SFGate.com reveals that “

[m]any Californians don’t understand how businesses are using and selling their personal information, according to a report released today by the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley.  The survey found that people tend to assume their information is protected from being sold when it’s not.  ‘Businesses are allowed to sell information unless consumers object,’ said Chris Hoofnagle, the clinic’s associate director and a co-author of the report.  ‘There’s a (significant) gap between people’s understanding of the rules and actual marketplace practices.’”

The Associated Press reports that “an Air Force colonel is suggesting the U.S. military build its own ‘botnet,’ or network of remotely controlled computers, to be ready to attack the computer networks of foreign enemies.  The proposal Col. Charles Williamson III outlined in the May edition of the Armed Forces Journal highlights the creative cyberwarfare strategies being hashed out by the military as hackers abroad step up their attacks on U.S. government computer networks and others around the world.  ‘The days of the fortress are gone, even in cyberspace,’ wrote Williamson, staff judge advocate for Air Force Intelligence in the Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.  ‘While America must harden itself in cyberspace, we cannot afford to let adversaries maneuver in that domain uncontested.’”

The Register today has an article criticizing Salesforce.com’s CEO Marc Benioff for making a speech at Dreamforce Europe which “deliberately [conflated] multiple issues, including zero software deployment, cloud availability, and outsourced hardware maintenance.”  As the publication points out, “[t]he core of the [Salesforce] model is multi-tenancy. One entity (Salesforce.com) takes responsibility for your hardware and application server. Multiple entities (including you) get shared use of those resources, financed by a subscription.”

According to CNetNews.com, “New York’s expansive new online sales-tax requirements are drawing mixed responses from major e-tailers that haven’t previously collected such fees in the Empire State.  Despite a pending lawsuit challenging the law’s constitutionality, Amazon.com has said on its Web site that it still plans to abide by the law and add sales tax to orders shipped to New York when the mandate kicks in June 1.  But online outlet store Overstock.com wants nothing to do with collecting the new tax, according to reports at the Affiliate Tip blog and The New York Times.”

Internetnews.com writes that “MySpace is emerging the winner of a $230 million judgment against a spammer in what’s believed to be the largest antispam case ever.  The ruling came after defendants Sanford Wallace — the notorious and self-appointed ‘Spam King’ — and Walter Rines failed to appear in the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California on Monday.  ‘MySpace has zero tolerance for those who attempt to act illegally on our site,’ Hemanshu Nigam, the social network site’s chief security officer, said in a statement.  ‘We thank the court for serving justice upon defendants Wallace and Rines and we remain committed to punishing those who violate the law and try to harm our members.’”