A bill forcing cellphone cameras to make a sound when taking shots has been introduced in Congress, with its sponsor citing voyeuristic and exploitative picture-taking as the reason behind it.

The Camera Phone Predator Alert Act would require camera-phone manufacturers to include an audible “click” or other sound when the device takes a photo. That sound won’t be able to be disabled or silenced, according to the draft of the bill.

“Congress finds that children and adolescents have been exploited by photographs taken in dressing rooms and public places with the use of a camera phone,” the draft says.

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How worried are you about the amount of private and personal stuff you have posted on social-networking sites? I’ve always been pretty relaxed–both because I’m very careful about how much information I give away, and because I think I know my way around privacy settings.

But an investigation by my colleagues at Click has made me think again. They set out to explore just how much data is accessible to developers who make applications for Facebook. What they found was that it was relatively simple to write an application that would give the developer access to lots of personal data–not just from those who’ve installed that application, but also from their list of Facebook friends.

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When is a social network NOT a social network? When it’s part of Ning’s 200,000 social networks! Give me a break, Gina and Marc! STOP bragging about how many people have clicked and created a network. How come you have NEVER posted anything on: how many networks have five or more people in them? How ’bout 50 people in them? Or 500 people? Bragging about 200,000 networks with one person in them is absurd. And I don’t even care if they’re porno networks or not! But they’re NOT networks if there are less than what? Five? 10? 25 in them? You’re obviously pimping yourself up for a sale. Give us all a break–please!

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In my article in Monday’s Times, “To Aim Ads, Web Is Keeping Closer Eye on What You Click,” I worked with comScore to develop a new measure for Web companies: how much data they can collect from users.

On the Internet, companies are typically ranked by how many different people visit their sites in a given month. And when Microsoft announced its $41 billion bid for Yahoo, comScore and Nielsen Online promptly put out estimates counting how many people would be in the merged company’s total audience.

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As the world recovers from the comScore report that floored Google’s stock two days ago, a theory is gaining steam that the whole click problem can be attributed to Google’s “accidental click reduction” program. Google may not be as badly off as the comScore report suggests, but the accidental-click theory is flat-out wrong.

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