Your digital shadow has a life of its own. Literally.

The digital universe — the pile of digital information that includes everything from e-mail to YouTube videos — is growing faster than previously thought, according to a new study from the research firm IDC.

IDC now estimates that, at 281 exabytes, the digital universe in 2007 was 10 percent larger than the firm had projected a year ago. And the world’s assemblage of all things digital will grow at a compound yearly rate of 59 percent through 2011. That adds up to a tenfold jump over five years, to 1,800 exabytes. (Not that there is any real way to visualize it, but an exabyte — a billion gigabytes — is said to be 50,000 times larger than a digitized Library of Congress.)

Big numbers, sure, but not too surprising. Recent estimates of the growth of Internet traffic, for example, range from 50 to 100 percent a year.

But the intriguing finding was that all the ambient digital information about you — a person’s “digital shadow,” IDC calls it — now exceeds the digital information that you generate yourself by sending an e-mail, taking digital pictures, viewing a YouTube video, and so on.

Visit the EMC Web site to find this “digital shadow” study . The company has created a software application, the Personal Digital Footprint Calculator, which you can download and use to answer the question, “How fast is your digital universe expanding?” Equally fascinating — disturbing perhaps — is the Worldwide Information Growth Ticker.

In this video, John Gantz, Chief Research Officer, IDC discusses the study.

Dan Schawbel discussed the implications of the digital shadow for companies and others seeking to establish their brand. As with individuals, a company’s brand is, likewise, out of its hands.

Donald Kerr, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence wants us to change the way we perceive privacy.

As Congress debates new rules for government eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time that people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people’s private communications and financial information.

Kerr’s comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Lawmakers hastily changed the 1978 law last summer to allow the government to eavesdrop inside the United States without court permission, so long as one end of the conversation was reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S.

The original law required a court order for any surveillance conducted on U.S. soil, to protect Americans’ privacy. The White House argued that the law was obstructing intelligence gathering because, as technology has changed, a growing amount of foreign communications passes through U.S.-based channels.

The most contentious issue in the new legislation is whether to shield telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits for allegedly giving the government access to people’s private e-mails and phone calls without a FISA court order between 2001 and 2007.

Donald Kerr

As Wired’s Ryan Singel points out, this redefinition of privacy has staggering and worrisome implications.

Hmm. Suppose there was a rogue employee at your ISP who got access to your internet traffic. The worst case scenario I can think of for most people is that that person might try to blackmail you. As for stealing your credit card, its far more likely this would happen at a restaurant or a retail store.

What can’t your ISP do that an intelligence service can?

* Arrange to have you sent to a country like Syria to have you tortured like the government did to Maher Arar. Though the Canadians have since apologized and paid him $10 million for being tortured for almost a year, the U.S. government hides its culpability using the “state secrets privilege”

* Put you on a government watch list

* Find a tenuous connection between you and suspected bad guys in order to justify further surveillance

* Find a way to nail you for material support to terrorism

* Build secret files on Americans’ First Amendment-protected political activities

* Use those files to round up dissidents in the event of an “emergency”

In other words, this Administration – of which Kerr is only a small player – believes that the nation’s spooks microphones and data-mining robots should be inserted deep into the nation’s telephone and internet infrastructure. They don’t want court oversight, they don’t want Congress asking questions, they don’t want inspectors general crawling through their program logs. They think that they should have this power because they promise not to abuse it and there are laws prohibiting some of the things on that list.

They believe that they, unlike the Nixon Administration, won’t be tempted to create an domestic enemies list. That they won’t start adding groups like Food, Not Bombs and Quakers to terror data bases (only the Pentagon could be so stupid). That they won’t make mistakes and transpose phone digits when doing phone surveillance (only the FBI could be so careless.) That they won’t confuse Tuttle for Buttle, or Senator Ted Stevens’ wife Catherine for notorious terrorist Cat Stevens.

Yes, quite worrisome. As Mike Nizza points out, there are no end to the objections that we can and, indeed, must raise:

And there were many more objections from privacy-focused observers, including a declaration that Mr. Kerr “has decided to kill privacy,” an invocation of Benjamin Franklin about those who “deserve neither Liberty nor Safety,” and a compact summation of Mr. Kerr’s remarks by an expert talking to The A.P.:

‘’It’s just another ‘trust us, we’re the government,’ ” said Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

A writer at Ars Technica added, “It’s hard to have too much confidence when the F.B.I. is busy losing laptops and the nature of such programs appears to be one involving little oversight from independent branches of government.”

Marc Dautlich and Nick Eziefula of Times Online discuss the myriad ways that Web 2.0 is changing our concept of privacy and copyright.

From “podcast” to “poke”, “wiki” to “weblog”, the internet generation has a language all of its own. But since web guru Tim O’Reilly popularised the phrase “Web 2.0″ in 2004, even those who never considered themselves internet-literate have worked the new technology into their daily lives. Facebook, the social networking phenomenon, dominates water cooler conversations everywhere, having gained a staggering 42 million users since its worldwide launch in 2006. YouTube, which was founded as recently as 2005, attracts some 100 million page views a day.

