I hope that you enjoy the holidays. I’m taking some time off and will resume posting in January.

The New York Times reports on new moves by the federal government conceding surveillance of Americans:

More than 60 years ago, in his “Foundation” series, the science fiction novelist Isaac Asimov invented a new science — psychohistory — that combined mathematics and psychology to predict the future.

Now social scientists are trying to mine the vast resources of the Internet — Web searches and Twitter messages, Facebook and blog posts, the digital location trails generated by billions of cellphones — to do the same thing.

The most optimistic researchers believe that these storehouses of “big data” will for the first time reveal sociological laws of human behavior — enabling them to predict political crises, revolutions and other forms of social and economic instability, just as physicists and chemists can predict natural phenomena. [...]

The government is showing interest in the idea. This summer a little-known intelligence agency began seeking ideas from academic social scientists and corporations for ways to automatically scan the Internet in 21 Latin American countries for “big data,” according to a research proposal being circulated by the agency. The three-year experiment, to begin in April, is being financed by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, or Iarpa (pronounced eye-AR-puh), part of the office of the director of national intelligence. Read more »

The Department of Homeland Security’s Privacy Office has published its Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2011 Report to Congress (pdf), which covers activities from March 1, 2011 – May 31, 2011.

This weekend is the Fourth of July holiday in the United States. I’m taking a break, and posting will resume on Wednesday, July 6.

The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs will soon hold a hearing on “Cybersecurity and Data Protection in the Financial Sector,” which will touch on consumer privacy protection.

The witnesses will be Professor Kevin Streff, Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Information Assurance, Dakota State University; Mr. Leigh Williams, BITS President, The Financial Services Roundtable; and Mr. Marc Rotenberg, President, Electronic Privacy Information Center. Additional witnesses may be announced.

All hearings are webcasted live and Individuals with disabilities who require an auxiliary aid or service, including closed captioning service for webcast hearings, should contact the committee clerk at 202-224-7391 at least three business days in advance of the hearing date.

Date: Tuesday, June 21, 2011 at 10:00 a.m. ET
Location: 538 Dirksen Senate Office Building; Washington, DC
For more information: http://banking.senate.gov

The Street reports that the New York Yankees baseball organization is apologizing for revealing some ticket-holders’ personal data:

The New York Yankees are apologizing to all of their season ticket holders after the team mistakenly gave wider than intended distribution to a spreadsheet containing their personal information.

The team said the spreadsheet was accidentally attached to an e-mail sent out on Monday night to “several hundred” of its season ticket holders. Read more »