In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about the launch of Facebook Questions, how political posturing is stalling consumer privacy legislation, and why the military is interested in social media security.

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Facebook Launches Facebook Questions

Facebook officially launched its long-anticipated Q&A feature, Facebook Questions yesterday. According to Mashable, Facebook Questions is “similar in concept to Yahoo! Answers, Quora and Mahalo,” and “gives users the opportunity to ask questions just by clicking the ‘Ask Question’ button on the homepage.” When a user asks a question, it goes out to the whole Facebook community (or at least to people in the Facebook community whom Facebook indicates would be a good source of information for the specific subject matter).

Given Facebook’s massive built-in userbase, Questions could become a major source of searchable content for the site, meaning more potential advertising space. Because the questions go out to the whole site, however, Facebook Questions will also likely rekindle the Facebook privacy debate.

Man Behind Facebook Data Harvesting Speaks Out

Rob Bowes, the security consultant responsible for harvesting and sharing public data from over 100 million Facebook profiles, recently spoke with the BBC to explain how and why he gathered the information. Bowes says he compiled the data as research for a product his company was testing. Once he compiled the data, however, he decided it might be useful for researchers so he released it on torrent websites.

Bowes says that because the information was all publicly accessible, he hasn’t done anything wrong, and Facebook agrees with him. Still, Bowes makes a good point when he explains that the nature of Internet data allows people like him to compile large amounts of data in a searchable format. Even though the information itself may seem innocuous, it can be significant on a large scale. As Bowes says, “Having the name of one person means nothing, and having the name of a hundred people means nothing; it isn’t statistically significant. But when you start scaling to 170 million, statistical data emerges that we have never seen in the past.”

Connecticut School Superintendent in Hot Water Over Facebook Posting

A Connecticut school superintendent is in trouble with the school board after bragging about how easy his job is on Facebook. According to the news report, the man wrote on his Facebook page that “the school district was closed, that he slept until 10 a.m. and then browsed the Internet.” He went on to say, “If every day is like this, it’ll be the best job ever.” The Board of Education will determine whether to punish the man in a special meeting on August 5th.

“Zero Consensus” on Consumer Privacy Legislation

Declan McCullogh at CNET broke down Tuesday’s Senate Committee hearing on Internet privacy and has come to the conclusion that there is “zero consensus on what approach to take” to the issue. McCullogh details how the committee members veered from one subject to the next with little understanding of the issues, often leading to humorous (or at the very least awkward) exchanges with representatives from Facebook, Google, and other technology companies.Ultimately, we shouldn’t expect a real Internet privacy law to be passed until 2011.

Joseph Turow Offers Senate Recap and Privacy Predictions

Online privacy expert and University of Pennsylvania professor Joseph Turow was one of the guests at Tuesday’s Senate Committee hearing. Cecilia Kang of the Washington Post had the opportunity to sit down with Turow while he was in Washington D.C. to ask him about the hearings and what kind of legislation he thinks the government might develop to deal with consumer privacy issues. Turow also discusses ways that companies can self-regulate their industry and avoid possible legislation.

DARPA Puts Out Call for Social Media Security

According to NetworkWorld, the U.S. Military is looking at ways to improve social media security. Quoting the report, “the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) this week issued a call for information on how it can help develop technology to best protect the rich private details that are often available on social media sites.” While most examinations of social media technology have focused on consumer privacy, it stands to reason that the information on social media websites could also be important to the military as well as law enforcement officials.