ReadWriteEnterprise

So what's the next step, I asked? Do people start wearing biometric tokens that send signals to devices in the neighborhood, letting you know when you're in their vicinity so they can respond by tweeting you to please buy them?

Sure, why not, comes the swift response from Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. Last August, as regular ReadWriteWeb readers will recall, Benioff astounded his audience at the Dreamforce conference with the mind-alteringly imminent notion that Coke machines should become aware of their customers' presence, and respond through their iPhones with bargains and loyalty points. Of course, Benioff's idea at that time relied upon the customer always having his iPhone with him. This time, at the Cloudforce conference in New York this morning, Benioff one-upped his own idea with the notion that a biometric bracelet could supply interested products and devices in the wearer's immediate vicinity with a kind of identity signal.

The Associated Press this afternoon quoted European Commission Vice President Viviane Reding as stating that the E.U. government should not only federalize its approach to granting safe harbor for social networks, but essentially should hold all Internet service providers on the continent, including social networks, responsible for informing Internet users when personal information is being collected from them.

The quote seemed a little fishy, so ReadWriteWeb this morning ran it past Comm. Reding's spokesperson, Matthew Newman. As it turns out, according to Newman's information, the AP quote was indeed taken out of context. Words from the misquote originally appeared in a September 10 interview with the BBC, in response to a speech by Comm. Reding from last March. In its native context, Comm. Reding does not call for a limitation on the European framework for Safe Harbor with respect to social networks - an issue for which Comm. Reding was an outspoken champion.

United States law enforcement officials have been utilizing data provided by global positioning satellite systems to track down individual suspects, without having to demonstrate probable cause before a judge first - that much is known. Rights groups such as the ACLU have wondered, just how much of that goes on?

The rights group's investigation of this practice has inadvertently triggered a renewal of the debate over privacy policy versus public disclosure, and whether it's possible for an agency or other entity to reveal data that could lead to further revelation of personally identifiable data (PID), without officially violating privacy. The final outcome could set a new precedent for privacy policy, not just by the government but for enterprises as well.