New forms of interaction are forcing us to develop new social rules: is it wrong to spy on your ex’s Facebook page? At what point does an unanswered friend request become a gentle hint that you are not wanted? But such rapid change also raises a more serious question: do we need new laws to govern this changing internet landscape?

The analysis continues.

Who will use Microsoft’s new online health information repository, HealthVault? It is not an idle question. Historically, there has not been an enormous demand for this kind of electronic record keeping from patients. As a recent PCWorld article points out:

Microsoft’s new e-health platform will probably be the largest not affiliated with an insurance provider or specific employer, said Lynne Dunbrack, program director at Health Industry Insights, a market research and advisory services firm.

But the effort faces several challenges, Dunbrack said. Microsoft is banking on its relationships with outside software developers to create programs that work with HealthVault, she said.

In addition, less than 30 percent of doctor’s offices and hospitals now use electronic health records, so it will be a challenge for many users to find data to populate the HealthVault records, she said. Only about 1 percent to 3 percent of U.S. consumers have adopted personal e-health records, she said, despite a major push from U.S. President George Bush‘s administration and several private groups.

One of the issues is privacy concerns. “Consumers are quite wary of having their personal health information available and accessible over the Internet,” Dunbrack said.

The larger issue of patients’ privacy rights is not well understood. The public is generally not aware of who has access to their medical records and under what circumstances, although they may have some understanding that electronic record keeping increases the inherent risks of the divulging of private information. Privacy Maven recommends the resources of The Patients Privacy Rights Foundation to learn more about this issue.

Find out more about electronic medical records – their access, use and misuse – from this two-part interview with Deborah C. Peel MD, head of The Patients Privacy Rights Foundation.

Microsoft has just launched HeathVault, and the company asserts its commitment to user privacy:

As the name suggests, the HealthVault site is designed to be an online, encrypted vault, where U.S. users can store and manage their health records without paying a fee. The site will also serve as a repository for health-related articles and other information, Microsoft said.

HealthVault will also allow users to upload data from a small number of HealthVault-compatible devices, and allow users to send, receive and store their own medical records and information from doctors and healthcare providers. The information that could be stored in the vault includes data from fitness-related and health activities, according to Microsoft. Examples include aerobic sessions, measurements such as blood glucose and blood pressure, discharge summaries from hospitalizations, lab results, medications, and health history.

Microsoft’s effort also won an endorsement from the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation, which praised Microsoft’s privacy policy, which allows users to control which information they provide to other services through an opt-in program. In its privacy page, Microsoft says “We do not use your health information for commercial purposes unless we ask and you clearly tell us we may.”

As a BusinessWeek article points out, Microsoft is taking an enormous risk; their failure to safeguard users’ information would be disastrous:

Convincing patients that Microsoft can safeguard their data, though, won’t be easy. Dr. Deborah C. Peel, the founder and chair of the consumer advocacy group Patient Privacy Rights, says she believes Microsoft’s servers are about as secure as they get. That’s because “if they spill the data, it would completely ruin” Microsoft’s reputation, says Peel. “It would be like the Exxon Valdez.”

Microsoft is willing to take that risk—and is betting that putting a trove of information in patients’ hands will ultimately make money while improving health care. For Microsoft, HealthVault isn’t so much a leap in technology as it is a smart business bet. “This isn’t bleeding edge,” says Glen E. Tullman, chief executive of Allscripts. “It’s leading edge.”

When you visit the HealthVault website, you will find it designated “Beta.” The privacy policy is extensive and detailed.

The world’s smallest micro-camcorder is the size of a pack of gum:

Many camcorders have been billed as the world’s smallest, but only one has been small enough to hide inside a pack of gum. The Red Ferret Journal says the Micro Camcorder is the smallest high-resolution, real time digital camcorder ever produced. The camera can record up to 33 hours of video at 15 frames per second via its internal pinhole camera. Hide it inside a pack of gum, and no one will never know you’re secretly recording them.

According to its web site, the camstick includes a tiny Micro SD card that can hold 1GB of video and will record video for up to two hours on a single charge. Anything you record will be in 3GP format, which can be played on any PC using programs like RealPlayer or Quicktime. Judging by a video taken with the Micro Camcorder, the quality appears to be pretty decent for Web use. You can easily find other pocketcams marketed to the YouTube generation like the Aiptek DV 4500, Flip Video, and RCA EZ101 for under $200, but they all seem gigantic in comparison. Anyone with intentions to take voyeuristic shots won’t mind paying the relatively low price of $195 for a novelty spy gadget.

While certainly some people like gadgets for gadgets’ sake, that’s not always the case and privacy concerns are justified:

It’s amazing how easy it’s become to spy on anyone. The type of technology available online is extremely sophisticated, and usually goes undetected. Judging by stories circulating on the Web, spy gadgets are a hot commodity among scorned lovers and voyeurs alike. I guess my concern is the way people use this type of technology, especially in a day and age when many don’t know where to draw the line or don’t understand privacy laws.

