We’re all familiar with the movies and stories about jurors who skirt or even violate rules in the name of “real justice” (one of our favorites is the little-known movie Suspect, with Liam Neeson, Dennis Quaid, John Mahoney (best known as Frasier’s dad), and Cher). But it’s become a serious problem as the confluence of Google, social media, and smartphones in the pocket of every juror has led to a phenomenon known as the “Googling juror”, or “digital disobedience”. Put simply, jurors are taking matters into their own hands, doing extra-curricular (and extra-legal) research, and also sharing information on social media, which is throwing trials, and even causing mistrials.

Today Google posted some news on their blog, along with the release of their Transparency Report, which shows increasing requests from the government for private user data. In fact, the report shows that, of all the governments in the world, the U.S. leads the pack in personal information requests.

Facebook’s new graph search feature is proving that it is good for so much more than just finding which of your friends watches The Walking Dead. You can also find out who on Facebook likes sexism, or young women with large breasts.

The social media world is buzzing with opinions about the new Myspace now that they have released the new version. Ever since it was announced that Justin Timberlake was one of the new partners involved in reviving the dead social media site, the Internet has been flooded with speculations as to how the newly revamped site will compare with Facebook, Pinterest, Pandora, Songza and, of course, how it compares with the old Myspace.

Facebook proves once again that they can make the most underhanded actions seem like they are doing a favor for their users by testing a new feature: pay $1 to send a message to users with whom you’re not connected on the socia media site, in the name of reducing spam.

For those of you who are fed up with Siri’s lack of understanding you when ask to do a search, then the Google Voice Search app may be just what you need. When you ask Google Voice Search where the nearest taco shops around you are, unlike Siri, which will likely come back with a list of the nearest tackle shops, the Google Voice Search app will deliver your request with consistent precision.

If you ever wanted to match the face to a name you just learned, or if you find yourself kicking yourself over missing a fabulous photo opportunity, then the tiny little Memoto clip-on camera may be just the device for you. Still in its concept phase, the device is promising to hold pubic interest, having already raised $245,000 on Kickstarter, far surpassing their goal of $50,000.

Google is yet again finding themselves in hot water as the Federal Trade Commission is poised to slap them with an antitrust lawsuit. The FTC staff recommendation for the antitrust lawsuit is not unexpected given the swift investigations of Google by California, New York, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas. On top of the U.S. investigation, there is also an antitrust investigation of Google taking place in Europe.

California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill on Sunday that would have required a search warrant in order to obtain location-based personal information obtained through cell towers from mobile devices such as cell phones and tablets, and also GPS systems. The veto came with the message that Brown felt that information based on a user’s location is important to the processes needed by law enforcement.

More and more, people are performing web searches on their smart phones. It’s great to be able to do that, but it also can be frustrating to try to find what you’re looking for on that tiny screen, or without the full tools available to you with a keyboard or mouse. For example, how can you easily search for and jump to a particular word or term that’s down towards the bottom of a web page, and not visible at the top of the page?

You may think that you are being oh-so-careful with your Google profile, Match.com profile, Facebook profile, or other social media or dating site (or other) profile. You never use your full real name publicly, you don’t share your address or where you work. But if you have an image in your profile that has ever been published anywhere else on the Internet, it can be very easy to use Google’s image matching search engine to quickly discover any information associated with that image anywhere online.

When we saw a Google Adsense ad on our own Internet Patrol for the “Dead people search engine” we had to investigate. Our first thought was “What company or site would pay good Adsense money to advertise a “dead people search engine”??” (Well, actually our very first thought was “WTF is that??”) At first we figured it must have been poor marketing terminology, but it turns out that the site, Sysoon is, in fact, a ‘dead people search engine’.

When you’re going through the security gates at an airport, you’re most likely resigned to the fact that your bag will be searched, regardless of whether there is a reason to do so.   But what about your computer, laptop, or cell phone, with the overwhelming amount of personal information it contains – do you expect that to be searched?  You should, as Lisa Wayne found out the hard way when her laptop was whisked away and subjected to a half-hour search.  It turns out this is fairly routine.  Now a law suit has been filed by Wayne and others to out a halt to this practice (some would say ‘abuse’) by the TSA and Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 

From our “We told you so” department, San Mateo County sheriffs have executed a warrant, seizing computers and other items from Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s residence, following the appearance of a lost secret iPhone 4G prototype both in Gizmodo’s possession, and on their blog, where they fully disclosed Apple’s proprietary prototype. Jason Chen was not arrested, although he was patted down.

Google has officially confirmed the new search engine juju on which they’ve been working, previously in secret, for the past several months, now code-named “Caffeine”. Google Caffiene provides a new search infrastructure and algorithms that are intended to provide enhanced indexing speed, accuracy, and “comprehensiveness”, among other things, according to Google. Now Google is inviting folks to test Google Caffeine and rate it against old-formula Google, which we hereby dub Google Decaf. But will it give web publishers a Caffeine headache?