Just listened to an edition of Radio Open Source on the NSA wiretapping case, and was struck by how well the topic maps to social networks as we know and use them. Privacy, degrees of separation, pattern analysis, and more. With comments by William Gibson!

Patrick Radden Keefe: I was talking to a bunch of high-school kids about a month ago, talking about the government surveillance, and the Bush administration’s moral-less eavesdropping, and was meeting with dead uninterested stares from these high-school juniors.
Eventually the Q&A started, nobody seemed very engaged, and a certain point I said “Why doesn’t this concern you, aren’t you worried about the government?” And after a pause a girl in the back row raised her hand and said “We’re worried about our parents!”

Chris Lydon: Meaning what?

Patrick Radden Keefe: Privacy from their parents. In a very micro-context, within the realm of their family, they’re worried about their parents knowing what they did online. But anybody outside that family capacity: let ‘em at it!
There’s a kind of impersonal space in the Internet, that they figure: “Somebody could look into it, but it’s impersonal enough, so why would they be interested.”

Link: The NSA’s New New Phone Database

The Christian Science Monitor about a society reacting to a widespread phenomenon: That their kids document their initianition rituals on the Internet.

In separate meetings with freshmen and upperclassmen on the team, they probed to find out whether there was any implication that freshmen were expected to do this to be socially accepted. A group of freshmen chose to do this while others sat out, and several left the party to go to church, with no repercussions, Ms. Altmaier says. She adds that officials clearly conveyed to students that the behavior, including some underage drinking at the party, was unacceptable.
“We’re not happy about it, but it could become one of the best educational things for all the student athletes,” says the baseball coach, Jack Dahm. Participants felt remorse for making bad choices and attracting negative publicity, he adds. (The photo wasn’t posted by a team member.)

Link: Online photos put hazing in the spotlight again | csmonitor.com