When Justin Bassett interviewed for a new job, he expected the usual questions about experience and references. So he was astonished when the interviewer asked for something else: his Facebook username and password.

Bassett, a New York City statistician, had just finished answering a few character questions when the interviewer turned to her computer to search for his Facebook page. But she couldn’t see his private profile. She turned back and asked him to hand over his login information.

Bassett refused and withdrew his application, saying he didn’t want to work for a company that would seek such personal information. But as the job market steadily improves, other job candidates are confronting the same question from prospective employers, and some of them cannot afford to say no.

In their efforts to vet applicants, some companies and government agencies are going beyond merely glancing at a person’s social networking profiles and instead asking to log in as the user to have a look around.

“It’s akin to requiring someone’s house keys,” said Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor and former federal prosecutor who calls it “an egregious privacy violation.”

Questions have been raised about the legality of the practice, which is also the focus of proposed legislation in Illinois and Maryland that would forbid public agencies from asking for access to social networks.

CONTINUED at WTOP.

Counting Twitter mentions would have you believe that Ron Paul is the most popular Republican candidate in the ongoing U.S. primaries. Umm, right.

But some social media analysis of politics is going beyond that. A partnership between Facebook and Politico announced today is one of the more far-reaching efforts. It will consist of sentiment analysis reports and voting-age user surveys, accompanied by stories by Politico reporters.

Most notably, the Facebook-Politico data set will includeFacebook users’ private status messages and comments. While that may alarm some people, Facebook and Politico say the entire process is automated and no Facebook employees read the posts.

Rather, every post and comment — both public and private — by a U.S. user that mentions a presidential candidate’s name will be fed through a sentiment analysis tool that spits out anonymized measures of the general U.S. Facebook population.

This is similar to the way Google offers reports on search trends based on its users’ aggregate search activities.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Latvia’s largest bank is scrambling to contain a run among depositors gripped by fears of the bank’s imminent collapse.

The panic among Swedish-owned Swedbank‘s depositors began Sunday after rumors spread that the financial institution was facing legal and liquidity problems in Estonia and Sweden.

Swedbank’s Latvian chief Maris Mancinskis on Monday called the rumors “absurd.” He said the bank is functioning normally and all depositors will have access to their funds via bank machines.

Mancinskis said some 10,000 Latvians withdrew over 10 million lats ($20 million) on Sunday.

Latvia’s 10th largest bank, Latvijas Krajbanka, is currently being liquidated after regulators uncovered fraud on a massive scale. Depositors were left without access to their money for days.

Source: CNBC.

*Taken from The Examiner.

Documents made public yesterday by Judicial Watch describe extensive collusion by Federal Communications Commission officials with a left-wing advocacy group in a campaign to expand government regulation of the Internet.

The documents, obtained by Judicial Watch in a December 2010 Freedom of Information Act request, were created after Democrat appointees solidified their 3-2 control of the agency in March 2009.

Judicial Watch is a conservative nonprofit that specializes in using the FOIA and other avenues to expose corruption in government.

The coordination between FCC officials and Free Press, the advocacy group, supported a proposal for the agency to regulate access to the Internet as if it were a public utility, in the interest of ensuring “Net Neutrality.”

CONTINUED..

*Taken from Prison Planet. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

A new program being touted by the Obama administration as a solution to online identity theft actually increases the risk of identity theft while providing the government with a national ID system through the backdoor, paving the way for a world wide web in which users will need government permission to access the Internet.

The so-called “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace,” created by NIST under the auspices of the U.S. Commerce Department, purports to offer an “identity ecosystem” under which Americans will be able to protect their information not with passwords but with a “single credential” stored on a smart card, a cell phone, a keychain fob or some other kind of gadget. This will then be used to access a myriad of data, including tax returns, health information, bank accounts and more, amounting to a passport for your entire life.

Companies like Siemens developed credit card-sized gadgets years ago that enable fingerprints to be used to approve online transactions and the technology is already well established. A series of workshops are planned for June to September during which the government will nail down specifics with companies who are on board with the project and pilot projects will be launched next year.

The program bears more than a passing resemblance to a 2007 proposal by China that threatened to force bloggers to register their real identities and personal details via a single centralized ID system as a means for the Communist government to control information and punish dissenters.

That idea was scrapped for being too draconian, but the Obama administration is pushing ahead with its own Internet ID system in pursuit of a wider cybersecurity agenda that Senator Joe Lieberman has publicly stated is aimed at mimicking Chinese-style censorship of the world wide web, casting doubt on assertions in the government PR video for the program embedded above that claim, “there is no central database tracking your actions”.

