Stilgherrian » Privacy

Links for 26 August 2008 through 30 August 2008

del.icio.us — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 01:38:44 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 26 August 2008 through 30 August 2008, collected using a fine-meshed net and a spoon:

Interpreting Privacy Principles | Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre: The Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre is holding a 1-day Symposium o 2 October to discuss the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Report on Privacy (August 2008), and to take stock of the NSW Law Reform Commission’s Consultation Paper 3: Privacy Legislation in New South Wales (July 2008). The Symposium is part of the Interpreting Privacy Principles Project, an Australian Research Council Discovery Project.
Electing a US President in Plain English | YouTube: A quick explanation of the US Presidential voting system from the wonderful people at Common Craft.
The Grand Twitter Experiment | Widgify: One guy’s experiment to increase his Twitter followers so his “channel” is one of “greater influence”. He seems to miss the two far more important aspects of Twitter: how he’s contributed to the conversation to improve his reputation, and what connections he’s made.
My current backup strategy | eirikso.com: A nice explanation of how one media producer stores his backups, with other suggestions in the comments.
50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business | chrisbrogan.com: What it says. The thread through all of it is “be human”.
The Anatomy of a Successful Music Broadcast Event | The Ustream.TV Blog: Nice set of tips on doing live music stuff on this Internet thing.
Explanation before information | Made to Stick: A nice little article explaining why explanations need to come before the low-level facts, not the other way around.
Twitter demystified and debunked | The Fluent Self: Havi Brooks has written a fine, playful piece about Twitter.
Oedipus (with vegetables) | YouTube: The story of Oedipus in 8 minutes performed by vegetables in the tradition of Ben-Hur. Featuring a Potato, a Tomato, Broccoli, Garlic, and Billy Dee Williams as the Bartender. Official Selection 60+ film festivals including Sundance

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Links for 28 July 2008 through 01 August 2008

del.icio.us — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:11:37 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 28 July 2008 through 01 August 2008, which fell from the sky and painted in various attractive pastel colours:

Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China | Harvard Law School: An analysis of China's Great Firewall which concludes that the blocking systems are becoming more refined even as they are likely more labor- and technology-intensive to maintain than cruder predecessors.
Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents | Reporters sans frontières: Tips and technical advice on how to to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation.
Journalism.me - The journalism blogosphere: An aggregation of journalists who blog (mostly) about journalism.

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Links for 21 July 2008 through 25 July 2008

del.icio.us — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:49:30 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 21 July 2008 through 25 July 2008, gathered by a small, well-trained pig, washed by hand and exposed to cool, dry air:

The Changing Newsroom | Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ): A detailed analysis of the American daily newspaper of 2008, incuding the role of citizen journalist and a look to the future.
Google Maps (Part I of "The Googling") | YouTube: The first of 5 short films about a Google-run world gone scary.
How to Think | Ed Boyden's blog:: "I composed 10 rules, which I sometimes share with students. I've listed them here, followed by some practical advice on implementation."
2055: Voyage to Mars | YouTube: 9 minutes of animation by David Ross, with no CGI whatsoever. A fine tribute to an almost-lost craft.
Font Conference | CollegeHumor video: It's not often I can tag a video both "typography" and "humour", but here it is…
Manned spaceship design unveiled | BBC News: The first official image of a Russian-European manned spacecraft has been released. It is designed to replace the Soyuz vehicle currently in use by Russia.
Afghanistan. 1986-1987. It is photographed by the pilot of the helicopter. | Military Photos: My crusty Cold War correspondent writes: "Militaryphotos.net is frequented by Walter Mittyish paintball types, but they occasionally post material of real interest." Like a Soviet helicopter pilot's personal photos from his 1986-87 tour of Afghanistan.
Privacy | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: After Mark Pesce's offhand remark that privacy was a construct of the Enlightenment, I decided to do some reading. This is where I started.

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Links for 17 July 2008 through 18 July 2008

del.icio.us — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:44:59 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 17 July 2008 through 18 July 2008, gathered according to the ancient rituals:

Who is watching YouTube? The US courts want to know | ABC News: Are IP addresses personal information? Peter Black's take on the recent YouTube vs Viacom decision. With a lengthy comment by yours truly.
stripe - what you want on radio: A new multi-channel "Internet radio" service due to go live on 29 July. Subscription model, based in Australia. Investors include Glenn Wheatley and Alan Jones.
"Is St Isidore of Seville really the Patron Saint of the Internet?": Short answer: Yes.

