In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about Facebook’s role in relationship disputes, Sen. Ellen Corbett’s thoughts on Facebook’s new privacy controls, Flickr’s creative new privacy feature, and a curious story involving the commercial sale of mug shots from the 1950s.

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Facebook Friction Cited in Relationship Disputes

Dating in the digital age not only requires navigating the usual pitfalls of new relationships, but also the confusing ins and outs of social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter. This article from the Herald Sun discusses how “Facebook Friction” is often cited as a common issue in modern relationships and various ways to deal with digital drama.

California Sen. Ellen Corbett on Facebook Privacy Changes: “More Must Be Done”

Sen. Ellen Corbett, whose controversial proposal to force social media websites into opt-in defaults was narrowly defeated earlier in the year, recently released a statement about Facebook’s recent privacy changes. According to the San Jose Mercury News, Corbett said “much more still must be done to protect children and educate adults and children about the dangers of disclosing information on the Internet,” and that “as a parent and a legislator, [she has] serious concerns about protecting children and will continue to work on this issue.”

Flickr Aims to Protect Location Privacy with Geofences

In an effort to give users more protection over the location data in their photographs, the popular photo-sharing website Flickr recently introduced a new feature called “geofences.” With geofences, “users can draw a circle on a map to designate a geofence and then choose a geographic privacy setting for that area.” It’s a creative solution to a complex problem that many Flickr users likely were not even aware of.

Commercial Use of Old Mug Shots Raises Questions on Privacy

The New York Times has an interesting article about a new company that sells products with reproductions of 60-year-old mugshots. Jason Schultz, a director of the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at the law school of the University of California, Berkeley explains the complex issues involved with old mug shots, saying “There are ongoing questions about the privacy of people listed in court records. We think, ‘Wow it’s in the public record,’ but in reality if it’s in a file somewhere that you can’t Google, it remains private until we need it. Now that records are becoming more public, I think courts are trying to think about how to be sensitive to those interests given that they can be indexed by search engines, copied and reposted.”