When you apply for a job, it's a safe bet that your future boss is going to google you and see what bubbles up. Even two or three years ago, such a search probably wouldn't have turned up much personal info for most people. But with the explosion of blogging and social networks like MySpace, it seems like just about everyone has left some kind of footprint on the web, for better or worse.
But now, tilting that balance much further toward "worse," New Scientist reports that the NSA is funding research into the "mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks." The MySpace-mining project, it seems, is an extension of the NSA's illegal wiretapping program.