A tentative analysis of some network crawls Let us first consider the sociogram that resulted from the network

crawl of the 11th of July 2010 ( indicated in Figure 1). We first note that Electronic Privacy Information Centre (epic.org) is the most central actor. This is justified given the involvement of the actor in various activities (privacy research and advocacy) with information about emerging privacy and civil liberties issues (such as EPIC filing lawsuit to suspend the deployment of body scanners at US airport according to epic.org). Senators Klobuchar (D-MN) and Bennett (R-UT) have introduced a bill that would mandate the deployment of full body scanners in US airports. The bill would make Full Body Scanners the primary screening technique. The bill would provide for an alternative screening method for passengers with "privacy concerns." The bill contains particularly weak privacy provision that ignores many of the problems with the devices already uncovered. Documents later obtained by EPIC established that the TSA required that Full Body Scanner have the ability to store, record, and transfer detailed images of naked air travellers. EPIC has recently filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security to require that the program be suspended, pending an independent review. So this appears to be central issue around this time. However there is one more on going issue at this time related to childrens online privacy protection. EPIC filed comments urging the Federal Trade Commission to improve the childrens online privacy protection rule. The rule is the principal federal protection for childrens' privacy, and limits how companies may collect and disclose childrens' personal information.

Figure 1: Sociogram 11th July of 2010

Other significant actors are, for example, the privacyinternational.org, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org) and statewatch.org. All of above stated actors are to be expected in this list. The United Nations (un.org), European Digital Rights (edri.org), Creative Commons (creativecommons.org) also appeared on the network as some unexpected networks (in terms of prominence). From the diagram (and the links to and the links from lists) it seems that there is a high level of co-linking (i.e. cohesiveness) between the advocacy sub-networks (designated with the .org domain). In contrast the co-linking between

advocacy groups and the traditional media is relatively lower than one would have expected. Reporting around specific incidents would probably drive linking from advocacy groups to the traditional media as we can see a very limited connectivity between them. Another interesting feature of the network is the relationship between advocacy groups and social media (such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, etc.). There again seems to be limited co-linking between advocacy actors and social media. If we compare this linking pattern of privacy groups to the pattern analysed by Introna & Gibson (2008) then we can see that advocacy groups are improving there relationship with media over the time but it did not reach up to any satisfactory level yet. The second sociogram that is received on 24th July 2010 is not showing any unexpected results and patters same almost similar to previous sociogram. This can be because of same on-going issues which were there in previous sociograms time as even central actor remain unchanged(epic.org). linking pattern between advocacy and media do not show any improvement even in this sociogram which should have been there to make this network more efficient. But it was interesting to see as issues remained unchanged but still one new actor appeared on the network that is Centre of Digital Democracy (democraticmedia.org) .This can be probably because of CDDs urge to the Federal Trade Commission to build on its recent privacy roundtables to draft a comprehensive plan as existing Privacy law in the United States is in disarray. Existing laws dont adequately address new business practices. It is necessary to track incidents through this network to understand the linking patterns. I think that these changes were in the network as result of two major issues at this time,first one is about googles saving wifi data from residential and personal computersand the second one is about facebooks failure on consumers expectation. For this analysis, data was collected on regular basic between 4th july 2010 to 24th august 2010.

Figure 2: Sociogram 24th July of 2010

The third sociogram(figure 3) received on 8th august 2010 shows higher density of privacy advocacy organization but comparatively lesser no of actors. Some of the actors which were there in previous two sociograms were missing in this third sociogram which are Gnu operating systems(gnu.org), United Nations(un.org), computer freedom and privacy conference(cfp.org). Central actor remained the same and electronic frontier finland (effi.org) joined the network.