Intellectual Property Law

The bottom five check boxes are pretty, but useless.
Screenshot: Facebook

Facebook launched a series of new privacy controls Wednesday that lets people have more control over who can see pictures of their keg stands or one-night stand, including an option for college students to block college officials from looking at their profile at all.

Unfortunately, as Christopher Soghoian quickly pointed out over at Surveillance State, the latter feature is purely privacy control theater.

The feature gives you the option of deciding which types of people at your school -- fellow classmates or alumni or faculty -- can see your profile. But there's nothing about college email addresses that specify whether someone is a college student or the dean.

So dean.wormer@faber.edu could join the Facebook community, designating himself as an administrator. Students like Bluto who are on double secret probation would likely use the new feature to set their privacy policy to not let the dean see their pages of shocking photos and stolen test questions.

But Dean Wormer can just change his identification to a student, look at the pages he likes, and then change back to administrator minutes later.

Students could do the same, but it's likely that deans have learned enough to keep their indiscretions off the web. That's how one becomes a dean after all.

So warning to the unwise: do not trust that privacy 'feature' to keep word of your undercover float hidden from the administration.

The other features might come in handy for those of you who, in a fit of misplaced desire to deepen your relationship with your father, decided to "friend" your dad.