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Links for 15 May 2008 through 19 May 2008

del.icio.us — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:05:02 +0000

My links for 15 May 2008 through 19 May 2008, gathered semi-automatically:

The Mother of All Demos | Wikipedia: On 9 December 1968, Douglas Englebart demonstrated some breakthrough technologies: interactive text, video conferencing, teleconferencing, email and hypertext — and the very first computer mouse. This Wikipedia article has links to videos of the actual 1928 demo.
Shops track customers via mobile phone | Times Online: UK shopping centres are trialling the tracking of customers via their mobile phone emissions. Which stores do they visit? How long do they stay?
Drivers of Australian Inflation | A Stubborn Mule?s Perspective: What's causing the relatively high inflation in Australia? Here's an excellent visualisation with analysis.
The Prospect/FP Global public intellectuals poll: Over 20,000 people voted for their top names from the original longlist of 100. Links to analysis and biographies. Voters also nominated others who they thought should have been on the top list. Interesting view of what counts as "intellectual".
The Workplace: How to tell if you're a "workaholic" | International Herald Tribune: Workaholics don't get more done, necessarily, because they focus on inconsequential details.
Building a Popular Social Media Profile: Seven Essential Characteristics | Dosh Dosh: Some useful tips for establishing a global micro-brand.
Federal Budget 2007-08 analysis | ALIA: The Australian Library and Information Association's take on Australia's Federal Budget. Librarians get this information stuff!
Why Gen Y Is Going to Change the Web | ReadWriteWeb: Many of the themes have appeared elsewhere before, but still a good article.
Powerhouse Museum Collection's Photostream | flickr: 450-odd photographs from (mostly) the 1800s taken from original glass-plate negatives. Beautiful shots of Victorian Sydney, rural scenes etc.
The Art of the Business Card | Guy Kawasaki: Finally, a business card design where you can actually read the information! interesting discussion in the comments, too.

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Facebook and your privacy

Stilgherrian — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 21:19:16 +0000

Should the Daily Telegraph have published the dead soldier’s family photo, lifted from his Facebook profile? I (and others) have been having an interesting discussion with Laurel Papworth with some surprising extracts from Facebook’s Terms of Use.

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Found Art: The Suspect’s Property

Stilgherrian — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:31:30 +0000

A new semi-regular feature, Gentle Readers. Found Art. Objects which I’ve stumbled across in the street.

Today, a Returned Property Docket from the NSW Police Service. It records in detail (and fairly poor typing) exactly what was being carried by S– when he was detained at the Newtown police station, and which was subsequently returned at 2.24am on a Saturday morning.

A life, in summary.

Don’t worry, S–, I’ve shredded the original. Though if you were concerned about your privacy you wouldn’t have thrown it into the street.

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Stilgherrian Simpsonsized

Stilgherrian — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 01:15:08 +0000

’Pong and I have just let The Simpsons Movie and Burger King absorb an hour of our valuable attention in exchange for turning us into yellow-skinned characters. Simpsonize Me is a promotional tool for the film, but one which gives you a toy to play with — the ability to turn your photos into characters from The Simpsons — in exchange for a bit of brand reinforcement.

I reckon this is how “interactive advertising” has to work. A fair exchange of value. As opposed to Audi’s over-produced self-indulgent wank, where they get your psychometric profile and you get — well, nothing.

The question now, of course: How good a match for me is the character I’ve made? Comments?

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Oops, there goes privacy! So now what?

Stilgherrian — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 01:54:31 +0000

Most of the more enthusiastic web developers worry me. In their wild-eyed enthusiasm for the latest, coolest technology they seem almost oblivious to wider or longer-term implications. Nick Bradbury, creator of FeedDemon, a popular RSS reader for Windows, had an interesting take on this recently.

Back in 2004, I asked: “What are we actually building here? A lot of people in my profession wear rose-colored glasses and believe we’re helping to make information free to the world, but some of the early proponents of television believed the same thing. Are we really just building the next version of TV, one even more powerful because it knows your name and shopping habits?”

I thought I was being cynical then, but now I’m not so sure. Google continues to carve out a huge share of the Internet advertising market, in large part by figuring out what we’re paying attention to. The quality of the content doesn’t really matter to them — only the number of eyeballs they can advertise to does. Sounds a lot like commercial TV, doesn’t it?

So far, has the Web been better than TV, or just more targeted? And is it really worth giving up so much privacy in order to get it?

One of the biggest changes facing society right now is a massive loss of individual privacy. And one of the best introductions to the issues is Simson Garfinkel’s book Database Nation.

Garfinkel is a leading researcher in computer forensics, so he’s well aware that “privacy on the Internet” isn’t really about your email address being used to send you spam — despite that being the focus of most website privacy statements.

