Probably not in countries where the government is the law.

Maybe there's an outside chance in the US where they might have some constitutional rights. But in the current climate I suppose that's a forlorn hope.

The good thing about a FOAF-like system from this perspective is that at least you have some control over what you publish about yourself.

For example, imagine if Tribe was so succesful and the place to be, that you pretty much *had* to sign up for it in order to look for online work. But at the same time, they sold information about you to health insurance companies. (Eg. are you friends with a lot of gay men, and therefore, in the eyes of the actuarial accountants, an AIDS risk.)

With something like FOAF that shouldn't happen. Though the there's no reason the actuarial accountants couldn't write their own scutter.

Guess this makes me wonder whether there might be a role for a *secure* FOAF network. Where scutters need a key to get access to the links to your links. And you only pass keys to trusted friends.

It's kind of going against the idea of social networks stimulating the flow of information, but may have some interesting uses. (Secure file-sharing, email, etc.)