling information and moving information.”

It certainly is, but is it really prudent to slap an iTax of 8.25% to 8.75% on such information? Especially when those who peddle it could pretty easily create a separate entity out-of-state and avoid it altogether? Driving away e-commerce certainly isn’t going to do California’s budget any good. “When you charge these taxes, all these e-commerce [companies] are going to move outside of California,” said Michelle Steel, a member of the California State Board of Equalization. “California is the high-tech state; why would you want to kick them out?”

Good question. Because if you do force them out, who’s going to provide the state with its massive tax windfalls? From an Associated Press report from January, 2007:

After cashing in more than 9 million shares valued at $3.7 billion last year, 16 Google insiders will owe the Golden State as much as $380 million in taxes–enough to cover the salaries of more than 3,000 state workers.”

According to a new study from the University of Virginia, many of Facebook’s most popular applications access far more personal user data than is necessary. From the study:

We performed a systematic review of the top 150 Facebook applications in October 2007 and examined their information needs. We found that 8.7% didn’t need any information; 82% used public data (name, network, list of friends); and only 9.3% needed private information (e.g., birthday). Since all of the applications are given full access to private data, this means that 90.7% of applications are being given more privileges than they need.”

And what sort of user data are we talking about here? Pretty much all of it, according to the company’s terms of service.

In order to allow you to use and participate in Platform Applications created by Developers (”Developer Applications”), Facebook may from time to time provide Developers access to the following information (collectively, the “Facebook Site Information”). … Examples of Facebook Site Information: your name, your profile picture, your gender, your birthday, your hometown location (city/state/country), your current location (city/state/country), your political view, your activities, your interests, your musical preferences, television shows in which you are interested, movies in which you are interested, books in which you are interested, your favorite quotes, the text of your “About Me” section, your relationship status, your dating interests, your relationship interests, your summer plans, your Facebook user network affiliations, your education history, your work history, your course information, copies of photos in your Facebook Site photo albums, metadata associated with your Facebook Site photo albums (e.g., time of upload, album name, comments on your photos, etc.), the total number of messages sent and/or received by you, the total number of unread messages in your Facebook in-box, the total number of “pokes” you have sent and/or received, the total number of wall posts on your Wall™, a list of user IDs mapped to your Facebook friends, your social timeline, and events associated with your Facebook profile.”

Quite a list–and one that the social network’s users could recall the next time Facebook asks them to agree to “allow this application to … know who I am and access my information” …