There are always going to be churn and minor movements of users among services, but I think people who have a lot invested in a network, e.g. home pages, relevant postings, active participation in groups, many photos, lots of friends they actually do interact with, etc., probably aren't going to pick up and leave en masse unless there's some grossly distasteful change in the policies or terms of service. If you're providing the service, you don't make those grossly distasteful changes at once, you progress toward them in increments that each fall below users' overall threshold of discomfort.

On the whole, we're still in the middle of a huge transition in the ways we communicate with each other, and the degrees to which we trust third parties with information that rightfully belongs to us. Facebook is no more accountable to its users than any other service; and no matter how much we might bitch and moan about changes in their privacy policies, the fact is that they are going to use our information in as many ways as they can to make money. Sharing information directly with third parties is the most obvious, but there are plenty of indirect means.

Now that we can't hide ourselves, we're bound to attract more friends. Every one of those relationships is a potential revenue stream, either directly or indirectly. Folks at MIT recently demonstrated that they can determine to a high probability who on Facebook is gay without knowing anything about them except their friends. I'm sure the same technique applies to religion, various types of hobbies, and a number of other things we don't always give as much thought to, like criminals, terrorists and the like. These affiliations and attributes have to be a gold mine for someone, and the policy changes are a new mother lode.

I'm glad that EPIC, FTC, etc., are interested in our privacy, as they can exert pressure to change things in ways that we as users cannot. What I'd really like to see out of all this might be some kind of formal privacy impact review before changes to social networking policies are made. Any change that degrades privacy would need to be identified by third parties, justified or mitigated by the social network, then reviewed again until it's clear that users will be better off after the change than they were before. I think that expecting users to flee a service following troublesome changes is unrealistic. The users are caught between a rock and a hard place, and Facebook will continue twisting their arms as long as the users are paying more attention to their friends and apps than they are to their privacy.

It will be sad, yet very interesting at the same time, to see what happens when lost privacy demonstrably results in crimes of various sorts. Facebook may find that its greed has a higher human price than it might ever have realized.

Look for science gifts in areas that you know well. This way you can extend the teaching far beyond the instructions by showing the kids all the other things the gift can do. This means that you'll have fun too, and the kids will think you're really smart! You can also toss instructions you happen not to like for some reason.

Happy order of magnitude! May you see many more!

The genie is out of the bottle on this one. The document won't disappear, and even if it becomes illegal to host it, it'll continue circulating. The legislators need to accept this as a "teachable moment" and figure out ways to prevent it from recurring, perhaps through improvements in process and education of the folks producing the secure content.

Beyond "use better redaction", process improvements mean inserting a few steps between redaction and publishing.

The redacted document should go through a QA/review process that ensures it contains only content appropriate to the intended audience. The administrative review was undoubtedly done, but not a technical review. It's no secret that electronic documents have hidden data, whether it's redacted or whether it's document metadata, and there's no excuse for these not be examined as part of the release process.

The process should also ensure that the document is being posted only to the appropriate audience. If the document is meant to instruct contractors on security practices, then restrict access to the document so only those contractors can get it.

And now that some of the TSA's security practices are public knowledge, we'll have an opportunity to analyze and share concerns. A lot of this stuff is easily written off as security theater, but when decisions on who and who not to screen hinge on politics, something's clearly wrong and perhaps the legislators need to look at that instead of trying to undo this leak through unenforceable legislation.

The beer bottle I drink from when I read slashdot is far more ergonimc tahn my lptaops prephrils...glug.

Which all is fine, for another 5 years or so. Then your 1 year-old will be 6 and learning how to fold paper airplanes. One day you'll go up in the attic and dicsover that you have the highest bit density paper airplanes on record, and no more video.