Has Facebook gone too far? Is it out of control? Another change to its privacy settings and a new 5800-word privacy policy have triggered concerns by US authorities and European privacy organisations. In Sydney the death of 18-year-old Nona Belomesoff has been dubbed another “Facebook murder”. Is regulation needed?

In this week’s Patch Monday podcast, I cover Facebook privacy from two angles.

First, security and the risk to you and your employer. Paul Ducklin is Sophos’ head of technology for Asia Pacific. His research shows that half the time people will befriend anyone who asks — exposing all their personal details to strangers. Criminals wanting to steal your identity or probe your business have it easy.

Second, the policy implications. David Vaile, who heads up the Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre at the University of New South Wales thinks Facebook’s privacy model is “dangerous”. He foresees a time when personal information is considered as valuable and vulnerable as financial information — and any IT systems that hold that information will need network security as strong as the banks.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please let me know what you think. Comments below. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

If you can’t see the CoveritLive tool immediately below, then you’re not using a compatible browser. Anything written without attribution will be from me.

Feel free to add questions and comments. The Twitter hashtag for the event is #sogikii.

Registration closes today, so be quick. My 15-minute presentation is “The Parable of the Topless Gnome: Cultural imperialism and censorship in a global world”. Well, yes…

• Web of secrecy | ABC Unleashed: Mark Pesce’s essay on the leaking of the Internet censorship blacklist this week.
• Chinese fight internet censors with “Grass Mud Horse”; cuddly toy | Times Online: Chinese Internet users have been fighting back at the censors with a children’s character, Grass Mud Horse, whose name in Chinese sounds just like a curse, but with a different tone. He’s fighting the evil River Crabs, who sound almost like the forces of “Harmony”, the Chinese euphemism for censorship. The result has been the ludicrous concept trying to ban a children’s character and stuffed toy for being subversive.
• Unlocking IP 2009 Conference: “National and International Dimensions of the Commons” | UNSW: The Conference will explore the national and global dimensions of the copyright public domain, drawing on the Project’s research to provide a structure for further discussion. It will bring together a range of eminent local and international scholars from the field, as well as showcasing notable Australian achievements in the copyright public domain. The Conference will be structured to some extent around key themes in the 2008 Submission by project researchers Unlocking IP to Stimulate Australian Innovation — An Issues Paper, made to the Australian government’s Review of the National Innovation System.
• Stilgherrian on Lateline | TwitPic: I look rather scary when appearing later than life on someone’s 42-inch TV.
• Mandatory internet filtering. It’s not a debate. | Wazzapedia: In summary: The pro-filter lobby are offering a solution to the “problem”. It’s not enough for the anti-censorship campaign to demolish their argument — if we don’t start offering an alternative workable solution as part of our strategy, we will ultimately fail.
• Govts website black list leaked on internet | Lateline: I appeared on Thursday night’s ABC TV program Lateline as part of a report on the leaking of a secret blacklist of naughty websites.
• Blog, Podcast, Vodcast and Wiki Copyright Guide for Australia | CCI: I think the title explains it all. A handy reference for everyone, it’d seem!
• Social Collider: Whatever this visualisation is visualising about my Twitterstrean, it’s pretty. I’ll come back to this later.
• World War II: If Maps Could Fight | Strange Maps: A cartoon and cartographic interpretation of World War II by artist Angus McLeod.
• Metropolitan Skin | Out to Space: Some of ’Pong’s photos are in this this exhibition on the video displays at Sydney’s World Square (George Street) through to 25 March. Also featured are images by Robert McGrath and Vitek Skonieczny .

• What is the biggest problem in your life? | GOP Problem Solver: “Utilizing the latest and greatest of Republican economic thought to improve your life.” Ahem.
• Phone call to Minister Conroy’s Office | NOCENSORSHIP.INFO: Steve Johnson has posted his fruitless attempt to get Senator Conroy’s office to answer his question about Internet “filtering”.
• Internet filtering and censorship forum | Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre: The first of these workshops at UNSW on 27 November 2008 was excellent. The second will be on Wednesday 4 March 2009 and I’ll definitely be liveblogging it.
• Five barriers to journalists using Twitter | Sarah Hartley: What’s stopping journalists using Twitter? Here’s five excuses journalists use, and the rebuttals.
• The Prisoner 1960s | AMC: The entire 1967-1968 TV series The Prisoner is available for free streaming viewing here — if you happen to be in the United States or can appear to be so.
• Vic Govt limited Google’s bushfire map: News | ZDNet Australia: Google produced a brilliant live map of the tragic Victorian bushfires. However Crown Copyright provisions, which assign copyright over all government-produced information to the government and prevent its use without explicit consent, meant the couldn’t use data from the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE). Crown copyright is well established in Commonwealth law, but runs contrary to data protection provisions in countries like the US, where data produced by government agencies is held to be in the public domain.
• Citizen-journalism’s rulebook | guardian.co.uk: It’s nearly a year old, but it’s still an interesting discussion about the “rules” of [cough] Citizen Journalism.

The forum is at the UNSW Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre from 10am Sydney time on Thursday 27 November, through to 2.30pm, and there’s a fantastic array of speakers.

There’s three sessions: technical and social/legal to set the bounds of what’s actually possible, and then one focussing on how we actually protect the interests of children given this background — both preventing children seeing “inappropriate material” and stamping out child pornography.

The CoveritLive live blog tool should appear immediately below this paragraph — at least if you’re looking at this in a compatible web browser.

I’ll be taking comments and questions during the forum, but do feel free to add them here now, or after the sessions are over.