Annie Leibovitz's reckless candor

Salon (daily pass): Annie Leibovitz's reckless candor. The renowned photographer's snapshots of her partner Susan Sontag and of her family, exhibited for the first time, are shocking in their intimacy — but they should have stayed inside that shoe box.

Users take part in Election '06 via video

Sunday NY Times: Scary, Like Funny Scary.

It’s not that campaign ads are so nasty. They are always nasty, brutish and 30 seconds long. If anything, the scare tactics that loomed so large in the 2002 election in the wake of 9/11 now seem passé. This time around, many of the most powerful political ads are funny — 2006 marks the Comedy Centralization of politics.

Some are playful, others are mean-spirited, snarky and downright scurrilous. But the new breed of humorous ads don’t just mock the opponent, many of them wink at the absurdity of the entire campaign process.

It’s not so surprising. In a culture where growing numbers of viewers say they get their news from “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report,” and at a time when anything shocking or amusing on television can be downloaded and e-mailed instantly, candidates are co-opting the YouTube revolution.

Please. This is not the YouTube revolution. Call it the personal media revolution, or the participatory media revolution, or the citizen media revolution. Just don't name it for a for-profit company built on piracy.

A high-tech bug could spy on you

San Jose Mercury News: A high-tech bug could spy on you. Civil libertarians troubled by tracer used in leak probe. Hewlett-Packard's investigation into leaks has put the spotlight on electronic tracking technologies that just about anyone can use to try to spy on people.

Your Treo may betray you

Associated Press: Cell-phone security experts: Your Treo may betray you. If you sell your cell phone (as many people do), you're probably giving away some of your secrets, too.

Online privacy in the digital age

Sunday San Jose Mercury News: What do they know about you? Survey of AOL, Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft's search engines shows your online wanderings may not be as secret as you would like.

What IP addresses can tell about you

Adam Fields has some timely thoughts on the subject of Internet privacy: What’s the big fuss about IP addresses?

ZabaSearch pushes the envelope on privacy

David Lazarus in today's SF Chron has a very interesting look at ZabaSearch.com, an upstart (and alarmingly accurate) people-search service. ZabaSearch aggregates information from public records and makes it available for free.

Go ahead, check to see if your name is in there. Mine is (including several past addresses and phone numbers).

Excerpt:

There's nothing illegal about any of this. Blogs enjoy free-speech protections, and there's no law against ZabaSearch pulling together, and giving away, information gleaned from public records.

Be that as it may, the Los Angeles company is blazing a trail into new territory by complementing its free-of-charge aggregating of personal data with an opportunity for others to comment on people who aren't public figures.

Lots of privacy issues here, and ZabaSearch is making it unreasonably hard for people to remove their listings from the service. But on the whole, public is public, even if we haven't gotten used to the idea as a society.

Snoops bug the high-tech car

From Sunday's NY Times: Don't be too sure your car is an island of privacy. Under certain circumstances, outsiders can eavesdrop on conversations among you and your passengers if your car has a built-in Bluetooth telephone link.

A pass on privacy

In the Sunday NY Times Magazine, Christopher Caldwell wonders whether all the new whiz-bang contraptions in our digital lifestyles are putting a crimp on our personal privacy.

Take my privacy, please

Ted Koppel in today's NY Times: Take my privacy, please!