Worried about social-network data mining? Facebook hires Ted Ullyot, former right-hand man to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, as its general counsel. Tapping Ullyot, who worked on the infamous torture memo and other illustrious projects, is a sign that the burgeoning Scrabble platform "is a little more grown-up," says Facebook public-policy VP Elliot Schrage.
posted by digaman on Sep 30, 2008 - 40 comments

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area. I've read this article twice now because I was laughing too hard the first time. If I were more paranoid I might actually seriously ask what sort of data mining the FBI is doing, but... falafel sales! via. [more inside]
posted by tarheelcoxn on Nov 6, 2007 - 75 comments

AOL releases 3-months of queries from 500k users. AOL, either fairly or unfairly, is sometimes considered the internet with training wheels. So while parsing this data, keep that in mind. Some of these queries seem like spam email subjects, don't they? Don't forget, this is the same demographic that brought you the September that didn't end. AOL tried to retract the data, but it's of no use - it's out there, on the web.
posted by rzklkng on Aug 7, 2006 - 89 comments

Docusearch settles claim for 75K with family whose daughter was killed by a stalker who purchased her personal information from them -- a killer whose intentions were described on a Googleable website. The NH Supreme Court determined last year that Docusearch, the company who sold Amy Boyer's work address and SSN to her killer could be held liable for her death, even though some of that information was publicly available. An "Amy Boyer's Law" intended to increase privacy by restricting the display, sale or use of SSNs received negative reviews by privacy organizations and ultimately was removed from an appropriations bill. In a statement, Amy's parents encourage others to use the Internet to keep track of who may be keeping track of their kids. "If only we had typed our daughter's name into any search engine, the Amy Boyer Web site that was posted by her killer would have come up, and we could have called the police...This may never have happened."
posted by jessamyn on Mar 11, 2004 - 6 comments

The Patriots didn't win; Britney did. TiVo analyzed their viewers behavior during the Superbowl and they came up with some pretty interesting results. How soon till TV programming adapts to viewer behavior?
posted by costas on Feb 5, 2002 - 36 comments