As he says in Database Nation:

To understand privacy in [the 21st century] we need to rethink what privacy really means today:

It’s not about the man who wants to watch pornography in complete anonymity over the Internet. It’s about the woman who’s afraid to use the Internet to organise her community against a proposed toxic dump — afraid because the dump’s investors are sure to dig through her past if she becomes too much of a nuisance.

It’s not about people speeding on the nation’s highways who get automatically generated tickets mailed to them thanks to a computerised speed trap. It’s about lovers who will take less joy in walking around city streets or visiting stores because they know they’re being photographed by surveillance cameras everywhere they step.

It’s not about the special prosecutors who leave no stone unturned in their search for corruption of political misdeeds. It’s about the good, upstanding citizens who are now refusing to enter public service because they don’t want a bloodthirsty press rummaging through their old school reports, computerised medical records and email.

It’s not about the searches, metal detectors and inquisitions that have become a routine part of our daily lives at airports, schools and federal buildings. It’s about a society that views law-abiding citizens as potential terrorists, yet does little to effectively protect its citizens from real threats to their safety.

Actually, you could argue that privacy has already been lost — we just don’t realise it yet.

It’s now impossible to drive anonymously across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Every mobile phone is a tracking device. Every web page you look at is logged by your Internet service provider. And a generation is recording every little detail of their lives in LiveJournal or MySpace or Facebook or whatever social media website will make all those look so last week.

My take on this?

Society will have to come to terms with the fact that everyone has skeletons in the cupboard — that joint they smoked, for instance. Roughly 1 in 7 of the men listed on birth certificates isn’t actually the father — but now routine DNA screening for diseases is uncovering uncomfortable bedroom secrets.

Many “bad” things are really quite common — they’re just not talked about. Our private worlds remain private. Or at least they used to.

We’ll have to get used to the idea that politicians, teachers, bus drivers — whoever! — are all flawed humans. We can’t ban those who smoked a joint or has “a history of mental illness” (depression affects 800,000 Australian adults a year) or committed a crime (copyright infringement is now a crime, you know) or there’ll be no-one left!

So long-term we might get a more tolerant society, with a more reality-based view of the world.

However in the shorter term I can see a decrease in tolerance. As new technologies reveal more of our hidden private worlds, people will be shocked to discover “all these criminals” and so on, and there’ll be a crackdown.

It could be an uncomfortable few decades.

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I look like David Trimble

Stilgherrian — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 10:30:21 +0000

Apparently I look like David Trimble (pictured right), the Northern Ireland politician and joint winner of the 1998 Nobel Peace prize. Well, 67% like him anyway, according to face recognition website MyHeritage.com.

Here’s the deal. You give them your photo, they match it against their database of celebrities and pick the closest. And in return, they get to test their face recognition software — and along the way build up a database of over a million faces (so far) matched to names and email addresses and family connections. Neat eh?

A not a single privacy concern, not one. Because their privacy policy includes the magic words saying that they’re firmly committed to protecting your privacy. So it must be true.

I also look 61% like actor Anthony Hopkins, 56% like American poet Ezra Pound, and 55% like actors Annette Bening (should I frock up now?) and Hugh Grant (should he frock up now?).

And 53% like Boris Karloff, which doesn’t thrill me at all.

Ah, the devil’s in the detail…

Will MyHeritage disclose any of my personal information to third parties?

bqNo. MyHeritage will not disclose any of your personal information, except with your knowledge and consent as described below, or as may be required by law, or to protect the rights or property of MyHeritage.

So, they won’t pass on my personal information, except when they do. The typical weasel-words of privacy policies, and something I’ll return to another time…

By the way, my thanks to The Adventures of Queer Penguin for alerting me to this site.

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The Future of Privacy

Stilgherrian — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 20:46:07 +0000

Information security expert Bruce Schneier looks at the Future of Privacy in this article from his Crypto-Gram Newsletter.

Two snippets:

The pervasiveness of computers has resulted in the almost constant surveillance of everyone, with profound implications for our society and our freedoms. Corporations and the police are both using this new trove of surveillance data. We as a society need to understand the technological trends and discuss their implications. If we ignore the problem and leave it to the “market,” we’ll all find that we have almost no privacy left…

Most of us are happy to give out personal information in exchange for specific services. What we object to is the surreptitious collection of personal information, and the secondary use of information once it’s collected: the buying and selling of our information behind our back.

Bruce writes coherently — and presumably knows more than we know he knows. His books are well worth a read too.