The irony of the fact that the program will be managed by a government that has routinely stolen and lost personal information (including that related to personal health data) through both malevolence and incompetence is not addressed in the propaganda video. Remember cash for clunkers? This is the same government that openly admitted it had seized control of data on Americans’ computers who used the cars.gov website.

Although the program will initially be voluntary, its widespread adoption by numerous internet hub giants will eventually make its use necessary for conducting any kind of transaction, creating profiles or engaging in any interactive process on the web.

Moreover, should there be a major cyber attack that cripples the web and leaves sensitive information vulnerable, the Obama administration would have all the political capital it needs to turn the “voluntary” program into a compulsory requirement for anyone who wishes to use the Internet. Given the fact that the Stuxnet worm attack was admittedly launched by the United States and Israel, the culprits are likely to be closer to home than we think.

“Although the White House is describing the NSTIC plan as “voluntary,” federal agencies could begin to require it for IRS e-filing, applying for Social Security or veterans’ benefits, renewing passports online, requesting federal licenses (including ham radio and pilot’s licenses), and so on. Then obtaining one of these ID would become all but mandatory for most Americans,” writes CNet’s Declan McCullagh.

“Taken to its logical conclusion, the program, “Could become the virtual equivalent of a national ID card,” he adds.

Despite government assurances that the “conspiracy theory set” are wrong in highlighting privacy concerns, critics have labeled the plan an effort to impose a national ID card via the backdoor.

Writing for Network World, Mark Gibbs slammed the proposal as, “A totally ridiculous idea. A great example of rampant, over-reaching, ignorant, and ill-conceived political foolishness.”

Gibbs highlights the fact that both the IRS and Homeland Security have recently been caught abusing and mismanaging online identity systems.

“In short, the government, at the heart of its most sensitive public and administrative services, is incompetent on a biblical scale. And now they propose to provide what is, in essence, the management of a single sign-on system that would impact tens of millions of its citizens,” he writes.

In addition, the centralized nature of the system will not protect identity theft, the entire raison d’être behind the program, but will instead make identity theft far more prevalent and easier for criminals.

“It remains unclear whether the White House proposal will solve this problem or create new problems,” said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, warning that if the system was compromised it would be like losing your whole wallet, not just your keys or credit card. “There is the real risk that consolidated identity schemes will lead to ‘hyper’ identity theft.”

My Two Cents: Tyranny? Tyranny? Is that you? Ah.. thought so! End Two Cents.

*Taken from Fox8 – Raleigh.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – North Carolina sheriffs want access to state computer records that identify people with prescriptions for certain drugs, an idea that patient advocates oppose.

The state sheriff’s association proposed the idea Tuesday to a legislative health care committee, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported. The sheriffs said they want access to state computer records identifying anyone with prescriptions for powerful painkillers and other controlled substances.

“We can better go after those who are abusing the system,” said Lee County Sheriff Tracy Carter.

More people in their counties die of accidental overdoses than from homicides, the sheriffs said.

The state began a computer database in 2007 to help doctors identify patients who go from doctor to doctor looking for

prescription drugs they may not need and to keep pharmacists from supplying patients with too many pills.

Nearly 30 percent of state residents received at least one prescription for a controlled substance in the first six months of 2010, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. Nearly 2.5 million people filled prescriptions in that time for more than 375 million doses. The database has about 53.5 million prescriptions in it.

About 20 percent of the state’s doctors have registered to use the information, and 10 percent of the pharmacies are registered.

Patient advocates say they’re concerned about privacy issues for people in pain.

“I don’t feel that I should have to sign away my privacy rights just because I take an opioid under doctor’s care,” said Candy Pitcher of Cary, who volunteers for the nonprofit American Pain Foundation.

The American Civil Liberties Union opposed a bill in 2007 that would have opened the list to law enforcement officials and probably would object to this proposal as well, said ACLU lobbyist Sarah Preston.

“What really did concern us is the privacy aspect,” she said.

Opening the record to more users could deter someone from getting necessary medicine because of the fear that others would find out, she said, “particularly in small towns where everybody knows everybody.”

Rockingham county sheriff Sam Page said his department frequently receive complaints concerning people selling pain killers on the street.

“The sheriff’s association isn’t concerned with someone who comes to pharmacies like this one and has a need for painkillers,” said Page. “They want to know who’s doctor shopping, obtaining meds illegally and abusing the powerful prescription drugs.”