Many stalkers atm. Origin, EAs take on Steam has been revealed to browse pretty much all your computer (i.e. tax records and the like) and send pretty personal details back to them from you. http://www.overclock.net/video-game-news/1155275-various-battlefield-3-outrage-germany.html The result is BF3 being 1 star'ed and returned in droves. Germany seems pretty wrapped up in it though, haven't even heard this happening in other countries.
No. Origin sends things back to an Amazon-rented server, but the data is SSL encrypted so nobody actually knows what it's sending. Though the whole thing will just turn out to be a marketing thing (like in advertisements displayed to you) as it's sending data to Facebook and stuff.
Many of the claims here are pretty unfounded as people are going wild screaming "spyware spyware" without actually looking into it. It seems the main things that get sent to amazon servers are actually keep alive requests just to ensure Origin is actually up. Something to easily explain it - http://www.facepunch.com/threads/1136552?p=33033301&viewfull=1#post33033301
Origin has been out longer The only reason people are talking about it now is cause battlefield 3 is an origin exclusive and thats the only reason people use it