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Facebook might be headed back to court, for not going to court. Some employers have been requesting Facebook passwords before hiring so they can internet stalk their candidates. ACLU Lawyer Catherine Crump explains:

“it’s an invasion of privacy for private employers to insist on looking at people’s private Facebook pages as a condition of employment or consideration in an application process. People are entitled to their private lives. You’d be appalled if your employer insisted on opening up your postal mail to see if there was anything of interest inside. It’s equally out of bounds for an employer to go on a fishing expedition though a person’s private social media account.” 

Facebook commented on the issue, saying:

“you should never have to share your password, let anyone access your account, or do anything that might jeopardize the security of your account or violate the privacy of your friends….As a user, you shouldn’t be forced to share your private information and communications just to get a job. And as a friend of a user, you shouldn’t have to worry that your private information or communications will be revealed to someone you don’t know and don’t intend to share with just because that user is looking for a job.”

Although Facebook is clearly against the idea of sharing passwords, they have done nothing legally to protect their users, and that’s where they might get in trouble. But why should they? Because it’s the right thing to do. They have enough money to do it. They don’t have to take everyone’s back, but unleashing hell on a few repeat offenders will send a message to the rest of them. But let’s be real here. That won’t happen. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. See, if doing the right thing were important, then this wouldn’t even be an issue because it wouldn’t be happening.

If multiple friends’ privacy is broken, then they will post less frequently because they will not have trust in their friends’ internet privacy. And you get where it goes from there, right? The network falls apart and someone like Google+ can jump in - which, by the way, I still have faith in. It takes patience. But that’s not what this is about. Why else should Facebook do it? Restoring the trust that has been lost through the countless privacy issues over the years will benefit them.

Employers are not going to stop just because a privacy officer at Facebook told them to. They need to go to court with some of these users. Having access to employers Facebook pages will give them information they could never legally ask for in an interview, or on an application: sexual orientation, relationship status, religious views, political views, who they hang out with, what their private conversations are about, and so forth. 

The Department of Homeland Security has approved collecting of public personal information from television anchors, news reporters, bloggers, and anyone else who uses social media. DHS spokesman Matt Chandler claims the agency uses social media monitoring “for situational awareness purposes only, within the clearly defined parameters articulated in our Privacy Impact Assessment to ensure that critical information reaches appropriate decision makers.”

A government official explained in an example: after the earthquake in Haiti, monitoring of social media allegedly allowed DHS folks to guide rescue crews to someone who was tweeting while trapped under rubble. The program would apparently be used only in times of crisis, and is required by Congress. ”Situational awareness” basically means knowing what’s going on so you can make quick decisions.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a lawsuit against the DHS. The issue? The DHS’ plans to create fake accounts on social networking sites, against those sites’ terms of service, to monitor the networks for certain key words - such as “drill,” “infection,” “strain,” “virus,” “trojan,” and others.

The government, in the past, has created a bill to team up with ISPs to internet stalk everything citizens do for an entire year without any court oversight. Here’s that story.

Facebook is planning a major redesign. Similar to their last one, being in 2008, this one will become easier to use and more fun as time passes. Their idea is to remove the profile feature.

Instead, will be a Facebook Timeline. It’s basically the same thing, but just more messy-looking. It’s not disorganized, because it is a timeline, but it does take more work to read since it’s split into two collumns and constantly rotating between them. Users are also able to add dead family, surgery, pets, broken bones, roommates, vehicles, illnesses, licenses, travels, achievements, and awards.

It is currently only available to developers. So here’s how to easily become one:

1. Go to Facebook and search “developer” in the search box. Add the first result.
2. Create a new app (don’t worry - you won’t actually submit it for anyone else to see). You can name it whatever and put whatever in the Namespace box, it may take a while to find an unused name.
3. Click “Open Graph” on the left hand tab
4. Fill out the two boxes. You can type anything.
5. This should take you into a configuration page. Change a few of the default settings. Don’t worry - you won’t screw anything up. You won’t even be using it.
6. Wait a few minutes. That’s a few minutes literally, not seconds.
7. Go to your Facebook profile. An invite to try Timeline should be waiting at the top of the page.

You’re welcome.

Facebook has released a more entertaining version of their Terms of Service:

We give lots of fucks about your privacy, so we wrote this. Read it, so you know what the fuck we’re going to do with the shit you post, so you’re not all like ‘Facebook, I had no idea!’ when your shit is in our press releases.

Sometimes when you publish things, you can share with ‘Everyone.’ Just so you know, we mean everyone. Every. Fucking. One. But if they ask whose shit it is, we only tell them your full name and show the one picture. That’s it. So make it a good picture.

Hey, sometimes, maybe you have an idea! Fuck yeah, we love it when you have ideas. If you tell us your idea, maybe we’ll be like, ‘Hey! Great fucking idea, kid! We’re totally going to make it happen.’ We, uh, don’t have to pay you for it, though, just like you don’t have to tell us how to improve our site, asshole. Thanks.

Yeah, we made it super easy for you to invite your friends and tag them in pictures and shit. So easy, you’d think we want you to invite them. You might even be tempted to do it. But don’t, unless you have their permission. Don’t email anyone an invite to Facebook until you have their permission. No, go ahead, we don’t mind if you ask for permission to email them. We’ll just wait over here.

There’s a lot of information in here about a lot of people. Useful stuff, information, right? Well, you can’t have it, unless you tell everyone exactly how you’re going to use it and make sure they okay it. Who do you think you are, us?

Don’t be telling people we’re tighter than we are. You’re just some application developer; we don’t want to find out you were trying to impress that hottie or those investors by telling them you know Mark or whatever. You don’t.

Basically nothing you create is private. We can check out your content, mine your data, analyze your application and pretty much whatever else we want, for any reason at all. Yes, even to make money off of your shit. Problem?

On the other hand, we don’t have to tell you shit, either. Sometimes you’ll see something that looks like an ad, but maybe it isn’t, and you’ll be like ‘Is that an ad, Facebook?’ and we’ll be like, ‘…Good question.’

We can use your ads in our ads, like when we make ads for selling ads. We call it adception.

LEGALLY WE’RE REQUIRED TO YELL THIS PART BECAUSE IT’S FUCKING IMPORTANT. THIS IS THE PART WHERE WE TELL YOU THAT WE DO OUR BEST TO NOT HAVE BROKEN SHIT BUT WE CAN’T MAKE ANY PROMISES OR GUARANTEE ANYTHING AT ALL. WE DON’T EVEN PROMISE THAT USING FACEBOOK IS SAFE SO IF YOU GET AXE-MURDERED BECAUSE OF SOME SHIT YOU DID ON FACEBOOK THAT’S NOT ON US WE TRIED TO WARN YOU WE EVEN YELLED IT. 

Thought I was kidding? The updated version was released by Facebook Engineer Nick Schrock. You can read the entire improvement here.