Never in my wildest dreams would I ever imagine that I'd be in agreement with MoveOn.org, the group that Caroline McCarthy charitably describes as having "got its start as a left-leaning grassroots organization." Calling MoveOn a left-leaning organization is about like calling Helen Thomas unpleasant on the eyes.
I can't decide right now if having MoveOn's help in calling attention to this problem helps or hurts the problem. The tech world is seemingly dominated by largely left-sympathetic folks, and when George's group says something, liberals tend to lend an ear. On the other hand, those unfamiliar with the issues of technology and privacy may hear for the first time about Facebook's Project Beacon foibles through MoveOn, and immediately discount their allegations out of hand (as most of MoveOn's allegations are highly politically motivated attacks with little basis in fact).
Green does however hit on all the salient points on what is wrong with Facebook's Project Beacon: not easy to opt-out, it isn't the world's business what each individual purchase is, it can cause logistical nightmares during gift-giving season, and the poor PR will likely end up in the laps of the merchants, not Facebook.
Update 4:45PM PST: A Facebook spokesperson sent us the following statement in response to MoveOn.org:
“We encourage feedback from our users on new products, but in this case, the MoveOn.org-led group misrepresents how Facebook Beacon works. Beacon gives users an easy way to share relevant information from other sites with their friends on Facebook. Information is shared with a small selection of a user’s trusted network of friends, not publicly on the Web or with all Facebook users. Users also are given multiple ways to choose not to share information from a participating site, both on that site and on Facebook.”