According to Reuters:

Canada’s privacy commissioner told Google in August that the feature — which offers a series of panoramic, 360-degree images of nine U.S. cities — could violate Canadian laws if it were introduced without alterations.

Some of the pictures feature people who can clearly be identified, which contravenes Canadian legislation on privacy.

“We are thinking about launching it outside the United States, including Canada, and we’re looking at how it would have to be different in Canada compared to its U.S. version,” said Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy counsel.

“We would launch Street View in Canada in keeping with the principles and requirements of Canadian law … that means we know we’ll have to focus on finding ways to make sure that individual’s faces are not identifiable in pictures taken in Canada and that license plate numbers are not identifiable in Canada,” he told Reuters in an interview.

Google had been approached by a number of Canadian cities seeking to be featured, he said.

Google’s Global Privacy Counsel, Peter Fleischer, responded to concerns on the Google Lat Long Blog:

In the US, there’s a long and noble tradition of “public spaces,” where people don’t have the same expectations of privacy as they do in their homes. This tradition helps protect journalists, for example. So we have been careful to only collect images that anyone could see walking down a public street. However we’ve always said that Street View will respect local laws wherever it is available and we recognize that other countries strike a different balance between the concept of “public spaces” and individuals’ right to privacy in those public spaces. In other parts of the world local laws and customs are more protective of individuals’ right to privacy in public spaces, and therefore they have a more limited concept of the right to take and publish photographs of people in public places. Street View isn’t available outside of the US yet, but when it is, we’ll be sure to respect local laws.

However, Reuters also notes:

Canada’s privacy commissioner has yet to hear from Google, a spokesman said.

John Thompson, CEO of the security software company, Symantec Corp., is denouncing nondisclosed usage of Internet cookies:

During a visit to the EU in Brussels, John Thompson, chief executive of the security software company, said that cookies “are just as much an invasion of privacy as someone peering in my bedroom window”.”I don’t have an issue with people having cookies on their machine as long as I’ve been told one just got planted there,” Thompson said.

In fact any decent web browser will include an option to be alerted when a site attempts to set a cookie. But Thompson wants the onus moved from the web user to the website. “I think there is an opt-in option here that should be available to everyone.”

The technology known as Internet cookies has been commonplace, and perhaps not widely known or understood, whereby Internet sites deposit small files on a user’s computer which send back data to the sites which is used for a variety of functions, from improving website navigation to serving targeted advertising based upon the user’s surfing habits. Howstuffworks.com has a detailed primer on the subject of Internet cookies. Additionally, here is a video explaining Internet cookies and how they work:

The advertising of the new bundled cable, Internet and phone services is compelling and enticing as witnessed in this video for Time Warner Cable…..

…but we need to remember to read the fine print:

There are red flags in each telecom provider’s privacy policy. A close reading of Time Warner’s policy reveals:

- Along with knowing juicy details of your calling and viewing habits — those 900 numbers, say, or that subscription to the Playboy Channel — the company keeps track of “Internet addresses you contact and the duration of your visits to such addresses.”

- Time Warner not only compiles “information about how often and how long” you are online, but also “purchases that you have made” via the company’s Road Runner portal, which provides access to thousands of goods.

- The company may monitor “information you publish” via the Road Runner portal, which should send a chill through anyone who accesses his or her e-mail through Time Warner’s servers.

That’s not to say Time Warner or any other service provider is reading people’s e-mail or invading users’ privacy in any other way. The point is, they are explicitly saying they could.

The controversial Google Street View application allows users to pinpoint and search street level video images of select U.S. cities. Some videos have shown recognizable faces and interiors of dwellings and thus, privacy concerns have been raised and widely discussed. Now the Canadian Privacy Commissioner has raised concerns about Google Street View which may, in the future, begin featuring Canadian cities.

The program’s potential risks have prompted the privacy commissioner to send letters this week to Google — and the Canadian company that has been providing some of the photographs — outlining her concerns and seeking an explanation over whether sufficient precautions and safeguards are in place to protect privacy.

“The problem is it’s a slippery slope when it comes to privacy rights,” said Colin McKay, spokesman for the federal privacy commissioner’s office. “You can read house numbers and see street signs. You can clearly see facial characteristics.”

Unlike other mapping programs, which use grainy satellite images, the new street-view program allows users to view crisp photographs of pedestrians, homes, businesses and traffic taken from the street level. Many of the photographs are believed to have been taken using high-resolution video cameras mounted on cars as they drive through cities.

Google said it places a high priority on privacy and is not doing anything wrong.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and here is a video – originally a report on CBS Evening News – on Google Street View:

Mashable has coined the term StreetSpotting, and numerous other blogs and websites post users’ favorite Street View shots. If you find yourself on Google Street View and want to be removed, here’s the procedure.