Naked in the 'Nonopticon'

By SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN

Surveillance and marketing combine to strip away our privacy

In November, Facebook, the social-networking site most popular among university students and faculty members, discovered just how much its users care about privacy. Sneaking in a surprise for its roughly 60 million users, it placed little notes about some of their Web purchases in the personal "newsfeeds" on friends' profiles. Through this new "social-advertising" program, Beacon, Facebook ruined quite a few surprise